Dirty Words and Fleeting Expletives Revisited

This past week, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review decency regulations as they apply to television and radio, specifically, “fleeting” or accidental use of expletives in live broadcasts. In effect, to review the 30 year-old ruling of FCC v. Pacifica Radio (whether a broadcast of patently offensive words dealing with sex and excretion may be regulated because of its content). The Pacifica case specifically dealt with George Carlin’s “seven dirty words”: S**t, P**s, F**k, C**t, C**ks****r, Mother*****r and T**s.

Regarding the “fleeting” expletives and accidental use, The First Amendment Center writes: “for most of the 30 years since, broadcasters have felt generally unthreatened when a prime-time expletive escaped from an entertainer’s mouth. That changed after the seemingly spontaneous use of the F-word by Cher in 2002 and both the F-word and the S-word by Nicole Richie in 2003 on Fox broadcasts of the Billboard Music Awards. In accepting an award, Cher said critics had counted her out for decades, and she added, ‘So f— ‘em. I still have a job, and they don’t.’”

The case is FCC v. Fox Television Stations.