It’s a move worthy of bitchy bad girl Blair Waldorf.
After sending out a promo in which a well-placed bleep left viewers with the distinct impression that GOSSIP GIRL’s Serena dropped the F-bomb while telling lover Dan he was, well, da bomb, the CW contacted yours truly — asking that the controversial clip be pulled.
Of course, do a quick search of youtube and you’ll find a half-dozen or more copies of the promo floating around.
Now were we cynics (who, us?), we might think that the CW purposely created a bit of a ratings-inducing controversy for itself, knowing full well that having the perky blonde heroine of a show aimed at teens dropping a barely-bleeped obscenity might get tongues wagging. They could then say “whoops!” and appear to be doing the right thing by pulling the clip, all the while knowing that in this day and age, a genie freed of its web-based bottle can never be shoved back into the bottle.
Adding fuel to that particular fire is the fact that the network seems to have no problem with using the word — or at least the inference of it — in their new ad campaigns, which feature the letters OMFG repeatedly.
If you don’t know what those letters stand for, trust me, you’re not GOSSIP GIRL’s target audience.
Certainly, GG isn’t the first show to play this particular card. The most recent episode of 30 ROCK revolved around a reality series titled MILF ISLAND, and Dominos pizza recently saturated the airwaves with their BFD promotion, claiming the letters stood for Big Fantastic Deal. And earlier this year, the president of Spirit airlines defened their use of MILF in ads, tap-dancing around the fact that the initials they were using in their Many Islands Low Fares campaign might, in fact, summon up hot-to-trot mamas in the minds of many.
This isn’t a particularly new game. And while we’re tempted to take The CW to task for trying to have its cake and eat it too, anyone who thinks that the viewers of GOSSIP GIRL don’t text the letters OMFG to one another 100 times a day might want to take their blinders off. Once they do, they’ll see that the kids who worship Dan, Serena, Nate and Blair are ROFL at them. 
