If you care about the F wordMike Rappaport

At Volokh, Jonathan Adler has a post on the Second Circuit decision striking down the FCC’s policy concerning fleeting expletives and the FCC’s reaction.  Overall, the numerous comments to the post are entertaining and interesting.  (Be forwarned: The comments contain many expletives.)

The policy/legal issues raised by the case are interesting, and both sides are on display in a single line from this FCC press release criticizing the decision: 

If ever there was an appropriate time for Commission action, this was it. If we can t restrict the use of the words f**k and s**t during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.

The actual press release contains the expletives in their full form.  Pretty nifty to make the free speech and the protection of decency argument in the same sentence — especially one that contains two (nongratuitous) explectives.      

Some of the comments at Volokh suggest that allowing expletives on the public airways will lead to their unrestrained use, whereas others deny it.  Suppose that people did use the F word without restraint.  That would soon turn it into a less shocking, less vulgar, less powerful word.  I suppose this is how many people now think of the word “damn.”  What would happen in that world?  My guess is that new curse words would have to emerge to substitute for the F word.  But I think that would be a shame.  Sorry, I think the F word is a wonderful word — short, Anglo-Saxon, nice hard k — and I don’t want to do anything to undermine its power.  So if you, like me, care about the F word, don’t use it indiscriminately.  A somewhat different argument for propriety.