Back in 2004, prompted by Bono's exclamation at the 60th Golden Globe Awards that his band's victory in Best Original Song for "The Hands That Built America" from Gangs of New York was "really, really, f***ing brilliant," the Federal Communications Commission looked into complaints as to whether to sanction NBC for indecency for this fleeting, unscripted, live expletive. In that case, they did not. While ruling that Bono did not describe, in context, sexual or excretory organs or activities and . . . the utterance was fleeting and isolated, it was still patently offensive because the term is one of the most vulgar, graphic and explicit descriptions of sexual activity in the English language, ts use invariably invokes a coarse sexual image, and because Bonos use of the word was entirely shocking and gratuitous. However, since the FCC hadn't yet penalized a broadcaster for fleeting expletives before, they wouldn't yet -- but were putting future potential scofflaws on notice.
Enter Nicole Richie and Cher -- Richie at the 2003 Billboard Awards for asking the audience Why do they even call it The Simple Life? Have you ever tried to get cow s*** out of a Prada purse? Its not so f***ing simple"; Cher at the previous year's awards for noting, Ive also had critics for the last 40 years saying that I was on my way out every year. Right. So f*** em. The FCC sanctioned Fox for both broadcasts, finding Richie's explicit description of the handling of excrement to be vulgar and shocking, and Cher to be "patently offensive" "because she metaphorically suggested a sexual act as a means of expressing hostility to her critics."
The Second Circuit said that the FCC overstepped its bounds by expanding its policy to include fleeting expletives. Today, in a 5-4 opinion authored by Justice Scalia, the Supreme Court reversed, holding that this expansion of FCC policy was not arbitrary or capricious, but rather a rational way to regulate modern tv:
? You realize in the extreme that could be used to justify a communist economic model?
