Confession time: I’ve become so accustomed to the bleep sound being used in place of really bad words that when I saw the Reverend Wright video on TV the other week I totally assumed he said “Not god bless America, god fucks America!” I even got into an argument about it and felt pretty sheepish when Google proved me wrong: the bleeped word was “damn.” I guess I should stop getting my political scandal news from Sesame Street.

The New York Times reports that advertisers are using the bleep sound on purpose more and more to arouse and titillate consumers (such as in the Bud Light commercial, “Swear Jar“), and local markets are starting to ban some of the ads.

The stations objected to a talking blue circle in the commercials, he said, which twice utters a word that is bleeped.

“They said bleeps are inappropriate and they bleeped the bleeps,” Mr. Kay complained. “It’s a little blue cartoon head that’s not being allowed to swear.”

The FCC might even get involved in this exercise in meta censorship. Who could have seen this coming? Oh, Jimmy Kimmel for the past three years. Nobody takes away my unnecessary censorship! $#%&!: