When I lived in Canada, there was nudity on TV and swearing and movies weren't censored like they are on the TV here. They did show a warning at the start of the movie and end of every commercial break which is great for those who have kids, but it was not censored. When people think of sex, they immediately think of American TV and culture but I ask you, where is all this so-called debauchery? Are the American people so fragile that we need to be sheltered from bad words and images of the human form?

I think Canada has it right when it comes to censorship, no nudity and bad words before 9 pm but after 9 pm is grown-up time. For all you Quebecois, I give you TQS.

The prevailing attitude toward sex in American culture can still be boiled down to one example: Three's Company

Sex sells in the USA, but not real sex as much as much as jr-high-nudge-nudge-snicker sex... If you imply that there's nothing dirty about it, everyone will get offended and try to take your show off the air.

You're right, even in primetime, we often have nudity in films or other programming.

TQS every night at 11:00 has a soft-core 1/2 hour program.

I think this will vary from province to province though. We often get "marginal" films released here in Quebec that are banned in other provinces. "Baise-moi" would be a good example. Guess we're not as uptight about nudity as some other places are.

America likes sex but because of a few people who would complain, we don't have it on primetime regular TV. Those uptight people make me sick. They should just choose not to watch the stuff they don't want and let the majority of the people watch what they want to.

The right wing christian conservative who run the country.

A certain person with the initials GWB?

That's nothing! I once saw a programme (a film actually) on German (free) TV with full frontal male and female nudity at 4pm - a time at which USA is showing kids TV! (FYI It wasn't a sex scene as the 2 characters involved were interrupted by a jealous husband just as they were about to bond.)

It's all because Americans like to pretend that sexuality is somehow diametrically opposed to religion.

With our public face, we tend to reverently suck at the milkless teats of egocentric con-artist windbags like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson so as to look meek, mild and oh-so-holy in the eyes of some mythical all-powerful being. Whereas behind closed doors, Americans are bumping uglies in an erotic flurry - the likes of which even the Marquis de Sade never dared dream. It's the virgin/whore complex on a nation-wide scale. We are quite simply the world's biggest hypocrits on the subject of our own sexuality.

And unfortunately, that's never, ever going to change.

Because we were settled by and are the descendents of Puritans, who want nothing to do with dirty Eurpoean tatses.

Sex and nudity are taboo to Americans.
Violence is taboo to Europeans.

Man I would gladly swap with the Europeans any day.

Executives mix American TV from a concentrate and they try and make as much of it from as little real juice as possible. Sometimes it is so watered down that it is void of any color. Except UPN on Friday nights.

Americans don't want to see things as they really are, but they also don't want to see things like they really want to see them.