stubbornkelly said:
The FCC ruled that in that particular instance, it didn't violate the rules. That doesn't mean it's going to start being used all over the place. They do bleep Paris Hilton's show, The Simple Life, and they bleeped most everything on the Billboard awards show - it's a live show, and they missed one. I don't think it's anything to get up in arms about.
Read the ruling. AFA has misrepresented the ruling.
Indeed. The following is taken from snopes.com (which has an entire article on this-I can't link to it because they didn't bleep the word in their article and hence, I would be breaking Rule 4 by linking to it. If you want to see it, go to snopes.com and search the "Inboxer Rebellion" section. You'll find it.)
"The AFA 'Action Alert' implies that the 2003 Golden Globes ceremony marked the first incidence of anyone's using the "f-word" on television, after which the FCC underwent a sea change and suddenly declared that all offensive language, including the "f-word," could now be used at any time, in any context, in all radio and TV programming. That wasn't the case they addressed one specific context in which the "f-word" was allowed (a "fleeting and isolated" remark used as "an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation") while reiterating that certain other uses of the "f-word" (those which describe or depict "sexual activities") and other offending terms (such as scatological references) were still not permissible under current FCC regulations."
I'm not in favor of these words by any definition of things. As a writer and grammar nerd, I personally find them offensive and intellectually pointless because if you think hard enough, you can think of something else or of a different way to write the situation where something lesser will suffice.
However, spreading urban legends and panicking that this isolated ruling "opens the floodgates" is not the way to go about reducing the amount of profanity in society.
The way to do
that is to stop yourself from using these words, and ask that those speaking to you not use them in talking to you. Studies have stated that the average American adult swears or uses expletives 24 times a day.
So, let's just say that one of these average persons decided to stop using expletives and swearwords
at all for a week. That, in and of itself, would be *168* less swearwords and expletives heard.
It's not as easy as e-mailing an urban legend to others, but it would make a difference-unlike doing that.
Hey, in fact. . .I have an idea for a new thread because of this.
