ABC's The Bachelor Ben Flajnik Goes Skinny Dipping With Potential Wife

Apparently ABC is going back to a time before Janet Jackson's Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction, back to a time when bare butts regularly made an appearance on ABC's NYPD Blue, and a few other shows, with the latest iteration of The Bachelor, set to premiere Monday, January 2, 2012.

In a promo video viewable on Entertainment Weekly's Insider TV in an article titled "New promo for 'The Bachelor' features Ben's bare butt -- EXCLUSIVE NSFW VIDEO" you can see Ben Flajnik go skinny dipping with one of his wife candidates.

In the video promo it appears that the other wife candidates watch the skinny dipping from afar and react in mortified horror.

The potential wives this time, at least judging from the video promo, were cast for cursing ability. There is a lot of use of the infamous F-word.

Apparently at some point in the ongoing potential wife winnowing process an ex girl friend of Ben's arrives. This has one of the homicidal maniac potential wife's saying "I am going to kill whoever walks in that door."

This threat of violence and Ben's bare butt leads me to something that has long bugged me.

On primetime TV it is perfectly okay to show all sorts of acts of violence. On shows like the various CSIs, Bones, the NCISs, and others, we can see a body cut up during an autopsy. Or the crime scene before the body gets to the autopsy table. Or the actual murder.

But we can not see a bare butt. To me a bare butt is perfectly innocuous. As are bare boobs. On the most recent episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills a lot of attention was paid to Brandi Glanville's nipples, which were clearly visible, despite being covered by a dress. But, Brandi being topless would be a big no-no.

This makes no sense to me. It seems a sane healthy minded world would tend to censor scenes of violence, not scenes of human bodies in their perfectly natural state.

With ABC deciding to bare butts again, I wonder if this means the cameras are going to follow Ben all night long in the notorious Fantasy Suite episodes.