Elimidate and censorship?

So I was surfing the other day and happened upon ‘Elimidate’, which turned out not to be a programme called ‘Eliminate’ for people with head-colds.

Anyway, my spanko radar whoop-whooped, and sure enough, one of the girls competing for the attentions of cute dimbulb guy announced it was her birthday (and kept announcing it throughout), and that she’d had 22 birthday spankings and, furthermore, wanted each of the others to give her one too.

Cut to interview with said girl admitting that she’s into it, and demolishing any credibility she might otherwise have had with the line, ‘I’m a fetish!’

Cute dimbulb guy and the other girls – one of whom in a separate interview reveals that she might well be into it too, but as a top rather than bottom – then give birthday girl a few feeble swats.

But here’s the thing. At this point about 90% of the screen becomes covered by a graphic, on top of which is displayed a ‘spanking fact’ – that spanking [of children, one assumes, though it doesn’t say so] is banned in Sweden. The not-discreet-at-all graphic is removed once the unpleasantness is over.

Now, quite apart from the fact that using the occasion of some kids playing with almost-but-not-quite-sexual birthday spanking to show some ‘fact’ about CP of children is about as relevant as covering up a kiss with a rape statistic, what’s the deal with the graphic in the first place? Later on in the show there’s a little more very very playful spanking – a few gentle swats over jeans – and again it’s covered with a graphic, this time (verbatim):

‘Statistics show that spanking is a practice used more in some areas of the country than others.’

Well, duh. And, again, what’s the link between the kids playing a bit, and CP of children? Are the programme-makers trying to deny any sexual aspect to this play? Is there some sort of puritantical post-Janet-Jackson’s-nipple censorship or self-censorship going on? I mean, it’s okay for a TV programme to basically act as pimp for cute dimbulb guy, but not okay for them to show two people having a little very innocent fun smacking each other’s bottoms?

Feh. As it happens, the only one of the girls who seemed to have anything about her was rejected first, and cute dimbulb guy ended up with cute dimbulb girl, after rejecting maybe-top girl and increasingly drunk and loud birthday girl. Ain’t love wonderful?