Indeed, right after a phone call and e-mail to the FCC, the next best thing you can do to keep the "f-word" mum is send the AFA cash. "If you can give $25 or $50 today, please do. If you can give $100 or $500, do that." And, silly me, I thought this was about morality, about the moral consequences of letting down the public guard on matters that may seem trivial to me but matter much to others. But if any one of you sends $500 to the AFA to keep the "f-word" out of television programming, you're the most immoral son of a bitch I know. I can think of about 14 dozen better places — left, right and center moderate — for you to send your $25, 50, 100 or 500 than the AFA's campaign against the FCC and the notion that they might look the other way if the "f-word" pops up now and again on broadcast television. Straight away asking for 500 bucks to wage war against the "f-word" debauches the entire concept of campaigning for moral integrity; it's the antithesis of moral integrity; worse by so many thousand meters than the "f-word" ever aspired to be. And the AFA Action Alerts play up as a grassroots e-mail campaign, a commitment deep and valued in the heart of the common, Internet-connected man. Seems to me the common man has to be wondering about that kind of grassroots action, what with, apparently, the cost of landscaping and topiary installation tacked onto the basics of lawn care.

Think about it, if you will. What's worse? Keeping your kids out from in front of prime time television — which really isn't a bad idea on several levels? Suffering yourself through the "f-word" a few times a week from your sofa redoubt? Or contributing to the war chest of a political lobbying organization — with a quite possibly veiled agenda — masquerading as the last bastion of American decency? The AFA is the candy story with the numbers game running in the back room; and, after all, $500 is a lot of money for a stick of licorice, isn't it?