On this Mother’s Day edition of SNL, Betty White changed.

Saturday Night Live, NBC, May 8, 2010, hosted by Betty White, with musical guest Jay-Z.

Art (from the neck down): coopstuff.com

First of all, let me say, I’ve loved Betty White as much as you have. And for the same reasons. But since last night’s Saturday Night Live, something’s different. I’m not sure what: Betty White, our perception of her, television, or us. Or me.

Used to be I could say about Betty White, she was the lady who might not repeat every joke she overheard, but you knew she got them all. You could tell by the gleam in her eye. And when she related the more risque aspects of life, she’d do it in the style of last night’s opening monologue. She was referring to the Facebook feature “poking” (which I’ve never used). In her day, “…that only took place on a hayride. Under the blankets…” Then she broke a stare of fond memory, and shook her bouffanted head. “Where was I?”

Subtle. That was the Betty White I knew prior to about 11:45 last night. The art of manipulating the unsaid. The implied. The audience had to come equipped with its own dirty mind, or the joke wouldn’t work.

She learned this art in the crucible of 20th-century television, when network Standards & Practices departments kept things unrealistically clean. And only the talented could get across real-world comedic ideas, leaving no other tool but the double-entendre, the metaphor, the allusion.

Then, just before midnight, she dropped the F-bomb.

Oh sure, it was bleeped. The bleep is the vestigal symbol of control networks retain, mostly as a liability defense against the FCC. But we all know what it is. We’re in on the joke. The bleep actually makes the word funnier. A phenomenon at which Johnny Carson was quite adept.

But Betty White?

I watched the Twitter stream. She was the top trending topic during the show. The words to describe her were invariably “cute”, followed by the old stand-bys, “wily” and “spry”. But from these skits written for her, in my eyes, she shed her cuteness. I now don’t know what Betty White is capable of. Or what to think of her.

I suppose, appropriately enough for today, I’ve looked for a little of my mother in Betty White. Mom’s about 4 years younger than Betty. At her top alertness, she’d get maybe 3/4 of the jokes Betty would get. She’d do an obligatory laugh as my late father told them. But she’d never repeat them. (Granted, she never could tell a joke well.)

We got to hear from Betty: “Happy Mother’s Day, motherf***ers!”

She’ll still be called cute. As if nothing’s changed. But not by me.

This is a terrible thing for a live-and-let-live libertarian to confess to. The saving grace is, I have no urge to do much of anything about it, least of all call the FCC. So, there’s that. But still…

Am I just over-reacting? I’m about 2/3 Betty’s age (in Sally O’Malley range). What lines would I recite if they put me on SNL? How about you?