The Federal Communications Commission has long forbidden licensees to use the air waves assigned by the federal government to broadcast obscene, indecent or profane content.
The rules are very easy to understand. Lenny Bruce and George Carlin did a public service when they made Comedy Schtick from the generally agreed standards for temporary employment content. Every broadcaster in America was given the standards in it before they went into the air.
In 35 years I never had a complaint about breaking this rule. I don’t know any broadcaster who did. Because the rules are almost common sense about language that not only insults, but which is usually meant to just shock. Before there was “clickbait”, there were the “seven dirty words”, forerunners of “clickbait”.
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There is no reader of this column that some, if not all, does not know of the travel terms. Likewise there is no chosen officer in the country who uses the prohibited language in paid advertisements. That’s because they know that it will not be released for broadcast. Most of them also think that the use of obscene, indecent or profane language will not get any voices.
It is also clear that most adults and certainly the vast majority of teenagers let go routinely with a sentence that would be convicted if it is broadcast by a license holder. In the not so distant past, however, candidates would never let the language slide their lips into a public event or most private institutions.
That day is now over.
This week, Californian governor Gavin Newsom – a competent communicator, whatever you think of his policy – let go with the “moap” – the mother of all blasphemy, not least because it includes the word “mother”.
That the Governor of California did this on a podcast and not in public tells you that he knows the rules. Applying the term on Podcaster, Joe Rogan, because the governor could have been a calculated olive branch on the most popular podcaster. It was certainly a conscious decision, not the “excited expression” of the kind that the court reports make. The federal evidence rules ensure an “excited expression” as an exception to the bar of hearing, and is permissible to prove the truth of the statement itself.
And Governor Newsom is hardly alone. A growing number of officials and legions of public figures have almost no filters on their public expressions. The few filters that remain are still so disgusting that they are not even the “I try to impress with my casualism” bar because they have a real political prize.
They have no price for comics and podcasters. The opposite in fact. Casual use of the forbidden fruit of the FCC is actually a brand mechanism and therefore serves on both left and right podcasts.
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It would be very good for a poll star or ten to test the views of the public about profane, obscene or indecent speech. Candidates and the attention seem to have concluded that there is no disadvantage of the use of such conditions.
My gamble is that there are still costs and that the new approach influences the dead center of American politics, where both Blue and Red America are reluctant to socialize the shocking.
“Prude” or “Victorian” is considered by many to be insults, but when applied to those who easily object to the enlarged of the country’s discourse, such names are compliments.
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There are few or no people who do not slide into annoying, vulgar or profane speech, who is still immediately regretted by most normal people when they are pronounced in the hearing distance of children, especially those from toddlers to pre-teenagers (who have a lot of super powers, including a capacity to remind us of any sentence used by parents and relatives.)
For some reason, people on the left side of the spectrum seem convinced that the causal use of the previously prohibited is now a plus. Doubtful. But it would be useful to have evidence that there is no advantage and some disadvantage – but only a few percentage points.
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