March 29, 2004
Shock Jocks Go Silent, South Park Cleans Up, as a Knocker Causes a Cultural Crackdown
Bono's Obscene & Cartman's Muzzled. Presented In Two Parts
P1: Clean Airwaves Act Attempts to Define Profanity
By: Scott Ross
from www.avn.com
WASHINGTON - H. R. 3687 is likely the filthiest bill every to be submitted to the House of Representatives. The bill attempts to define profanity, or at least suggests that seven specific words and phrases be legally deemed profane.
The Clean Airwaves Act, not to be confused with the better known Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act states that the following words should be considered profane: “the words 'shit', 'piss', 'fuck', 'cunt', 'asshole', and the phrases 'cock sucker', 'mother fucker', and 'ass hole'.”
Congressmen Doug Ose (R-Sacramento) and Lamar Smith (R-San Antonio), introduced the Clean Airwaves Act in December, well before the now infamous Janet Jackson performance during the Super Bowl halftime show, though the bulk of the bill’s co-sponsors threw their support to the bill after that event.
The bill was written in response to the FCC decision that U2 frontman Bono did not violate indecency standards when he used the phrase “fucking brilliant” during a live broadcast of the Golden Globes.
Although that ruling has been since overturned, The FCC’s rational at the time was that the word “fucking” was acceptable when used as an intensifier, a type of adverb that modifies the level or intensity of an adjective or another adverb.
So Ose tried to ensure that the morality of America would never again be challenged by grammar by closing all of the loopholes.The bill suggested that not only were the aforementioned words and phrases previously cited profane, their compound use, including hyphenated compounds, would be profane as well.
In other words, “asshole” and “ass-hole” are just as bad as “ass hole.”
And so are “other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).”
Yet as the New Orleans Times-Picayune pointed out, Ose forgot to include adverbs on his list of grammatical forms – meaning that “fucking brilliant” would still be acceptable.
The Clean Airwaves Act still sits in committee.
P2: Cartman's muzzled
Boy, Janet Jackson's right breast sure does pack one hell--oops, heck--of a punch.
Since the superstar unveiled her nasty Miss Jackson to the TV nation during the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII, the race has been on to safeguard our airwaves from further wardrobe malfunctions--and pretty much everything else. The Oscars were delayed. Britney got booted from prime time. Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was escorted from power.
As columnist and radio talk host Michael Medved puts it, one flash of the "mighty boob, [and] the Earth shifted on her axis."
South Park's rapscallions have not been known to hold their tongues. On Comedy Central, they can get away with salty language. On your local over-the-air TV station, they can't.
The Bottom Line: When South Park reruns debut in syndication in fall 2005, words such as asshole, goddammit and buttplug will have been shortened to ass, dammit and butt, while spooge and Jesus Christ! will have been deleted entirely, per Broadcasting & Cable. An exec with the show complained to the mag that the Superboob incident has put Cartman's crew under greater scrutiny.
The Future: An estimated 15 percent of the South Park canon will never make it to syndication, as no amount of bleeping can cleanse, say, the 2001 episode featuring 162 utterances of a four-letter word for doody.