Sherry Chandler

Oh, foot!

Which was an expression I heard and may even have used as a child with no idea that it was a euphemism for a certain currently popular and sometimes “fleeting expletive.” It may be that the adults I learned it from didn’t know that either.

A panel of judges from the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has found against the Bush administration’s FCC on the matter of publishing broadcasters for these “fleeting expletives,” saying in essence that what’s okay for Dick Cheney on the floor of the Senate is okay for Bono at the Golden Globes.

It’s a good decision. I’m against censorship. But I was struck by this passage in this morning’s report in the NYTimes:

Beginning with the F.C.C.’s indecency finding in a case against NBC for a vulgarity uttered by the U2 singer Bono during the Golden Globes awards ceremony in 2003, President Bush’s Republican and Democratic appointees to the commission have imposed a tougher policy by punishing any station that broadcast a fleeting expletive. That includes vulgar language blurted out on live shows like the Golden Globes or scripted shows like “NYPD Blue,” which was cited in the case.

Reversing decades of a more lenient policy, the commission had found that the mere utterance of certain words implied that sexual or excretory acts were carried out and therefore violated the indecency rules.

“Sexual or excretory acts were carried out”??? So the problem isn’t that the terms are abusive or just low street talk unworthy of the high discourse of television but that they imply that somebody somewhere must have sat on a toilet and relieved themselves?? Or even some angus on the back forty? The problem isn’t that some of these expletives are sexist in their implied violence against women? It’s that they might be sexy?

Dear old Mrs. Grundy is alive and well. We’ll be putting cloths over our tables next, to cover up their “limbs.”

Anyway, the judges would have none of it:

But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”

And this, which is more like it:

Although the judges struck down the policy on statutory grounds, they also said there were serious constitutional problems with the commission’s attempt to regulate the language of television shows.

“We are skeptical that the commission can provide a reasoned explanation for its ‘fleeting expletive’ regime that would pass constitutional muster,” said the panel in an opinion written by Judge Rosemary S. Pooler and joined by Judge Peter W. Hall. “We question whether the F.C.C.’s indecency test can survive First Amendment scrutiny.”

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that television can find ways to imply that sexual or excretory acts were carried out without resort to fleeting expletives. And it doesn’t take “vulgarities” to make a medium vulgar.

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