The 'FCC-Word'

By Garrett Epps

This article appeared in the June 16, 2008 edition of The Nation.

May 29, 2008

Lawyers used to joke that free speech includes the right to shout "fuck" in a crowded theater. But can Bono shout "fuck" at a crowded awards ceremony? Does the First Amendment still mean, as the late Justice John Marshall Harlan once wrote, that "the State has no right to cleanse public debate to the point where it is grammatically palatable to the most squeamish among us"?

Next term the Supreme Court will hear Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, which pits aggressive puritans in the Bush Administration against aggressive sleazemongers in the Murdoch empire. But the stakes for American culture are much higher than the party lineup would suggest; at issue is whether a government bureaucracy is the legal arbiter of what is "legitimate" news coverage or "genuine" art.

In 1973 a progressive New York radio station broadcast a George Carlin monologue on "the seven words you can never say" on the public airwaves (in current FCC parlance, those would be "the S-word, the P-word, the F-word, the C-word, the C-sucker word, the M-F word and the T-word"). A member of a "decency in media" organization filed a complaint. The FCC disciplined the station for violating a federal statute that forbids broadcast licensees from transmitting "any obscene, indecent, or profane language by means of radio communications." The Court held that the commission could not totally ban speech like Carlin's, but it could require broadcasters to transmit it late at night, when it is unlikely children would be listening.

Subscriber Login

4 ISSUES FREE

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

.

About Garrett Epps

Garrett Epps teaches constitutional law at the University of Oregon. His Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America won a 2007 Oregon Book Award. Next fall he will become a law professor at the University of Baltimore. more...
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Blogs

» The Beat

House Passes Health Reform, But Without Reproductive Rights | Pelosi secures necessary votes, but only after allowing anti-choice Dems to bar access to abortion in new programs.
John Nichols
119 Comments
Posted at 9:11 ET

» Editor's Cut

Around The Nation | Obama, one year on. Plus: Jeremy Scahill takes your questions, and a new video series from The Nation.
Katrina vanden Heuvel

» The Notion

Injustice in Illinois | Prosecutors in Illinois should be more concerned with an innocent man behind bars than journalism students' grades.
Ari Berman
28 Comments

» The Dreyfuss Report

Obama Fails in Middle East | Clinton delivers the ultimate diss to Abbas.
Robert Dreyfuss
135 Comments

» Act Now!

Equality Across America | This week, young LBGT activists are staging a National Week of Initiative.
Peter Rothberg
16 Comments

» Altercation

Slacker Thursday | Dying laptops, recapping the election, the Dow, and the Yankees with the World Series.
Eric Alterman