I need to rephrase that: this is the boring story that would not die. Cher swore on TV. First it wasn’t okay; then it was okay; now it’s not okay again. I’ve culled the pertinent details (in my estimation anyway) from the USA Today story by Joan Biskupic:
“A Supreme Court ruling Tuesday that upholds a prohibition of expletive outbursts on broadcast originated with a case over an appearance by Cher at the 2002 Fox Billboard Music Awards show in Las Vegas.”
“A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a federal prohibition on the one-time use of expletives in a case arising partly from an expletive uttered by Cher at a Billboard Music Awards show in 2002. The ruling, by a 5-4 vote and written by Justice Antonin Scalia, endorsed a Bush administration Federal Communications Commission policy against isolated outbursts of, as Scalia said from the bench, the "f-word" and "s-word." The ruling does not resolve a lingering First Amendment challenge to the 2004 policy that is likely to be subject to further lower court proceedings. Tuesday's decision reversed a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that had said the FCC's decision to sanction "fleeting expletives" was arbitrary and capricious under federal law.
[I hear “fleeting expletives” and I think of a cartoon of a sprinting “foul” word.]
That lower court had agreed with Fox Television Stations, which broadcast the Billboard awards, that such isolated utterances are not as potentially harmful to viewers as are other uses of sexual and excretory expressions long deemed "indecent" and banned by federal regulators. Dissenting were liberal Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. In a statement by Breyer, signed by the others, they said the FCC "failed adequately to explain why it changed its indecency policy from a policy permitting a single 'fleeting use' of an expletive, to a policy that made no such exception."
The policy dispute had been shrouded by partisan differences and moral overtones of what is best for young viewers.
[Yeah but what’s new?]
Breyer added in his dissenting statement that while the law allows administrative agencies to change their policies, it "does not permit them to make policy choices for purely political reasons nor to rest them primarily upon unexplained policy preferences."
Tuesday's decision was the first Supreme Court ruling since 1978 addressing federal anti-indecency policy for broadcast companies, which face greater government regulation than cable networks. In the case three decades ago, the court upheld a fine against a radio station that had aired comedian George Carlin's "Filthy Words" monologue in the middle of the afternoon. In that ruling, the court specifically noted that the FCC was not sanctioning the "occasional expletive."
[That was a famous piece of comedic art, kids.]
In a subsequent order, the FCC found several incidents, including the 2002 remarks by Cher, indecent. As she waved her lifetime achievement trophy, she had said, "People have been telling me I'm on the way out every year, right? So (expletive) 'em." Scalia repeated Cher's routine from the bench Tuesday with dramatic flair but using, rather than her expletive, the euphemism "f-word."
[Okay now that wasn’t so boring – can we see it on video?]
The government said that among the FCC criteria for determining whether something was indecent is whether the words were used to titillate or pander to the audience. Under such criteria, the expletives during the World War II movie Saving Private Ryan, for example, were not deemed indecent, but the outbursts of Cher and Bono were.
During oral arguments, however, some justices, including Ginsburg, complained that the policy seemed unpredictable. "Seeing it in operation, there seems to be no rhyme or reason for some of the decisions that the commission has made," she said, noting that a documentary about jazz history was found indecent.
The disputed FCC policy was developed under the leadership of then-FCC chairman Kevin Martin, an appointee of President George W. Bush who has since stepped down. Martin had complained that broadcast TV was trying to compete with cable, becoming "edgier" and "less family friendly." FCC membership is currently in flux as President Obama makes new appointments.
Can we please move on to something more interesting? Like Cher’s tax returns or something. Really, this is the edge of boring-celebrity-story, however pertinent to my waning rights of free f*ck-ing speech.
Sources:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2009-04-28-scotus-fcc-expletives_N.htm?csp=34
http://dailydalia.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/any-reason-to-write-about-cher/
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