Harry’s Freedom Foxhole - The FCC Is Alive and Kicking and Stupid

While everyone waits for the Supreme Court to rule on whether some or all of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional—in case you missed it, America is ruled over by a council elders who wear ceremonial garb and can’t be removed from office unless they die—the nine Justices keep on chugging along, issuing opinions on everything from union fees to prison sentences for crack. One of the most anticipated cases, for First Amendment freaks, at least, was Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., which concerned a series of fines levied by the FCC against Fox and ABC for showing a couple celebrities saying “fuck” during live broadcasts of awards ceremonies and featuring, in Justice Anthony Kennedy’s words, “the nude buttocks of an adult female character for approximately seven seconds and for a moment the side of her breast.” (Sounds hot.)

The reason to give a shit about this one was that there was a chance that the Court could rule that the federal government doesn’t have any business regulating speech on television and strike down the FCC’s entire insane indecency regime. And it is pretty insane: the agency fined NBC because Bono said winning an award was “fucking brilliant” on-air, then let ABC broadcast Saving Private Ryan, which, aside from being a movie about a bunch of dudes getting shot and blown up, has a bunch of bad curses in it. (During oral arguments, Justice Elena Kagan said, “It’s like nobody can use dirty words or nudity except for Steven Spielberg.”)

Instead of answering the big question of whether it’s sort of ridiculous that the FCC can—in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s words—“ban words spoken in a hotel on French soil,” the court issued a much narrower ruling that essentially said that it was fine to regulate speech on broadcast TV, but, dude, if you’re going to do that you have to at least explain to the networks what they can and can’t say. The FCC, the Court said, failed to do this and so the fines against Fox and ABC shouldn’t go forward. This was such a common-sense way to resolve the case that the normally divided Court made the ruling unanimous.

If you bother to dive into the full opinion, written by Kennedy, you’ll catch a glimpse of how silly the FCC’s policies are. The law that they base their anti-fuck policies on reads, “Whoever utters any obscene, indecent, or profane language by means of radio communication shall be fined . . . or imprisoned not more than two years, or both,” and it’s been mostly left up to the bureaucrats to decide what the hell is “obscene.” According to an old FCC document quoted in Kennedy’s opinion, the Commission bases it’s opinions on things like “whether the material dwells on or repeats at length descriptions of sexual or excretory organs or activities,” and “whether the material appears to pander or is used to titillate, or whether the material appears to have been presented for its shock value.” So apparently you can maybe use swears if you are really serious about it, like Spielberg, but if you tell a long gross joke about pooping and butt sex, you risk a fine. But also according to the FCC, the word “fuck” is special: “Any use of that word or a variation, in any context, inherently has a sexual connotation,” they claim—so when Bono said “fucking brilliant,” he meant, “this award is great, as great as penetrative sex!”

The only thing sillier than the FCC’s rules is the belief that without them, the children—won’t somebody think of the children!—will be exposed to terrifying indecency. This argument is made by people who say things like, “We all remember with horror Janet Jackson exposing herself during the 2004 Super Bowl Half Time show.” (Yeah, I hated that in between the spectacle of giant ‘roided-up dudes concussing each other, I saw a titty.) That argument was also advanced by Chief Justice John Roberts, who wants few channels where you can say, "They are not going to hear the S -word, the F -word.’” The problem is, broadcast TV is the least of your worries as a protective parent—there’s something called the internet, where instead of Janet Jackson’s boob, your kids could see a dude’s asshole getting stretched out by a horse’s cock, or some horrifying photos of maggot-filled wounds. (When even Deadspin’s Drew Magary is freaked out by the internet destroying youth’s innocence, you should be too.) The FCC’s mandate to keep obscenity off the radio and television parts of the electromagnetic spectrum is pretty quaint when there’s a whole world of horror waiting for your kid if he decides to google image “vomit penis.”

It’s not as if without the FCC, channels like Disney-owned ABC are going to start showing episodes of Big Hairy Dicks and Fat Juicy Pussies or Surly Pregnant Teens Mumble Racial Slurs. Even without the government looking over the networks’ shoulders, channels don’t want to alienate the prudish folk who don’t subscribe to HBO for religious reasons and say, “fiddlesticks!” when they get mad. That’s why there are wholesome cable channels like Great American Country and Smile of a Child. Removing regulations isn’t going to turn our TV networks into a 24-hour Satanist orgy. It’s just going to mean less ridiculous Supreme Court cases like this one.

Previously - Sweden Hates Your Penis

@HCheadle