Clearing the air

Actress Patricia Heaton stands up against language that was once confined to locker rooms and pool halls | Gene Edward Veith

When Patricia Heaton walked out of the American Music Awards, she became a role model and a rallying point for everyone who has had enough of the way filthy language has sloshed into the public square.

Ms. Heaton, the Emmy award-winning co-star of Everybody Loves Raymond, was supposed to provide the introduction to a retrospective film clip about the awards. But as she waited to go on, everyone in attendance and the national TV audience were subjected to one lewd and crude innuendo after another. Through it all were the Osbournes, emceeing the show, who were trying to see how often they could get bleeped.

"I'm no prude, but this was such a vulgar and disgusting show," Ms. Heaton told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where her father was a columnist and her brother is a reporter. "What was passing for humor basically ranged from stupid to vulgar—and I just thought, 'I'm not going to be part of this.' So I walked out and said, 'Get my car—I'm leaving.'"