TVSquad

Now I just want to know what the censored joke was on 2&1/2 men that was mentioned on card number 199.

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I am so glad I am not the only one who pauses their DVR to read those things!

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as a catholic, i can understand cbs's reasoning. whilst i have a sense of humor, many do not, and would cry foul. the problem here is that less than 1% of all priests have even been accused of such "diddling" as lorre calls it, and just as high a percentage of the general pastoral population, nondenominationals and other prody's alike, are guilty of the same egregious crime, so why pick on Catholics? because it's easier? funnier? the truth is that many catholics are offended by such comments(though i personally can think of far more offensive things about Catholicism than that that has aired recently on television - can you say Lewis Black "is the Catholic Church the root of all evil - which airs on Comedy Central, a CBS owned show)...perhaps that is why CBS censored the joke in this case?

I don't find the joke that funny to begin with, but the Catholic thing would have made me cringe, and think, "ah, another anti-Catholic in Hollywood. Imagine that." At least this way he just comes across as slamming all religion. Either way, the remarks about Christianity are endless and stupid. The only reason they continue is because Christians aren't insane suicide bombers. I don't mind some joking and tasteful humour, but enough with the garbage.

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Mike M, the clear reason that the public is picking on the Catholic church in this situation is beacuse of the church's continual and habitual (not to mention illegal) long-time behavior in denying the offensive behavior ever occurred and attempting to distract and obfuscate legitimate investigations into reported offenses. They hypocritically put tremendous amounts of effort into covering up the offending priests' transgressions instead of helping the victims. The only acceptable behavior for church officials upon learning of even the remotest possibility that a priest is molesting a child would be to call the police immediately. Instead they simply transferred priests out of their current positions and did nothing to help the victims.

If that doesn't warrant being picked upon, I don't know what does...

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Well Mike I suggest you ask yourself where 99.9% of all the jokes in TAAHM stem from.

Usually from sex practices that I won't ever conduct in my whole life or things that will never happen to me. Because they are easy? No. Because it's funny.

And it's not Chuck Lorre's fault that 99.9% of all catholic priests don't molest children but 0.1% do and that the catholic church paid people off and shuffled those molesters around to be able to keep on doing their horrible deeds and that we are now able to laugh about that.

At a certain point, people started making 9/11 jokes. Because it's easy? No. Because horrible things spur "horrible" jokes to be able to cope with the inherent grief process. This joke was a form of outcry about the fact that a rich church is able to get away with this virtually unscathed. I for one was raised catholic and left the church because of their policies towards abortion, homosexuals, contraceptives AND child molestation. I am angry. I (!) can laugh about such a joke. Not because it's easy. But because I am angry that virtually nothing was done about it and only money changed hands. MY money in part because yes, also here in germany there are catholic child molesters and the way it was handled was just the exact same way it was done as in US parishes.

So saying that these jokes are just "easy" is ridiculous. It's a slap in the face of authors and a form of extreme censorship that the power of catholic interest groups and the threat to hammer the advertisers is enough to make CBS censor the show. The media should be free and it's ridiculous that nowadays only comedy shows are able to push the boundaries while other shows like political (!) ones don't even dare to touch controversial topics because of religious interest groups.

I am sorry that I didn't read further than your first two sentences because I was already "on 180" which is a german expression for having a pulse of over 180.

The problem, to re-iterate, isn't that the amount of pedophile priests is that small. The problem is that NONE of them (or virtually none) were thrown in jail like EVERY OTHER child molester. It's not Chuck Lorre's fault that the rest of the priests have to suffer from the fact that their church in Rome decrees things have to be pushed under the rug.

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Interestingly enough, this tale about having to censor his joke is funnier than anything that's ever appeared on The Big Bang Theory.

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Even more to the point: Given their history of transferring pedophile priests in an attempt to cover their crimes, what right does the Catholic Church have to pass moral judgment on ANYONE?

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I'm Catholic, even went to parochial school. The joke wouldn't have bothered me one bit. In fact, when referred to as "Chaplain", I made an assumption that it was a reference to a Catholic priest.

I was bothered by CBS's censorship of his original script as well as their keeping him from posting his viewpoint on the after-show placard.

For the last so many months, everyone was distraught over the writers strike, hoping each week for a settlement. Now that their back and doing what we want them to do - write - the corporate suits are already whining about content. What are they looking for, a lame schedule filled with shallow "reality" and "talent" shows like Survivor & American Idol? I can't wait until that genre of "entertainment" follows the path of the 60's variety shows. At least with those, you had real writers and some occasional humor.

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Lorre isn't really that funny to begin with anyway, let alone Lorre with a dirty joke.

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Okay, one itch scratched, but now I'm going to spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what word you meant to use that became "prolific."

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My question is how many people really have the ability to stop and read the placard, and then how many of those that DO record the show or have a DVR 'actually' stop and read them? The fact they are on his website and he links to the offending cards seems to do nothing but delay those that would want to read them from possibly reading them - but it seems that by censoring him, CBS forced me and probably many others to go read what was written, force this article to highlight the censorship to be written, and in general bring MORE light to this. Honestly, I never read the placards, except for the one during the writers strike (since it looked so wierd flashing on the screen I had to back it up) despite the fact that I watch Big Bang...so all they've done is added even more people to the list that now will read his placards other than the small few that had the ability to pause and 'actually' do take the time to pause. Did they really think he'd just lie down and not write about the censorship??

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You might enjoy this entertaining audio interview with Bill Prady, co-creator of "The Big Bang Theory": http://www.mrmedia.com/2008/04/bill-prady-big-bang-theory-cbs-tv.html . Prady's other writing and producing credits include "Gilmore Girls," "Muppets in Space," "Dream On," and even an episode of "Star Trek Voyager." You could also subscribe to Mr. Media's RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MrMedia .

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I am Catholic and a loyal viewer of your show. I think that the joke was as effective comically as it aired as opposed to the reference to a Catholic priest. I get that the church has had to deal with alot of sick and perverted and individuals but if you have researched the problem of child molestation in organized religion, the problem is definately not only indiginous to the Catholic church. The joke worked and it was funny, isn't that what's important here?

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