by Micah Tillman

The most amusing part of the Blagojevich/Obama Scandal is how terrible everyone is at censoring themselves.

Take Patrick Fitzgerald, for instance. It would seem from his press conference Tuesday, that “bleep” is his favorite new word.

“‘If they don’t perform, bleep ’em.’ That’s a quote, and the word ‘bleep’ was not the word he used.”

“‘Fire all those bleeping people,’ . . . close quote. And the bleeps are not really bleeps.”

“Those are his words, . . . other than with regards to the bleeps.”

“‘Bleep them,’ close quote. And again, the bleep is a redaction.”

The irony is that a person like Fitzgerald, charged with enforcing the law, also thinks it’s his job to enforce morals. To protect our sensitive ears. To not be obscene.

Perhaps this isn’t surprising, coming from someone who thought it necessary to say:

“[T]he FBI agents that participated in this wiretap investigation were thoroughly disgusted and revolted by what they heard, and I think even the most cynical agents in our office were shocked.”

Why do we care? Is it the FBI’s job to follow their feelings? Are they supposed to judge people based on gut-reaction?

Is the classic Star Wars line, “I have a bad feeling about this,” now the standard for prosecution?

Of course, we are talking about the Patrick Fitzgerald who thought it would be helpful to add:

“The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave.”

So, the Executive Branch’s job is to arrest people until Lincoln stops rolling? Are the subterranean spasms of dead presidents now the law of the land?

It is the Executive Branch’s job to enforce the law, right?

If there’s really as much “bleep” going on in Illinois as Fitzgerald says, then I’m glad he’s cleaning the place up. But I’ve got a bad feeling about law enforcement being left up to moralizing prosecutors and queasy federal bureaus.

Couldn’t Fitzgerald at least have picked a better self-censorship technique? Wouldn’t “blank” have been a better way to vocalize redactions? Why imitate the radio bleep sound?

Or, rather, why say the radio bleep sound, rather than make it?

Besides, bleeping isn’t the only way audio is edited for offensive content. There’s the classic “turning the word around backwards,” used in the radio-edit version of songs like, “Holiday” by Green Day and the Foo Fighters’ cover of Prince’s “Darling Nikki.”

There’s the static/white-noise “bad word cover” used in the radio-edit version of songs like, “Last Resort” by Papa Roach.

There’s even the “change the lyric” technique used in the radio-edit version of songs like “Creep,” by Radio Head, and “We Are All on Drugs [or ‘in Love’],” by Weezer.

And the Top-40 (not Rock Radio) edit of “What It’s Like,” by Everlast, and the edit of “Cowboy,” by Kid Rock, are both extremely creative.

Or, Fitzgerald could have gone with the Family Guy option. An air horn is always a nice touch at press conferences.

But no. He decided to say, “bleep” and “bleeping” instead.

Quoth Darth Vader, “I find your lack of creativity disturbing.”

But Fitzgerald isn’t alone. There’s also Barack Obama:

“I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening.”

“[W]e were not, I was not”? You can’t censor yourself after you’ve already said it.

Or can you?

Jake Tapper reports that Axelrod said:

“I know he’s [Obama] talked to the governor [Blagojevich] and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them.”

It seems Obama’s statement was an attempt to censor Axelrod, after the fact. And now, Tapper reports, Axelrod has joined in, claiming he “was mistaken.”

C’mon, fellas. Let’s get our acts together. If you can’t censor yourselves properly, don’t make yourself look like an idiot by trying and failing.

Just take the Joe Biden approach. Say whatever you want, and we’ll all stop taking anything you say seriously.

Just admit that everything you say is t!@sl%#b (and I mean that in the technical sense).

It works for Biden, why not for you?

Micah Tillman is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America.