Replies

Right-wing radio which demonizes liberals, minorities, environmentalists, pro-choice and animal rights activists, they are fine, they will not be touched.

Yes. Demonizing isn’t prohibited. Certain issues dealing with nudity, indecency, vulgarity, and profanity are.

For instance (at least at one time), there were prohibitions against broadcasting graphic detail regarding excreta. It was usually considered urine and feces, though I guess it would cover waste excreted from the body in general.

Stern knows all this, BTW. Don’t fall for the “what did I do” line. So Stern promptly brings in some mentally disturbed man so a female guest can vomit on him. So does vomit constitute waste excreted from the body? Does their description of the act constitute “graphic detail?”

That’s the type of thing the FCC has to waste time trying to determine. Don’t get sidetracked by the dupes claiming it has to do with demonizing or silencing someone – there’s no “right” to broadcast. Never has been.

Their license gives them the privilege to broadcast provided they comply with a book full of regulations. They’ve never been bashful enforcing those regulations on the amateur side and it’s nice they’re momentarily looking at the commercial side.

Their license gives them the privilege to broadcast provided they comply with a book full of regulations

And what exactly are the FCC regulations governing speech such as Howard Stern's?

(I already know the answer -- it's whatever the FCC feels like at any given moment).

Howard likes to play "the argument of the beard", a logical fallacy- in his version you can't define where vulgarity begins, so it doesn't exist:

Argument Of The Beard

This is a paradoxical argument which derives from the impossibility of answering the question "How many hairs does a man have to grow before he has a beard?" Since there is no specific number at which an unsightly clump of hairs becomes a beard, the argument is that no useful distinction can be made between a clean-shaven man and Santa Claus.

Another way of expressing the fallacy is in the argument that there is no harm in removing one hair from a beard since it will not stop it being a beard; the argument is superficially convincing until you realise that eventually the beard will indeed disappear, even if it is plucked one hair at a time.

Thus the argument of the beard suggests that there is no difference between those things which occupy opposite ends of a continuum, because there is no definable moment at which one becomes the other: day and night, or childhood and adulthood, for example. This fallacy often turns up in essays that discuss such subjects as the appropriate age for drinking, voting, or driving.