There IS, however, such a thing as an impolite word. The point of it all is civility. We jointly agree to put certain limits on our speech and actions under “polite” conditions. Why should we do this? Because it expresses our mutual respect for each other and thus leads to a “civil” society. Most of us wouldn’t mention to our grandmother than she looks “fucking lovely today” because we respect her and wish to show it.

Take these constrains away and there no longer can be a civil society. This is about the point we’ve come to now. It’s perfectly ordinary to hear people express the most crude and rude thoughts at any time in any place. Someone cut in front of you at the Starbucks? Fine, loudly denounce them as an asshole. It’s OK, becuase no one respects anyone else anymore anyway. When you find out that they didn’t actually cut in front of you, but had just stepped aside to drop something in the trash, well, they’ll loudly denouce you as a cocksucker. After all, you’ve proved deserve no more respect than they do and the fact that you just made a mistake doesn’t count.

Civil society exists to grease the wheels of social interaction. It prevents arguments from turning into fights and prevents transgressions that might have been unintentional or simple mistakes from turning into ugly incidents. The US has pretty much lost its civility and setting broadcast airwaves to “anything goes” status is just one more symptom.

Thanks for the clarification.

I agree completely. (Full Disclosure - I did drop my first f-bomb in second grade - but it was a one off for a while. Of course, I grew up on military bases so there was a bit of salty language about.)

Excellent point, Penny.

Hardly the point. Just applying a sense of decorum, would your opinion be the same if it was real x-rated sex in front of your kid on tv?

As a responsible parent, the First Amendment doesn’t apply in my household. Use the word fuck in my presence and you are in trouble. Same with watching porn. I don’t appreciate slobs on the public airwaves that my kids can access either.

So, with your comment, I take it that adult intervention isn’t needed?

Nice.

This latest ruling from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals gives me some hope that our country hasn’t completely gone to the hell that has been created by a succession of sanctimonious authoritarians.

I think the answer from a linguistic point of view is simple enough. The root meaning of the former words is more diverse, even if the original connotations that lead to their use as an exclamation is expressly sexual. In the case of the f-bomb though, the root meaning is explicitly sexual and not only so, but with the basest intent. This is why society didn’t develop the exclamations “intercourse you” or “you’re ‘makin love’ stupid.” Because those terms have a neutral or positive connotation sexually.

Even the difference between someone saying “you’re ‘F-ing’ stupid” as opposed to the use of the full word in the exclamation have greater acceptance, because the use of the lette as opposed to the word connotates an avoidance of the word’s primary meaning. In other words, people who say “F-ing” as opposed to “f***ing” are aware of the sexual connotation and are attempting to emphasize the exclamatory rather than the sexual in the expression.

It’s also worth pointing out that the argument Jeff uses, abut his own use of the words in this post, is to really kosher:

“There is absolutely nothing sexual or scatological in what I’ve just said — first, because I can’t imagine saying anything involving Kevin Martin that is in any way sexual (though I guess some might say he’s kinda cute), and second because what I have just made is a political statement.”

Politics or Jeff’s own sexual intent really have nothing to do with it. The words have a sexual connotation. You can’t divorce that from them simply because you didn’t intend the meaning or because you and a certain portion of society feel they stand a solely exclamations. The argument seems to be that the FCC Chairman is being overly unreasonable in acknowledging those connotations, but in fact he’s recognizing that the connotations are still quite valid in American society. Regardless of the inflexible and inconsistent nature of the FCC regulations (which are far better grounds for the ruling to stand on) Martin seems to be far more in touch than Jarvis or the courts on those grounds.

Nicely stated, CB. An example that comes to mind is the term “sucks,” as in “he sucks,” “she sucks,” “this job really sucks.” Talk about a word with a nasty root connotation that has passed into the lexicon of general exclamations.

Also, Jeff fails to convincingly make the point that certain words can be used apart from their sexual or scatological connotations. Well, you can intend to mean them that way, but language doesn’t work like that. We don’t just pull terms out of the air regardless of their root connotations (except for the occasional wanna be hipster trying to get a catch phrase going). The use of the terms as exclamations come about precisely because the actual meaning of the terms is debased by the user (not withstanding the debasing nature of such expletives to the original concepts they depict). That they pass on into the lexicon of general exclamations to the point of a certain kind of antagonistic meaninglessness is a direct result of the original debasement of the words’ meaning. See Richard Curtis’ “The Skinhead Hamlet” for an example of this everyday practice taken to the ridiculous nth degree, or the Python episode where Graham Chapman uses the line “Oh, intercourse the penguin” for a variation on the concept.

