I’m no prude, but vulgarity in movies and on TV is just lazy writing

Hollywood’s vulgarians have succeeded in desensitizing us to profanity.

Anything goes on cable TV. An episode on “South Park” satirizing network restrictions used the vulgarity for excrement 163 times in one episode.

That’s entertainment?

TV may reach new depths Sunday when cable carries the Bobby Knight story, “Season on the Brink.”

In one scene, Brian Dennehy as Knight rips into his players with a string of obscenities that make Tony Soprano sound like Mary Poppins.

I assume that Dennehy will use the real speech by Knight which was captured on tape. The ads for the program say “viewer discretion is strongly advised.”

I saw how desensitization works in my own household. My wife and I were watching a clever movie, “Fargo.” In one scene the bad guys were mouthing a string of expletives.

My wife didn’t like it, and we turned off the movie. After years in the Navy and on the street as a police reporter, I have heard a lot of cussing. She is square and is used to more civilized language.

Fast forward. Two years ago she still didn’t want to watch “The Sopranos” because of the language.

But we heard a lot of swearing on other shows.

Now we sit and watch “The Sopranos” and “Chris Isaak” and “The Larry Sanders Show” and she doesn’t even flinch.

Profanity is used so much in entertainment because it is the lazy or incompetent writer’s means of expressing emotion. Want dramatic impact? Throw in expletives.

It takes skill and patience to convey dramatic impact without using obscenities. It’s the style used by writers before this generation.

I think....don’t know, but believe...that is the way everybody talks in Hollywood’s “creative” circles. They think that’s real life.

There’s one positive in all this. Swearing among ordinary people, at home or work or play, is no worse today than a generation ago. This may or may not be true in the newest generation. I’m not around them enough to know.

Regular TV controls swearing on shows because it depends on sponsors and customers complain to sponsors about excessive language.

Cable’s worst offenders are HBO, Showtime and Cinemax which have no advertisers.

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I watched a strange movie on HBO Saturday night. It was “The Mexican,” with Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and Tony Soprano, aka James Gandolfini.

There was the normal amount of cable cussing. But it was surprising to see and hear the lovely Julia swearing a blue streak.

Even more surprising, Gandolfini played a tough, vicious killer. But he was gay. He shed tears over his gay lover.

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Correction. I incorrectly said William Heirens has spent 46 years in prison. It’s 56. He was sentenced in 1946 and has been in prison since then for murdering Suzanne Degnan.

I have a little personal note to add to the story. I was the first reporter on the scene when the Degnan kidnapping was reported.

A beat cop was stationed behind the house. “Is that her room?” I asked.

Yep. “Mind if I take a look?”

“Go ahead.”

(As I mentioned, law enforcement was casual in those days.)

I climbed in the window, looked around the little girl’s bedroom, didn’t touch anything and backed out the window and jumped a few feet to the ground.

I didn’t know that my footprints were a major clue in the investigation. And I didn’t realize my fingerprints were all over the window sill.

It happened that I lived a few doors north of the Degnan home, at 6030 Sheridan Road, then a big house and not a high rise.

I’m still thankful that I escaped being a prime suspect in the murder.