If you click on the little audio thingy, you can listen to a story about the Federal Communications Commission or FCC (pronounced “fuck”).
If you want to learn more about the FCC, read below, otherwise, click the thingy and enjoy, though I have to warn you that the story’s use of expletives is more than just fleeting.
Background:
Just last week the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the FCC could fine broadcasters for “fleeting expletives” or isolated cases of profanity. Read about it here. This arose from incidents involving Cher in 2002 and Nicole Ritchie in 2003 when the FCC reprimanded Fox TV. The USSC did not decide the more far-reaching question of whether the FCC regulations violate the First Amendment of the US constitution.
Justice Antonin Scalia demonstrates that he does not understand the nature of language and meaning when he writes: “Even when used as an expletive, the F-word’s power to insult and offend derives from its sexual meaning.”
When I was seven, I told my teacher to fuck off. I had no idea that the word “fuck” had a sexual meaning. I had no idea it had a meaning at all. I said it on a dare. Of course I got in trouble, but it was clear that the sexual meaning of the utterance did not come from the person doing the uttering, but from the person doing the listening. My teacher was conditioned to hear the word “fuck” as sexual. As the listener, she was responsible for importing into the incident its sexual meaning.
As a seven year old, all teachers seemed infinitely old to me, but in retrospect, I realize that Miss Fozard couldn’t have been more than twenty. It was 1970 and, at that time, teachers could go straight into teacher’s college from high school. There she was, an attractive young twenty year old, standing in front of her first batch of students, nervous, maybe a virgin, and right off the bat some smart-mouthed seven year old tells her to fuck off. Immediately, she sat me down and asked if I knew what it meant. I shrugged and said no. But again, in retrospect, I realize that I did know what it meant. Although I didn’t know it’s sexual pedigree, I knew its meaning in the context of a larger social gambit. As a student with a nervous teacher, it was my duty to challenge boundaries and ensure that authority not get too authoritarian. That was its meaning.
No, Mr. Scalia, “fuck” does not have a sexual meaning. Like all words, it has many meanings. Your decision to restrict its meaning to a blunt sexual act tells us much about your assumptions, but tells us nothing about the intentions of Cher and Nicole Ritchie, and demonstrates an ignorance of the social context in which their utterances occurred.