Federal Appeals Court rules you can swear on the air, but only for the hell of it

[Dennis Baron]

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Federal Appeals Court rules you can swear on the air, but only for  
the hell of it

The Second Circuit of the U. S. Court of Appeals has ruled that you  
can swear on broadcast TV as long as you don’t really mean it, and  
it’s even O.K. if you do mean it, as long as you don’t do it very often.

This ruling stymies the Federal Communications Commission’s attempts  
to punish indecent language.  The Commission fined Fox Broadcasting  
for Billboard Music Awards shows in 2002 and 2003 in which Cher said  
of her detractors, “fuck ’em,” and Nicole Richie said, “Have you ever  
tried to get cow shit out of a Prada purse?  It’s not so fucking  
simple.”

In response to these fines for the offhand use of indecent language,  
Fox Broadcasting, NBC, and several other plaintiffs sued, and Fox v.  
FCC was decided June 4, 2007, one day before another federal court  
sentenced I. Lewis Libby to hard time.  The Appeals Court found the  
FCC’s actions “arbitrary and capricious” and instructed the  
Commission to revisit its new policy of assessing fines for indecent  
language..
...
In telling the FCC to rethink its policy on fleeting expletives, the  
Court observed, “These words … as the general public well knows, are  
often used in everyday conversation without any ‘sexual or excretory’  
meaning.”  The Court agreed with plaintiff NBC that “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.’ ”  ....

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DB


Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

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