Looks like the FCC is OK with saying the F-bomb on television [View All]

[CShine]

The Federal Communications Commission issued a ruling last week that may someday be seen as a cultural milestone. Responding to complaints about U2 singer Bono uttering the phrase "f---ing brilliant'' at the Golden Globe Awards in January, the FCC decided that the word "may be crude and offensive, but in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities.''



Or, in other words, it's OK to say it on broadcast television. We have trouble with that. Not out of any excess of prudery -- a well-delivered obscenity has a force and power not found in more common words, and while we could do with fewer of them, we would not want to scrub the swear words from literature or the movies.

But obscenity belongs in context. Phrases that would resound in a David Mamet play have no place in front of a kindergarten class. Broadcast TV is one of the last great mass media -- its market whittled away, to be sure, by saltier cable channels. Still it goes into tens of millions of homes, and thus conducts itself with a certain decorum. Or used to.

Our popular culture has a way of growing earthier and earthier. The scandalous excesses of the past, from "Fanny Hill'' to Rhett Butler's "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn,'' quickly become quaint anachronisms. The process never stops. Perhaps some day the president of the United States will include in his inaugural address a promise to continue "supporting our friends and f---ing our enemies.''

http://www.suntimes.com/output/commentary/cst-edt-edits12.html