Swearing swearers and FCC's new rulebook

With once-verboten swears and raunchy lingo peppering not just water-cooler conversations but the public airwaves, there's a growing question among the linguistically proper: Has "polite society" become an oxymoron?

Twenty years of record labeling and monitoring airwaves for profanity haven't exactly made for a less vulgar society - quite the opposite, experts say. Profanity and suggestive themes have proliferated, from television to children's books: For the literary-minded under-12 set, there is, for instance, "Day My Butt Went Psycho" and "Captain Underpants and the Big Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy." Now, two more bastions of proper English - the airwaves and politics - have taken pages out of the Locker Room Dictionary.

Critics of Big Government say a recent FCC decision to OK the "f-word" on television (in nonsexual contexts, at least, and only as an adjective) means society hasn't coarsened so much as changed: New proprieties are replacing those George Carlin spoofed in his 1970s skit, "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television."

But for many, it's a turn toward the tawdry - one that complicates the lives of parents coping with a new generation of giggling potty-mouths.

"There ought to be great insecurity [among parents] that what flows over the airwaves does legitimize incredible behavior and themes and language that are destroying the moral fabric of this country," says Bill Johnson, president of the American Decency Association.

Sure, Al Pacino took the creatively-placed expletive to new heights in the 1970s and 1980s, but that was in R-rated movies. In January, when U2 frontman Bono greeted his Golden Globe Award with an exclamation of "This is really, really [expletive deleted] brilliant!" the FCC - which monitors the bandwidth of radio and TV - ruled that the utterance was not obscene or indecent.

Granted, local standards still apply, and often keep a tighter rein on profanity. But increasingly, saucy adjectives are sanctioned from drive time to prime-time. In an age when "the bird" is nearly as ubiquitous as pigeons, even some who would be president don't see it as a liability to swear like a sailor: John Kerry has refused to apologize for his epithetical censure of President Bush's policies in an interview in Rolling Stone.

"When I grew up, there were words you did not use in polite company and never used with women. All of that has changed," says David Kelley, president of the Objectivist Institute in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., which espouses the free-market ideas of Ayn Rand. "But on the other hand, there are words that used to be fine but are no longer used: Publishers are afraid to speak of people who are crippled, even handicapped, which in turn has given rise to new jokes about short people being vertically challenged."

Parents' groups, especially, are upset by the FCC's verdict on the Bono remark, and have called on Congress to investigate. Now, members of both parties are pressing for a crackdown on the FCC.

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