Morning Media's Valentines to Vulgarity

Valentine's Day used to be a day set aside for wearing red and eating chocolates from that special someone, or for the jaded, dissing the Hallmark-holiday aspect of it all. 

But on Valentine's Day 2008, the morning shows rejected romance in favor of sex and vulgarity. 

It started at about 8:20 in the morning when liberal actress Jane Fonda dropped the C-bomb on air during NBC's Today Show during a discussion of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.

Today co-host Meredith Vieira asked Fonda, well known for her feminist activism, why she was not a “big fan of the play” at first.  Fonda responded “Well, it wasn't that I wasn't a big fan.  I hadn't seen the play.  I live in Georgia, okay? I was asked to do a monologue called C--- and I said, I don't think so.  I've got enough problems.”

So Fonda recognized that people in Georgia might have a problem with such a vulgar word, but didn't think the rest of the nation would have a problem with it?  

NBC's wasn't the only network to ramp up the vulgarity for Valentine's Day. 

On ABC's The View, topless Chippendale dancers presented each of the ladies with bouquet of roses, sparking co-host Sherri Shepherd, who apparently forgot that she was on national morning television and not at a bachelorette party, to whip out her dollar bills and excitedly ask the men, “Where are you going to be at?”  

Token conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck channeled her inner adolescent while discussing the audience gift of Godiva chocolates. She informed everyone that “if you give someone normal chocolate, you'll get a normal kiss, but if you give someone a truffle, you get tongue.”

Hasselbeck did regain her senses during a discussion about the new slogan for New York City's free condom program, “Get Some.”  She was the only one to express concern about the message it sends to people:

HASSELBECK:  I'm sure, as much as it would encourage someone to have safe sex, it may encourage someone to have sex for the first time when maybe they're not ready.

SHEPHERD: I don't --

HASSELBECK: I'm just saying maybe it's a false sense of security.

BEHAR: She's into abstinence, now this one…

HASSELBECK: I think that yes, we need to protect the body, but we should also be protecting the person and their integrity and maybe their sense of worth.  

WALTERS: It's hard to believe that somebody who doesn't want sex is suddenly going to go out and pounce on someone--

SHEPHERD: Oh, I've got a condom, I'm going to have sex now!

HASSELBECK: I'm sure it happens all the time if it's easy and right there.  I'm just thinking that it may have a--

WALTERS: I think if they want to have sex, they'll find the way. I'd rather they find a way with a condom.

SHEPHERD: I think they've been having sex without the condoms.

BEHAR: Say what?

SHEPHERD: I said, 'I think they've been going and having sex without the condoms.

BEHAR: They have.

SHEPHERD: I don't think it encourages them to have sex just being able to get that condom.

HASSELBECK: I do think in some ways it is an encouragement. I think the slogan itself is where I have the problem. I'm all for safe sex. If you're going to have sex you should protect yourself.  But I think in this society, we've very much focused so much on the body that we're forgetting to protect the person.

It's just a shame that a day that's supposed to celebrate love is twisted into a celebration of sex and vulgarity.