Swearing swearers and FCC's new rulebook

"I have three kids, 16, 14, and 11, and it's hopeless," says Michael Cromartie, a Washington, D.C., dad, and a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. "With a coarsening of society, there isn't a way of keeping ahead of it - interpreting it to the family as opposed to everyone buying into it."

Increasingly, the FCC is seen as allowing the market to dictate speech codes, and as unable to keep up with transgressions. But its laxity has limits: While acknowledging a "limited role" in protecting citizens, Chairman Michael Powell wrote in a Nov. 25 letter, "I am personally disturbed by the continued proliferation of profanity, violence and sex in our daily lives." (The FCC has warned licensees not to interpret its f-word decision as a buckling to vulgarity.) Still, many say the FCC's role has changed with market pressures and an emboldened entertainment industry.

"There was a time when the airwaves were seen as a public trust, when stations were given bandwidth in exchange for a public service," says Philip Klinkner, a US government professor at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. "Now is the FCC going to yank Clear Channel's licenses? Absolutely not."

Overall, experts say, entertainers and politicians simply don't see a liability in "wink-wink" humor anymore. And to some critics, the FCC ban on profanity was nothing but an Orwellian throwback to begin with, impossible to apply fairly.

One drive behind the lowered bar is a desire to be "real" and "one with the people." Recall the question posed to Bill Clinton on boxers vs. briefs - and his willing answer. What the public wants, experts say, is what reflects society: Workaday heroes who don't always ride in on a white horse, and may cuss freely. Today's discourse may even be a backlash against PC speech codes of the '90s.

Indeed, neither entertainers, nor politicians, nor journalists are known as paragons of purity. Reporters "winked" at Lyndon Johnson's tawdry outbursts and descriptions, even when delivered in a drawl.

And Richard Nixon's vernacular gave rise to the phrase "[expletive deleted]" on White House tape transcripts. With repetition and reruns, experts say, the shock value of a swear simply wears off.

Still, not everyone finds it charming to swear for swearing's sake, and whether the f-word will become common on TV remains to be seen. Here in Raleigh, where some stations have refused to carry controversial programs, a DJ recently sounded panicked when a guest used the f-word on-air twice in rush hour.

All of which raises the question: How many of Mr. Carlin's "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" can you still not say on television? With the FCC giving a pass on Bono's utterance, the list has dwindled to (drum-roll here) three.

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