Say it! Say it! SAY IT!

Just when you thought you heard it all, sometimes you don't hear it at all. Fox News could not bring itself to mention what "derogatory term" Colorado State Rep. Larry Liston used to describe teen parents. The word was so horrible, Liston ended up apologizing. The Rocky Mountain News reports where Fox News feared to tread:

Liston used the derogatory term during a Republican caucus lunch on health care to express his view that unmarried teen parents are sexually promiscuous and to complain that society condones premarital sex.

"In my parents' day and age, (unmarried teen parents) were sent away, they were shunned, they were called what they are," Liston said at the lunch. "There was at least a sense of shame.

"There's no sense of shame today. Society condones it ... I think it's wrong. They're sluts."

Sluts? That's the word Fox News was afraid to use? Not "rutting swine" or "parents of bastards" or even "pigs in heat"? Sluts?

Has anybody at Fox News watched what appears on the other Fox channels? I'm guessing the word sluts makes a frequent appearance over in the entertainment division. At the very least, it would describe the behavior often seen as "entertainment" by Fox.

And Liston is apologizing? Why? Perhaps if a few more public figures described promiscuous behavior in unflattering terms there might be a little less promiscuous behavior by teens. Who knows? Maybe we could even restore the social stigma. Certainly the loss of that stigma contributes to many of society's problems, so why shy away from describing those that engage in sluttish behavior as... sluts?

And if anyone in earshot complains, we can always say we heard it on TV.