January 11, 2009

Will the Golden Globes affect the Supreme Court's "fleeting expletives" case?

At tonight's Golden Globes ceremony, the producer accepting the Best Drama award — for "Slumdog Millionaire" — said "Oh, fuck!" when he got the signal to cut his speech short. But we didn't hear it. There was a second of silence. So, as I noted at 10:03 Central Time on my live-blogging of the show, we got a conspicuous demonstration of how easy it is to snip out what has come to be known as a "fleeting expletive."

This Term, the Supreme Court is considering a case — FCC v. Fox Television Stations — on precisely this subject.
[In] March 2004, [the FCC] said, even a single use of “the F-Word” on the air would be treated as illegal....

The agency changed its approach after getting complaints about two broadcasts on Fox television of the Billboard Music Awards – the show in 2002 when singer-actress Cher used “the F-Word,” and the show in 2003 when actress Nicole Richie used variations of that word and used the four-letter excrement word – and a broadcast on NBC-TV in 2003 of the Golden Globe Awards, when rock singer Bono used a variation of “the F-Word.”
Ha ha. The Golden Globes! And now here, tonight, we had the Golden Globes on a tape delay with the "oh, fuck!" removed. So it's not that hard for the broadcaster to protect us from the careless, casual speech of celebrities. I wonder which Supreme Court Justices were watching? Probably just Kennedy.

5 comments:

Host with the Most said...

"Fuck" is completely unacceptable on network TV where millions who are offended by profanity - and children of any young age - should not have to listen to it just because someone else thinks they have a right to say it.

"Fuck" belongs on blogs of Law School Professors.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The idea that Althouse knows?

Has everybody pisssing their pants.

If only they had the balls to faced up to it!.

Jeff with one 'f' said...

They didn't censor Darren Aronofsky when he gave Mickey Rourke the finger during Rourke's speech! In fact, they gave it a long take in closeup.

Beldar said...

I'm not concerned that Justice Kennedy may have been watching the Golden Globe Awards show.

I am concerned, however, that he may think it's another source for him to figure out his "concept[s] of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life" that he uses to trump the actual words of the Constitution.

PatHMV said...

Why is it acceptable to offend lip-readers, by not blurring out the lips of the speaker saying the offensive word?