We are so fucked.
During the course of a broadcast of the Golden Globes awards ceremony, Bono said either “This is really, really fucking brilliant” or “This is fucking great.” (The complaints are unclear.)
The FCC ruled, sensibly enough, that this was, basically, okay.
As a threshold matter, the material aired during the “Golden Globe Awards” program does not describe or depict sexual and excretory activities and organs. The word “fucking” may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities. Rather, the performer used the word “fucking” as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation. Indeed, in similar circumstances, we have found that offensive language used as an insult rather than as a description of sexual or excretory activity or organs is not within the scope of the Commission’s prohibition of indecent program content.
Then Justin Timberlake ripped Janice Jackson’s bodice in America’s living room, and Howard Stern got uppity about Bush and was promptly fired by Clear Channel, so now the FCC has decided that what Bono said was actually indecent and profane. (Previously, profanity was reserved for challenges to God’s divinity, so I guess a round of sour golf claps for doing something about a grotesque violation of the first amendment, there.) Don’t worry, neither Bono nor any of the broadcasters involved will be fined for this violation, because, as FCC Chairman Michael Powell puts it:
Given that today’s decision clearly departs from past precedent in important ways…
Indeed.
(Atrios has another example of how silly and stupid and politicized this bullshit has gotten. —And what did the Democrats do to protect liberalism and freedom of speech? Fuck-all, that’s what.)
