Sally field came to the Emmys with a prepared acceptance speech which she awkwardly forgot halfway through. That didn’t matter much, however, as Emmy producers decided to censor her comments anyway.
Said Field: “Surely this [award] belongs to all the mothers of the world. May they be seen, may their work be valued and raised. Especially to the mothers who stand with an open heart and wait. Wait for their children to come home from danger, from harm’s way, and from war. I am proud to be one of those women. If mothers ruled the world, there would be no — (censored).
What Field said was, “If mothers ruled the world, there would be no God-damned wars in the first place.”
Field said later, after learning she had been bleeped: “Oh, well. I’ve been there before! Good. I don’t care. I have no comment other than, ‘Oh, well.’ I said what I wanted to say. I wanted to pay homage to the mothers of the world. And I very, very seriously think that if mothers ruled the world we wouldn’t be sending our children off to be slaughtered.” She added: “I would have liked to have said more four-letter words up there!”
It’s not clear whether FOX was upset over the blasphemy or the anti-war remarks, but given their announcement that they would censor of Kathy Griffin’s “Jesus” comment last week as well as the network’s political bias, it seems likely they were irked by both.
Tom O’Neil of the L.A. Times notes: “Technically, Field’s censored words are not profane. A 2004 FCC ruling specifically stated no objection to the use of “god damn” on TV when making a judgment on the uproar over Bono swearing at the Golden Globes in 2003 where he used more colorful language.”
