Then came radio shock-jock Don Imus, who last year hurled racially charged insults toward the Rutgers women's basketball team. It took eight months before he was let back on the air, a self-described changed person. In the meantime, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People held its national convention and symbolically buried the N-word in a pine box. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said it was an act not only to banish that word but everything that goes along with it in the culture.

A few months later, the rapper Nas released a CD that had the N-word in the title.

I am reminded about the old joke that asks how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb. The answer is that the light bulb first has to really want to change.

Of course, many Americans already get it and do not fill their lives with rude behavior or degrading humor. They won't watch shows such as CBS's new comedy "Swingtown," which makes wife-swapping and drug abuse seem normal and acceptable.

But as the Information Age provides freedoms never before experienced — in what we view on our televisions and computers and how we react anonymously to things online — the tug-of-war over the future direction of the culture becomes more pronounced.

Rivers had been warned ahead of time that the British show she was on was live and that guests should avoid profanity. The World Entertainment News Network said she followed her eviction with a public apology that also contained profanity.

The age of irony is nothing if not resilient.

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Jay Evensen is editor of the Deseret Morning News editorial page. E-mail: even@desnews.com.