As Mr. Emanuel says, “I swear a lot.” He also yells a lot, and in his sentences his favorite expletive can serve as subject, verb or adjective. . . . New York Times, November 6
The Federal Communications Commission defines “indecent speech” as “language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory activities and organs.”
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However, Garre went on, “What we would say is that it can qualify as indecent under the—under the commission’s definition, because even the nonliteral use of a word like the F-word, because of the core meaning of that word as one of the most vulgar, graphic, and explicit words for sexual activity in the English language, it inevitably conjures up a core sexual image.”
“Which is indeed why it’s used as an intensifier or as an insult,” said Garre.
Now the FCC surveyed the horizon. At the 2002 Billboard Music Awards, Cher had said, “People have been telling me I’m on the way out every year, right? So fuck ’em.” And at the same awards ceremony a year later, Nicole Richie, a presenter, had remarked (departing from her prepared script), “Have you ever tried to get cow shit out of a Prada purse? It’s not so fucking simple.”
And for good measure, the appellate court observed that while it hadn’t decided the case on constitutional grounds, if it had the FCC almost certainly would have lost.
Fortunately, the FCC didn’t fold its tent. It took the matter to the Supreme Court, and the oral arguments last Tuesday found the Court pondering the F-word and the S-word like physicians of old contemplating the king’s bowels.
