“Little Bo Bleep” Modern Family Episode Upsets Viewers

A 2-year-old was bleeped during a scene of ABC comedy Modern Family on Wednesday and some anti-profanity advocates are crying foul.

Students at Palm Desert High School have gone as far as to start a club that stands against using cusswords.

The title of the episode is “Little Bo Bleep.”

Lily, 2, played by actress Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, said the word “fudge” during the taping. But to viewers, after a bleep was added and her mouth pixilated, it sounded like a toddler just dropped the f-bomb on national television.

On the show, Lily’s dads Mitchell and Cameron, were shocked to hear their daughter utter her first cussword.

Palm Desert High School senior Amanda Biggs, 17, is not amused.

“To me, it’s just not funny to have a little kid saying a bad word,” said Biggs, who along with senior Madelyn Brown, 17, are two of the almost 30 members making up their school’s no cussing club.

“The child won’t be influenced, but I think other people (who) watch the TV show will,” said Brown.

The Palm Desert club is the first of it’s kind in the Coachella Valley.

It was created in August of last year, and in recognition, the city of Palm Desert then proclamed Sept. 29, 2011 a “cuss-free day.”

In 2010, the California State Assembly passed a resolution, annually establishing the first week of March as a “no cussing week.”

The Palm Desert club is a chapter of the international No Cussing Club created in 2007 by then 14-year-old McKay Hatch in South Pasedena.

Today, Hatch, 18, is a student at Brigham Young University in Idaho.

His club has 35,000 members worldwide, and Hatch called on all of them to contact ABC, pleading for “Little Bo Bleep” to stay on the cutting room floor.

“There’s so many shifting values,” said Dr. Ossil Macavinta, a lead advisor for the Palm Desert club.

The organization’s goal is to empower people to use higher levels of communication, according the club’s website.

Macavinta said this latest Modern Family episode sends young people the opposite message.

“They can rationalize and say, ‘Well, if a 2-year-old can say it on television, it must be ok,'” said Macavinta.

In response to McKay Hatch’s attempts to pull the contraversial episode of Modern family off the air, ABC had no comment.