Court’s ruling on expletives emitted in public is step in our society growing up
Maybe you thought about the late stand-up comedian George Carlin when you learned today that a federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s so-called “fleeting expletive policy.” The iconoclast Carlin made a career mocking rules against cuss words spoken in the public arena. He boldly talked about the “blue words” in everyone’s consciousness but blocked from public expression by over-protective censors.
The three-judge panel in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled today that the FCC policy was “unconstitutionally vague” and had a “chilling effect” on the freedom of speech provisions of the First Amendment. The judges ruled, “By prohibiting all ‘patiently offensive’ references to sex, sexual organs and excretion without giving adequate guidance as to what ‘patently offensive” means, the FCC effectively chills speech because broadcasters have no way of knowing what the FCC will find offensive. To place any discussion of these vast topics at the broadcaster’s peril has the effect of promoting wide self-censorship of valuable material which should be completely protected under the First Amendment.”
George Carlin had made a living with his routine, “Seven Words You can Never Say on Television,” in which he sarcastically talked around those seven words that the audience clearly knew. He constantly pointed out America’s Puritanism and hypocrisy and its idiocy with what people hear and think they hear and with what they see and think they see. You know words like “frickin” and “freakin” that become acceptable, although they might as well be the actual expletive. Or how a fleshtone body sock or a graphic painting of a nude can be displayed, but a photo of a nude human gets banned.
I grew up on a farm where the hired hands were drifters. They cussed freely, told us kids the most ribald and graphic jokes, smoked up our house and got drunk on weekends. Their swearing hardly corrupted us. In short order, their swearing went unnoticed in their conversations or outbursts. My parents allowed me to be routinely exposed to copulating cattle, hogs, chickens, sheep, dogs and other critters. Where was Child Protective Services in those days?
When our government drafted me in 1969, I was sent to boot camp in Louisiana where drill sergeants — federal employees like I — were allowed to unload the most crude litany of cuss words on me, a callow fellow who wasn’t worth spit to them. Where was the FCC to protect my ears and impressionable mind? It surely wasn’t there to protect this young man’s sensibilities. Obviously, profanity was as much part of the Army environment as the helmets, KP, guard duty and cleaning our M-14 rifles. Was that unwelcomed and relentless assault of vulgarity on me psychologically injurious? Should I have sued?
It all points to the inaneness of protectionism and the arbitrary way things are enforced. TV ads about Viagra and Cialis can so graphically talk about couples able to have sex whenever they want it, but that there are risks of erections lasting four hours. What’s a parent to tell an inquiring child hearing that?
I often ponder the fuss that people put up about swear words, graphic art or references to sex or private body parts. I often think, “Just get over it. Let youngsters know about their bodies and their functions and that bodies are to be honored, but there is nothing shameful about them.”
The crude language I heard from hired men in the barn on the farm when I was 8 years old simply gave me an early introduction to the real world. My own family didn’t shelter me from that, but their own values trumped those influences. The FCC had started its policy after Bono of the U-2 rock band put the F-word in adjective form in front of the word “brilliant” during the 2004 Golden Globe awards show on NBC-TV. We all remember the total nonsense and non-issue related to the fuss at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime-show. You know, the “wardrobe malfunction” when singer Justin Timberlake caused, for a fleeting moment, the exposure of a breast of Janet Jackson. It ranked as one of best examples ever of American hangups about the human body.
Surely today’s ruling is a step toward America growing up and moving away from a nanny society, away from the prudish and anal ways this society selectively deals with so much about our bodies, especially as we look back through the patterns of history. Foul words will always be around us, but we are equipped to use peer pressure and expectations of decorum and maturity to dissuade potty mouths around us.
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Sir, I do not know anything about you, but this piece is brilliantly well stated. Thank you. I will be sure to read your writings in the future.
Sir, I have read you and it is no surprise that you have this opinion.
You want to normalize the base and crude. You want me to believe that this language or behavior is the real world. That for America to “grow up and move away from a nanny society, away from the prudish and anal ways this society selectively deals with so much about our bodies” that we must accept this language, and reject the teachings of our ancestors. I reject your world.
Hey Lawn Griffiths (the Spiritual Life editor), here is a little religious history lesson. Matt. 15:11 “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man” and Eph. 4:29 “Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them that hear”.
Several great religious leaders have said, “Profanity is the effort of a feeble brain to express itself forcibly” (President Spencer W. Kimball) and “Be clean in language. There is so much of filthy, sleazy talk these days. … It tells others that your vocabulary is so extremely limited that you cannot express yourselves without reaching down into the gutter for words. …” (President Gordon B. Hinckley), and finally, Elder Dallin H. Oaks has observed, “The nature and extent of profanity and vulgarity in our society is a measure of its deterioration.”
Don’t we as a society have the right and obligation to determine what our community will sound like? Don’t we as Christians have the responsibility to set limits on what is acceptable and what is not acceptable? I for one am tired of seeing our society slip deeper and deeper into deterioration.
Lawn Griffiths, you sound more like a sectarian humanist than a person who supposedly represents the religious community of the East Valley.
Mr. Bodine,
I appreciate your contempt for vulgarity. I side with you on the fact that it is juvenile, unsettling and demeaning. But can it, or should it, be legislated? I don’t think so It is part of free speech and sometimes people have to reach into that bag to passionately object to injustice or the pain of the moment. I don’t use profanity, but I was around it a lot in different phases of my life.
I don’t pretend to “repreent the relgious community of the East Valley.” I am one voice. As a very active longtime Christian — yes very progressive — I among those who see beyond legalism and lots of rules to curb behavior especially obscenity. I think we have all found that once people have unloaded their curse words, it becomes meaningless and they are somewhat disarmed and spent.
What about people among us who swear in another language? Should be get translation police?
I find it rather ironic that one of the requirements to even post a comment here is to “keep it clean”. What now is considered clean? I find profanity extremely offensive. One time I asked a younger, well-educated co-worker if he had ever taken English language classes as it seemed he had only one word that he used as a adjective….guess which word that was. Another teacher friend, when asked if she enjoyed reading a certain author, replied “Not really, she has a very limited vocabulary”. There are so many descriptive words to use, but just like everything else in this country, we seem to pride ourselves in becoming more vulgar, more crude, no self-respect and totally depraved. William B, there is also another scripture in John 16:2 that say, “a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God (NIV)”. I think that is why the Muslims are trying to get rid of us because in their eyes we are so morally bankrupt.
it was very interesting to read.
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?
You may post it on your blog. I do not twitter.
I would like to exchange links with your site blogs.evtrib.com
Is this possible?
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