In a stern decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overruled the Federal Communications Commission’s indecency standards. Two major pieces of evidence cited by the Court in their decision came from President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, again demonstrating this administration’s hypocrisy.
For eight years, Americans have been told over and over again that the Republican Party and in particular this administration firmly stood for “moral values.” They would fight the good fight against the indecency that was eating away at America. One of their long-running targets has been Hollywood, which like administrations dating back almost a century they have seen as the polluted fountain from which the torrent of foul language and pornography has flowed.
When he signed the Indecency Act of 2005 on June 15 of last year in Room 350 of the Dwight D, Eisenhower Executive Office Building as special guests then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Senator Ted Stevens, Senator Sam Brownback, now-former Senator George Allen and then House Majority Leader, John Boehner looked on, George W. Bush stated what had become his party’s stance on media indecency:
Every day our nation’s parents strive to raise their children in a culture that too often produces coarse, vulgar and obscene entertainment… Unfortunately, in recent years, broadcast programming has too often pushed the bounds of decency…
It’s the duty of the FCC to impose penalties on broadcasters and stations that air obscene or indecent programming. It’s one of their responsibilities. People expect us to adhere to our responsibilities. He’s a part of the executive branch. And since I’m the head of the executive branch, I take responsibility, as well, for putting people in place at the FCC who understand one of their jobs, and an important job, is to protect American families.
Introduced by Brownback, the Act’s official title was:
A bill to increase the penalties for violations by television and radio broadcasters of the prohibitions against transmission of obscene, indecent, and profane language.
Little did Bush know at the time that his own words would come back to haunt him: “Since I’m the head of the executive branch, I take responsibility.”
That the sentiments of speeches like Bush’s should find sympathetic ears among Americans tired of the explicit sex and violence of the movies and the over-reliance on potty jokes by television should come as no surprise. Even those of us who support free speech have seen and heard things on the screen that have caused us to avert our eyes or cover our ears.
For the GOP, the FCC’s recent review of media indecency was to serve as a centerpiece of their attempt to reclaim the morality turf. Hence the attention given by President Bush to signing the Indecency Act. With a Republican majority safely in control at the FCC, the Commission issued what became known as the “Omnibus Order” which attempted a bit of housecleaning in regard to several indecency incidents including Cher’s comment at the 2002 Billboard Awards:
People have been telling me I’m on the way out every year, right? So fuck ‘em.
As cited in the Circuit Court decision, the Omnibus Order:
Reaffirmed [the FCC's] decision in Golden Globes that any use of the word “fuck” is presumptively indecent and profane…
The Commission then concluded that any use of the word “shit” was also presumptively indecent and profane.
Squarely in the middle of this lay the most contentious issue of all–language. Long the subject of comedians’ satirical wits, the issue of verboten words has inspired endless debates and a long list of lawsuits, many cited in the Circuit Court decision. The legal history of indecent language would make for a nice satire itself since most of the decisions have to make use of the verboten words, thus in essence creating a catch-22 in which the courts themselves are guilty of using indecent language.
When the FCC took on the indecent language question with the Omnibus Order, language had become an especially difficult issue. The Commission recognized this by explicitly commenting on what has become known as “fleeting expletives,” that is four-letter words like Cher’s uttered on the spur of the moment. The FCC:
Dismissed the fact that the expletives were fleeting and isolated and held that repeated use is not necessary for a finding of indecency.
It was this issue of “fleeting expletives” that caused the Bush Administration’s favorite network, Fox, along with other networks and petitioners to file suit against the FCC. Fox, after all, wanted Bill O’Reilly to be able to describe liberals and Democrats with four-letter words.
In the Era of Bad feelings foul language has undeniably polluted the atmosphere. In other times and cultures, clever put-downs using sophisticated word play marked a blow as well-directed as a rapier thrust. Our times, though, seem to value the crude four-letter insult, the cruder the better. Discourse has descended to the level of a junior high playground and the WWF.
From reading the Court’s opinion, it appears clear that the use of profanity by both President Bush and Vice President Cheney played a major role in the decision. After all if the President can do it, why can’t Cher? Fox’s use of quotes from Bush and Cheney in its brief may be one of the more brilliant legal maneuvers in the past few years.
What it did was to paint the Court into a corner from which there was no escape. The Court could uphold the FCC and by implication convict the president and vice president of indecency (“repeated use is not necessary for a finding of indecency”) or it could rule against the FCC and thereby kill what was left of the GOP’s “moral values” campaign.
Here is the paragraph in the decision that pretty well settled the argument:
Similarly, as NBC illustrates in its brief, in recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced “sexual or excretory organs or activities.” See Br. of Intervenor NBC at 31-32 & n.3 (citing President Bush’s remark to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the United Nations needed to “get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit” and Vice President Cheney’s widely-reported “Fuck yourself” comment to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate).
If one places the Court’s citation beside Bush remarks at the signing of the Indecency Act of 2005, it leaves us with yet another example of this administration’s moral hypocrisy and lying. “I take responsibility..to protect American families..from obscene or indecent programming,” said the president. Yet according to his own FCC, “any use of the word “shit” was also presumptively indecent and profane.”
Language may seem like a small issue, but as George Orwell wrote in one of the seminal essays of the last century, “Politics and the English Language,”
Political chaos is connected with the decay of language.
When our president and vice president resort to profanity, especially to describe their opponents, it implies a certain lack of linguistic sophistication that in turn signifies a lack of sophistication about more weightier issues. Take Bush’s quote, “get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit.” What does he mean by “this shit?” You may be able to get away with that on a schoolyard playground, but in international diplomacy, where words can literally start wars, preciseness is absolutely critical. If Hezbollah does not know what it is supposed to stop, how can it stop it?
Orwell could not have found a more perfect example of his aphorism than this administration for whom language seems to have no meaning. Language is ultimately about truth, for if we cannot fathom or trust what someone tells us then we have no common ground and without common ground we have chaos. The debasement and mangling of language by this administration parallels their own belief that they don’t have to mean what they say. Bush can say he is going to protect American families and then curse like a barroom drunk. He can utter various reasons for getting us into Iraq and clearly not mean them.
At the root of the debasement of language is a debasement of people, for if you do not value language and the communication it facilitates then you do not value your fellow human beings. The heart of the Court of Appeals decision has less to do with whether someone says a four-letter word than it has to do with an overall decline in our respect for each other. Cher got that right,
People have been telling me I’m on the way out every year, right? So fuck ‘em.
This leads to the second dimension to the Court’s paying particular attention to Bush and Cheney’s language, for it illustrates just how far down the path we have come toward what commentators have called an “imperial presidency.” Like medieval monarchs, Bush believes he does not have to answer to anyone but himself. Actually the answering has only just begun, for this president has already found himself answering to the polls and the voters and soon may be answering before the Courts and the verdicts of history. Imagine the four letter words when that happens.
Print Posted by: liberalamerican