I do agree with Jarvis that the failure of the FCC to treat cases consistently is a failure, but language has meaning. It offends me as much to see an Afrian American comedian use the N-word as it does an ignorant bigot. We can spend all day pretending that the comedian has the higher ground because they are more enlightened and not racially hostile, but we miss the more salient point that they have only co-opted an vulgarity that still means the same thing: the denigration of a people based on their race.

To be sure, I’m not arguing for prohibition of such words. Rather, the Court’s ruling only stands to take us to the opposite extreme of the FCC’s strict policy, where the childish among our “creative” community will attempt to demonstrate just how “adult” they are, by getting away with whatever they can. To be sure, parents who value their input into their children’s own values about such things will now need to be even more vigilant than before. Maybe that’s the way to protect “freedom of speech” (which Jarvis and some commentors seem to define at the Least Common Denominator) but society itself will be debased more because of it.

I can’t say that I’m terribly sorry to see the Mental Minority besieged on yet another front, particularly THIS one. The more fronts we can have them pulling the defensive on, the better, in my opinion.

Just so you all know, however, this is going to lead to another paradigm shift.

Yes, the FCC has been caught up with the whole ‘dictating morality’ thing for far too long, and in far too arbitarary a fashion, but there’s another side to this. Introduce the universality of expression to some of these words and phrases, and those of us with children will soon be hearing them around the dinner table. From kids. Sometimes aimed at US, the parents.

Let’s don’t forget that there has been a major shift in parental ability to control children over the past decade or two. When I was growing up, a parent thought nothing of smacking a wiseacre kid in the mouth if he or she ‘popped off’ with a clever catch-phrase of this sort. Nowadays, I wander the supermarkets in a daze as I witness the powerless Mom at the mercy of her squalling kid, unable to deal out physical retribution to an angry child heaping abuse on her for not buying the latest junkfood or hot toy.

Oh sure, physical punishment was bad - no mistaking that. With some parents it got totally out of hand. But nowadays parents live in terror of their kid picking up the phone and calling DHS while their backs are turned. So, does the Mom get to ‘negotiate’ with the angry kid in mid-store? “Okay, keep it up and there’ll be no TV tonight!” I actually heard one kid reply “So? I’ll just go over to April’s and watch it over there.”

I rather imagine it’s going to take some getting used to for a good many parents, having their kids flinging this kind of language around the house. In a lot of cases, nothing is going to be done about it. Too many double-income families just don’t have the time to monitor child behavior on a basis regular enough to instill the kind of wisdom and judgement from parents that many of us enjoyed in the past.

Okay, a lot of what went on in that past I’m referring to was a thinly-veiled hypocrisy - but at least you didn’t have to deal with a kid calling you ‘F**kface’ at the dinner table.

So…this is going to usher in a new era of parent-child relations…a field which has already become pretty much a highwire act for a lot of parents. You want absolute freedom of speech? Be prepared to give it to your kids as well…and get ready for a whole new set of challenges to relating to them.

Honestly, I think this court ruling was a good thing. Really. I just have this unpleasant feeling that, like everything else, it’s a two-edged sword. Yeah, we can say whatever we want… and so can our kids…

I don’t need the government to filter the media I consume.

And as for kids, nobody uses expletives more than an 11 year old. I think the kids can handle some foul language on the tube.

Let’s see it says NO LAW, yet we have many laws restricting freedom of speech, especially those concerned with “pornography” and critical political speech. It’s nice that the court has ruled against enforcing arbitrary blasphemy restrictions, but we are still a long way from real freedom of speech.

Apparently there isn’t a phrase in the English language that can’t be twisted to mean its opposite by clever jurists. Given the conservative makeup of the court and the easy target that critical speech makes there is little chance that we will see true free speech restored anytime soon.

no mystery - it’s all about money

Insurance - wants you living longer (more income) and not getting hurt (less outlays)

Political Correctness Organizations - there’s money in them operations for the jobless salesman.

Don’t matter to them if we move closer and closer to shepherded sheep in a pen.