“The twins are fine.” That’s it. That’s what Brad Pitt said. The four most important words ever spoken by a human being. “The twins are fine.” Thank god, Brad Pitt has finally grown enough balls to publicly admit that the twins – while not ecstatically happy with their lives – are at least free of any major diseases, abnormal growths or traces of profound clinical depression.

That’s provided that Brad Pitt was talking about his two newborn baby twins Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline, of course. He might have been discussing The Proclaimers. We honestly can’t be bothered to check.

Hands up who forgot that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie just had twins? Yeah, we had to admit we did as well. There are two main reasons for this – the main one being that so much of our body is covered with tattoos of Maddox, Zahara, Shiloh Nouvel and Pax Thien that the only space we had left for our tattoos of Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline were on our buttocks where only our neighbours, our neighbours’ parents and our ‘osteopath’ can see them.

The other reason is because we have unusually small attention spans, and in the month since they were born, the announcement of their birth, second announcement of their birth, third announcement of their birth by their estranged grandfather and top-dollar People magazine photoshoot had totally slipped our minds. Whoops.

So thank heavens that Brad Pitt has the good old-fashioned courtesy to remind us for the millionth time that actually, yes, his girlfriend did squeeze out a couple of babies recently. God know what we’d do without him – probably get on with our lives in an otherwise perfectly normal manner or something disgusting like that.

So what did Brad Pitt say about his twins when he probably should have been concentrating on promoting his new movie Burn After Reading in Venice? Well, we’ve already told you quite a few times, but here’s People with the details:

Two months after the birth of Knox and Vivienne, Brad Pitt told reporters at a Venice press conference Wednesday, “The twins are fine.” He then raised his water glass like a toast, and took a sip.

“The twins are fine,” might seem like a fairly innocuous, standoffish thing to say about his own children – but in reality he’s given so much away about them. For instance, if the twins are fine then they’re not happy, sad, angry, disgruntled, distressed, jealous, anxious, bereaved, troubled, vexed, despondent, sluggish, frightened, timid, bewildered, fainthearted, vengeful, greedy, hate-filled, smug, disgusted, joyous, affectionate, disappointed, remorseful, contemptuous, aggressive, optimistic, surprised, zesty, tormented, spotty or nervous.

They’re fine. Deal with it.

Incidentally, if you’re reading this Brad, please don’t have any more children. We just have one small patch of skin left, and we heard that perineum tattoos are extraordinarily painful. However, if you do decide to have another kid, then consider the name ‘Perineum’ our gift to you.

And the latest scrap to break out is between the FCC and Fox. You see, half a decade ago, Fox showed some digitally-obscured boobs on a barely-remembered reality TV show and the FCC has just decided to fine it $91,000 for doing so.  However, Fox is refusing to pay the fine, calling it "arbitrary and capricious, inconsistent with precedent, and patently unconstitutional."

By doing so, Fox has kick-started a hard-fought ideological debate about morals, indecency, ethics, free speech and censorship that could change the shape of American broadcasting forever. Plus it's about boobies. Wheeeee!

We're no experts, but we think that Americans have the right to freedom of religion, the right to bear arms and the right to sit around masturbating to digitally-obscured breasts until they either a) get cramp or b) realise what they've become and stop in an angry fit of self-loathing. And that's a God-given right that the FCC has been trying to take away from them.

If the FCC had its way then the average American wouldn't be able to masturbate to a sudden glimpse of a 1990s pop star's partially-covered breast or brief shots of naked buttocks or Diane Keaton swearing on live TV. The first two are OK, but the last one is a step too far – show us a man who doesn't find saggy-faced 62-year-olds screeching the word 'fuck' at Diane Sawyer completely erotic and we'll show you a liar – which is why Fox is staging a fightback.

Back in 2003, Fox broadcast an episode of reality show Married By America that showed some digitally-obscured strippers and a woman licking whipped cream off a man's nipple. Enraged that Fox was basically sending everyone who watched it to hell for eternity – a place which, ironically, shows nothing by Married By America reruns all day – the FCC hit Fox with a $1.2 million fine.

