Monday night — call the censors

Watching television on Monday night with Mrs. Doud, I noticed a few things. For example, the programs we were watching seemed to be in a contest to see who could take the most clothes off without having the censor pull the plug (Assuming a censor exists anymore. That job, if it exists, must be filled by a blind person who can’t hear.)

One of the programs, “Bachelor in Paradise,” is peopled with characters who seem to do little else but take their clothes off. The men flex their muscles and the women wiggle their — well, their soft parts, which didn’t used to wiggle at all on prime-time television. People on prime time television used to have to wear clothes. That was all there was to it. So did animals.

Tweety Bird, for example — a cartoon, not an actual bird — was made to wear feathers by the Hays Office (film censors) when one of the Hays factotums determined a featherless bird was a little too ... well, tweetalating.

But it isn’t just the characters on “Bachelor in Paradise” who are vying to see who can show the most flesh.

The Olympics are actually ahead in that game. The male swimmers and divers are down to wearing next to nothing. One guy had a Band Aid on his arm that was bigger than his swimming suit.

“Wow!” said Mrs. Doud. “Look at those swimming suits.” What she really meant to say was that the muscular and very athletic swimmers, who were under the suits, looked pretty good to her.

Oddly enough, the young lady swimmers don’t wear little tiny swimming suits. Their suits are made to cover just about everything except their legs and arms. They look like normal people, wearing old-fashioned normal swimming suits.

Almost nobody on “Bachelor in Paradise” looks like a normal person. They have this crazed look, as though they can’t believe what’s going on around them. Maybe it’s because they seem to be drinking like beluga whales whenever they are alone or with somebody.

The Hays Office censors would have closed down “Bachelor in Paradise” in the first minute, at least until all the characters put their clothes back on, in which case, all the viewers would have turned it off in the second minute. Or, the viewers would have changed channels to watch the male Olympic swimmers, until they, too, had to cover up, maybe by donning old-fashioned pairs of trunks — a pair like I have in one of my bottom drawers, I believe.