F***, S*** and Other Typos

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F, S and Other Typos

Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal June 14, 2007

Some may recall the days when the Li'l Abner comic-strip characters in daily newspapers blew off steam, not with a string of profanities, but with a babbling brook of crazy typewriter symbols: "Why you no good l!!#&+!%l!!"

Thus we were touched to see how the daily press covered the story of the Federal Communications Commission's losing day in court in the Case of the Fleeting Expletives.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that the FCC lacked authority to sanction the TV networks for the broadcast of unscripted profanity, or "fleeting expletives," specifically as articulated live on network TV by Cher ("People have been telling me I'm on my way out every year, right? So f*** 'em"); and by Nicole Ritchie ("Have you ever tried to get cows*** out of a Prada purse? It's not so f****** simple").

Wonder Land columnist Dan Henninger on how the FCC lost its battle to fine TV networks that air cursing on live programming. After the decision, editorialists and columnists in newspapers everywhere mocked the FCC's "moralists" and "language police" for its provably quixotic effort to suppress the most commonly used words -- today -- in our language.

Nevertheless, virtually none of these newspapers could bring themselves to rearrange the famous four letters -- k,f,c,u and h,t,s,i -- into either word, instead publishing them as f*** and s*** or resorting to euphemisms: "highly pungent," "oft-heard vulgar words" and "celebrity cursing at awards shows."

For example, the Court's majority cited Vice President Cheney's recent, famous "comment" on the Senate floor to Sen. Pat Leahy -- "f" preceding "off" -- as usage "of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities." In other words, drained entirely of offensive or actionable content. How to explain, then, the New York Times' dainty account of the case, wherein Mr. "Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry, profane version of 'get lost' to Senator Patrick Leahy"?

The irony in this quaint typographical reticence and continuing homage to Dr. Bowdler is almost endless. The court's decision itself is awash across some 40 pages in spelled-out profanities, the most amusing legal read in a long time. What is more, the court's primary argument is that the entertainers' use of "f***" was in no sense meant to carry its original, sexual content (see Cheney at Times above). Apparently, no harm, no foul. Indeed the willingness of Judges Pooler and Hall to freely use these expletives in their decision -- ranging widely across the legal literature to discover and list examples -- reduces their status further, to little more than the common discourse of the courtroom.

But, for no reason immediately obvious, they remain unprintable in a daily newspaper.

If memory serves, the reason given in the olden days for not publishing such words was that these were "family" newspapers, meaning the words might be seen by children around the hearth. But that is explicitly the FCC's now-overturned reason for wanting these words suppressed on TV.

So what explanation remains for not printing the words in full? Good taste? Well, that is this newspaper's reason for not spelling it out. We think it's in bad taste. Perhaps the prohibition at the Journal, a newspaper for adults, is a holdover from the days when profanity was discouraged in the boardroom (if not the newsroom) but free to use after hours in the barroom.

Clearly, the Second Circuit is saying that good taste alone is insufficient reason to invest the FCC with the power to levy fines and suspend broadcast licenses, and perhaps so. The court told the FCC to come back with a rationale that "can pass constitutional scrutiny." That is unlikely. For example, in picking apart the FCC's inconsistent enforcement of its expletive policy, the court noted that the agency did not stop the network broadcast of the f-loaded "Saving Private Ryan."

Still, I come back to the otherwise uninhibited newspaper industry's reticence. Perhaps they fear that most of the public, their readers, aren't quite there yet with this practice. Or perhaps deep in the primeval corner of the editorial soul sits the sense that somehow there really is something not quite right with promoting verbal f'ng and s'ng in public. In other words, perhaps there are defensible reasons for separating "polite society" from what we've got now, which is Paulie Walnuts society.

It might not cut much ice with the Second Circuit, but my argument for cutting down on the public profanity, including even by Steven Spielberg's writers, is to avoid undermining the useful virtues of self-discipline and self-restraint.

It's entertainment values versus workaday values. TV life versus real life. Entertainers aren't like the rest of us. They work shorter hours. They have lots of free time to have fun. But most people have to gut it out at a job 9 to 5 or longer every day, every week, for years. This requires discipline, and the slovenly, unrestrained ethos behind talking dirty on live TV devalues the idea of a more-or-less controlled life.

In the really olden days, societies or nations tried to instill some level of self-discipline or social strength primarily for reasons of survival. It helped in case the barbarians decided to invade, as happened in the last century. Then it helped if the nation's fighting men had a bedrock of personal self-control on the way in, because slovenly people are hard to train. If you have no control over your mouth, what else can't you control?

It's said that parents are the proper police in this. Parental authority no doubts still counts for something, but the average kid, listening to a parent and measuring it against the verbal tide outside has to conclude that his parents' views are wholly marginal. What can they possibly be talking about? In the past, parental authority wasn't from never-never land; it had credibility because the larger society reinforced it. Not now. It's a jump ball.

Judges Pooler and Hall are probably right that "they" didn't create this F&S problem and besides, it's everywhere now. But it's disheartening to see a primary U.S. institution nominally associated with utilitarian rigor now throwing in the towel. And yes, it's pathetic and hopeless to imagine that the FCC can ever get this right. But to wake up one morning to discover that of all the socially organizing institutions in American life, the only one slightly disturbed if a Nicole Ritchie speaks to the nation about her Prada handbag in terms of F&S is the Federal Communications Commission, well, that's pathetic. And some day, it may be more than that.

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