You Can't Say That on Television: 40 Years of Debating Dirty Words

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Illustration by Alexander Ho for TIME

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The Expletive, It Is Fleeting

By the 2000s, a new problem had emerged between network broadcasters and the FCC: profanity during live shows. At the Billboard Music Awards on Fox in 2002, the singer Cher used the F-word. Nicole Richie did the same thing the following year. Then ABC broadcast nudity for about seven seconds on an episode of NYPD Blue.

Following these incidents, Bono cursed during a live airing of the Golden Globe Awards, triggering the FCC to issue an order finding the use of the F-word in an isolated instance to be indecent, reversing earlier guidelines stating that fleeting expletives were in fact not indecent. The FCC then used that Golden Globes order to retroactively say that Fox and ABC was in violation of FCC rules, which is why the Supreme Court ruled in the networks' favor last week. The justices said that the FCC did not give Fox or ABC fair notice that that content would be considered indecent.

It's unclear why the court ruling was so narrow. However, Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused herself from the case, which could've meant a 4-4 split over more fundamental First Amendment issues.

"I don't think it's the ruling that either side of the issue had expected," says the Parents Television Council's Winter. "But the FCC still has the ability to regulate broadcast indecency. I just wish the ruling had gone a little further. They kicked the can down the road, but they didn't take the can away."

The FCC will now turn to the 1.5 million complaints involving 9,700 TV broadcasts that were at a standstill awaiting a ruling. Even so, many parents will try to bypass the FCC altogether and try to organize a boycott of certain shows through social media.

It's unclear what the FCC will do or even how it will affect broadcast content. Crigler, who represents Pacifica, says he believes the FCC will either bolster their current guidelines or modify them in a way that the commission believes won't be challenged on First Amendment grounds. One thing he expects is more specifics from the FCC on what's indecent, considering Justice Anthony Kennedy's language that the commission's standards as they applied to the Fox and ABC broadcasts were too vague. In other words, a move toward what Carlin argued for 40 years ago.

As for Douglas, he's still battling what he sees as immorality in America. Since the Carlin case, he hasn't shied away from being an advocate on moral issues. In the 1990s, he was active in getting Times Square to clean up its porn establishments. His target of ire these days: cable companies that include on-demand adult channels in their cable packages — even in an age when adult content is only a click away online.

"I'm pounding on doors and calling people and so forth trying to get a number of people to join me in a lawsuit," he says.

Still, Douglas says he agrees with the recent Supreme Court decision, saying that it's all about the intent of words, not the words themselves. At times, Douglas sounds eerily like Carlin himself. After all, Douglas did develop a friendship with the late comedian after both were thrust together in the '70s.

"The man intellectually is a giant," says Douglas. "The definition of words and the double entrendres indicated to me the man had great intellect and I appreciated his humor all the more."

Because of the court's narrow decision, the big questions of censorship and constitutionality remain. Douglas says he's at peace with the decision, but that peace may be short-lived. More litigation, more debate, more questions are all certain to come. As Carlin might have said: f--k.

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