After four years of appeals the fine was reduced to just $91,000, but now Fox has decided that it won't pay that either. The Washington Post reports:

Despite the sharp reduction, Fox said it would not pay the fine on principle, calling it "arbitrary and capricious, inconsistent with precedent, and patently unconstitutional" in a statement released yesterday… Fox has asked the five FCC commissioners to reconsider the fine without its having to pay, a move that sets Fox in a two-front indecency war: It is battling the FCC at the agency level on the "Married" fine and in the Supreme Court on other indecency fines levied at about the same time.

Part of the reason why Fox is refusing to pay the fine is apparently because of the nature of the complaints that the FCC received over Married By America. Although it received 90 complaints, they were from only 23 people. And all but two of the complaints were virtually identical, meaning that the fine had basically come from three people who were angry at a pixelised tit.

If this is true, then there's a strong argument for Fox to fight the FCC fine. The FCC's war on indecency is wrongheaded at best and dangerous at worst – it can let entire seasons of 24 pass without blinking once at all the relentless scenes of violent torture pass, but as soon as a digitally-obscured stripper covered in whipped cream flits into view for a couple of seconds, fines get thrown about like nobody's business. The FCC really has no right to enforce such heavyhanded censorship in a modern society.

Unless the FCC is just protecting us from Heather Mills. After all, if we're talking cream-covered strippers then Heather Mills is pretty much the queen of that (NSFW), and the FCC needs to make sure that she's never allowed to commit such terrible atrocities again. Keep up the great work, chaps!

Read more:

Fox Refuses To Pay FCC Indecency Fine – WP 

Take the bottom for example. There are tons of alternative words for this piece of flesh. Ass, arse, batty, behind, booty and bum are just some of the brilliant ways to describe it. Sometimes you may have to come to terms with your own bottom while having a shower in the morning. There you see yourself in all your hideous glory. So it’s not like you’d be shocked to see an image of an arse on TV, is it? Apparently so.

NYPD Blue recently showed an episode which depicted a female arse. Not a problem you’d think. Well it is, and there may be some punishment to the network ABC.

America is a glorious nation. It's the frontrunner for telling the rest of the world how to live their lives, a global leader on fighting the war on terror, it won’t let other countries develop nuclear missiles and it's got a leader who won’t sign a piece of paper to cut evil gases emitting into the atmosphere which will consequently see the world imploding. 

With all these serious issues going on, you’d have thought that America would be quite liberal to less serious matters. Of course not, anything that could potentially turn the innocence of a child in to a sex-wielding maniac after seeing a bit of flesh has to be stopped.

Though saying that, Jamie Lynn Spears is probably the perfect example of how a bit of nudity can influence girls into committing acts of underage sex with blokes who should know better.

It’s not the first time that America has grinded to a halt after witnessing a bit of flesh. Who can forget Janet Jackson getting her chest pillows out at the Super Bowl? That’s a sight that nobody really wants to see. We’ve had those sorts of problems before, incidentally, although the police officers wouldn’t take our story of our trousers accidentally falling down inside a strip club seriously. What do they know? 

So what exactly upset several American viewers and forced them to gouge their own eyes out? After a repeat of NYPD Blue from 2003 was shown, the BBC reports that 'multiple, close-up views' of a woman's buttocks were broadcast before the US watershed. Oooh, multiple encounters showing something that both men and women have. Could it get anymore offensive? Apparently so:

“The scene in the police drama shows a boy surprising a naked woman as she prepared to take a shower. The FCC said it received several complaints about the sequence, which also showed one of the woman's breasts.”

Hmm, we could see why this may cause a few problems – but if reports are to be believed, a warning was issued before the shows going out: 

“An ABC spokeswoman said that the program was broadcast with parental warnings and that "the realistic nature of NYPD Blue's storylines was well-known to the viewing public". 

We can believe that. When was the last time the police busted a crack den and let the occupants dress appropriately before being sent downtown? Never, that’s when. But because it seems most Americans want to live in a fairytale land which is wrapped up in glittery cotton wool, a fine of $1.4m is going to be imposed on the network that broadcast the scene.

But it doesn’t stop there. The fine will be placed upon all 52 stations that showed the episode. It just goes to show that there's nothing as evil as arses. Which sort of makes hip-hop videos worse than Hitler. We think. 

Read more:

US network faces $1m nudity fine – BBC