Tired of hearing the word 'douche' on TV? It appears you are not alone on that.

Television is pretty douche-y these days. In fact, one character has called another character a "douche" no fewer than 76 times on prime-time network series this year, with shows like NBC's Community, ABC's Grey's Anatomy, CBS's The New Adventures of Old Christine and the CW's Vampire Diaries all featuring the insult in recent weeks. I learned this tally from The New York Times, which commissioned the right-wing Parents Television Council to do a douche count. That number is way up from just a few years ago, when only six characters got busted for being douchebags. (By the way, I think I'm more offended by the PTC getting hired to search TV for "naughty" colloquialisms than by the misuse of a word for the sake of comedy. Sorry, Massengill). The story further reveals that the tube has a whole passel of "bitches" (triple the number of a decade ago) and a heaping helping of "jackasses" (mentioned in 34 family-hour shows). And a lot of things just "suck." That word's come up 232 times this season in series that air between 8 and 9 p.m. But back to douche, a pejorative term that's apparently so titillating to the Grey Lady that it spawned an entire coarsening-of-our-televised-world story, only about a dozen years late. And they totally forgot to mention Jon Gosselin. What a bunch of asshats.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley