On Senate TV: ‘Buffcoat and Beaver?’

Buffcoat and Beaver? As if the popular MTV series “Beavis and Butt-head” had not been maligned enough recently, a U.S. senator on Wednesday mangled the show’s name during a packed Senate hearing.

Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, was arguing that television broadcasters had to be pressured to curb violent or otherwise offensive shows when he said:

“We’ve got this--what is it--Buffcoat and Beaver or Beaver and something else. . . . I haven’t seen it, I don’t watch it, but whatever it is, it was at 7 o’clock (p.m.)--Buffcoat--and they put it on now at 10:30, I think.”

The MTV cartoon series has come under criticism recently after charges that Beavis and Butt-head’s habit of lighting fires caused a 5-year-old fan to set a fire that killed his 2-year-old sister.