Not sure how I missed this when it happened Monday, but an appeals court in the States decided that it’s OK to say “fuck” and “shit” on TV. This ruling doesn’t sit well with the Federal Communications Commission, but that fucked group of Bush-backed censors can eat shit.
A great piece on the situation comes from Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine. It’s a long article, and along the way he highlights a couple great quotes. The first is from the ruling, and it delights Jarvis that the “justices point to George Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s use of no-no words to prove that fuck and shit are not necessarily sexual, execratory, and indecent”:
Similarly, as NBC illustrates in its brief, 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.” . . . (citing President Bush’s remark to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the United Nations needed to “get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit” and Vice President Cheney’s widely-reported “Fuck yourself” comment to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate).
Jarvis then quotes the official statement from the FCC’s Kevin Martin:
Today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said the use of the words “fuck” and “shit” by Cher and Nicole Richie was not indecent.
I completely disagree with the Court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families. I find it hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that “shit” and “fuck” are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.
The court even says the Commission is “divorced from reality.” It is the New York court, not the Commission, that is divorced from reality in concluding that the word “fuck” does not invoke a sexual connotation.
The whole BuzzMachine article is here. It’s right the fuck on.
This article appears in May 31 – Jun 6, 2007.