Censorship and babaganoush

I like to watch TV. I have a satellite, which grants me more than five hundred stations in Arabic, French, Turkish, Hebrew, German, Russian and probably other languages too. I'm not sure what all is available. I only watch four stations: BBC World, three which show English-language movies and television series with Arabic subtitles and Arabic commercials. (Oh, and I sometimes watch the cartoon channel when they show Tom and Jerry. I love that mouse!)

These channels have bizarre censorship patterns. Bizarre not only because of what makes it past the censors, but also what they choose to air given their obvious feelings on the matter. For instance, "Pretty Woman" was on the air the other afternoon. Not that it's a particularly racy movie, but if you are a channel with a stance against the portrayal of sex, is a movie glorifying a prostitute really the best choice?

That's not what surprises me the most. "Pretty Woman" is a great movie, so why shouldn't they show it? What makes me wonder is the fact that some shows are allowed to say "fuck" and its various derivations, but kissing is cut. Violence and gore are no problem, but complete scenes are removed because of a bit of risque-ness. And most confusing: the word "Jewish" was censored yesterday from an episode of "Third Rock from the Sun."

I actually remember this episode from when it was new, a million years ago, so the missing bits were all the more noticeable. The premise is that the aliens are searching for an ethnic identity to call their own, and after experimenting unsuccessfully with Italian - and African-American, they are outed by the landlady. She mentions that one of her previous husbands was a member of "your people." What people exactly? Well, in the version I saw yesterday, there was no answer to this question. The episode cut straight to the aliens' delighted reaction, at which point one congratulated the other with a "mazel-tov" and later played a Jewish song on a trombone.

But that particular word never made it past the censors, which begs the question, is "Jewish" a more dangerous word than "fuck"?

I don't know whether I want to know the answer to that question.

Completely unrelatedly, here is the view of the citadel from the restaurant at which I ate with The Roommate and Number Two in Al-Azhar Park. It's a lovely park, and although the restaurant requires the patrons to pay 120 pounds for a buffet on Friday nights, they offered two kinds of babaganoush and many delightful green apples.

Money well spent.