Language Not Safe for Fucking Work
October 10, 2007 7:00 PM Subscribe
What. The. Fuck. The word "fuck" became the subject of congressional debate in 2003, after NBC broadcast the Golden Globe Awards. Bono exclaimed,
"This is really, really, fucking brilliant" on the air. The
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided somewhat surprisingly not to sanction the network for failing to bleep out the word. Explaining its decision, the FCC noted that its (and
George Carlin's) guidelines define "indecency" as "
material that describes or depicts sexual or excretory organs or activities" and Bono had used fucking as "an adjective or expletive to emphasize an
exclamation."
Cultural conservatives were outraged. California Representative
Doug Ose tried to close the loophole in the FCC's regulations with the filthiest piece of legislation ever considered by Congress. Had it passed, the
Clean Airwaves Act would have forbade from broadcast:
the words "shit", "piss", "fuck", "cunt", "asshole", and the phrases "cock sucker", "mother fucker", and "ass hole", compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).
The episode highlights one of the many paradoxes that surround swearing.
posted by psmealey (38 comments total)
This post was deleted for the following reason: as much as this is an awesome post, it is a recent double - post some of these links in the original thread if you haven't already? -- jessamyn
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posted by Samuel Farrow at 7:01 PM on October 10, 2007