Posted on 08/03/2006 11:19:13 AM PDT by Paul678
George W. Bush and the Curse Heard ‘Round the World
By Jim Dyke
The National Ledger
August 2, 2006
Is license to curse on live television a presidential perk?
If George Bush were a NASCAR driver or an NFL quarterback, his use of the s-word might have triggered a six digit fine from the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC commissioners aren’t making a fuss over their boss’s on-air swear at the G-8 summit, but the incident brings some clarity to the indecency debate.
It demonstrates that live broadcasts cannot always be appropriate for most children if they are also appropriate for adults – people who take their truth straight up, even if it’s sometimes coarse. Athletes, politicians, musicians and actors sometimes do and say things unfit for kids.
We Americans have to choose.
We can either make it so painfully costly for television to risk possible “indecencies” like Mr. Bush’s St. Petersburg slip that all live news and sports coverage is delayed, air brushed and self-censored. Or we can accept that sometimes, um, stuff happens.
Live mikes can have unintended consequences, for instance, if an American soldier curses out on the field in Iraq or a football coach or fan goes ballistic over a dubious call.
President Bush signed legislation raising the roof on fines for broadcasters and affiliates, even for accidental slips like his. Legislators even considered letting the FCC fine the cursing individuals as well. Imagine the President’s colorful response if the Federal Communications Commission hit him with a $325,000 fine for venting against the Syrian regime’s duplicity.
Perhaps Mr. Bush would see the FCC's scrutiny of live broadcasts as unwarranted government interference, especially now that the FCC is asking broadcasters for 30 tapes of sporting events to investigate profanity picked up by live mikes. Swear on the football field or the battlefield, and all heck breaks loose – so broadcasters faced a difficult and potentially costly decision when the President's language turned salty.
The St. Pete slip also demonstrates what we already know: that most of the complaints lodged with the FCC are manufactured by special interest groups bent on re-cutting television to fit their values. Accidental curses have triggered mass carbon-copy complaints, but I’m willing to bet that the FCC won’t hear from outraged viewers about the President’s s-word. Why not this time? Because the group that orchestrates complaints against media companies, the Parents Television Council (PTC), won’t pick a fight with the free world’s most powerful curser.
A recent PTC-orchestrated campaign against the popular show "Without A Trace" prompted the FCC to fine many of the broadcasters that aired it. Court documents exposed that nearly all of the complaints were generated by the PTC's online network, and many came from people who admitted to never having seen the show at all.
PTC’s founder Brent Bozell attacks the programming that tens of millions of Americans enjoy as a “river of smut, sewage and pornography,” echoing the 19th Century moral guardian, Anthony Comstock.
In 1873 Congress deputized Mr. Comstock to rid America of the influx of “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” material. He proceeded to destroy 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing ‘objectionable’ books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures and caused the arrest of 3,000 persons. The United States Postal Service prohibited certain anatomy textbooks from being sent to medical students.
Like Mr. Comstock, Mr. Bozell intends to save us all, but we need saving from him.
Jim Dyke is the executive director of TV Watch, an organization that promotes parental awareness and control tools as an alternative to increased regulation of TV content.
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27267432.shtml
Bingo! For cyring out loud, is there gonna next time be a live mike when he's in the men's room?!
Bravo. It wasn't exactly a Howard Stern comment, intended to appeal to the prurient.
The "s-word" is not a curse word as such, it is just crude Anglo-Saxon terminology referring to a disgusting substance.
And its use was perfectly appropriate, relating to the subject of the conversation.
Subject: Fabulous bit of historical knowledge
Ever wonder where the word "sh*t" comes from. Well here it is:
Certain types of manure used to be transported (as everything was back then) by ship. In dry form it weighs a lot less, but once water (at sea) hit it. It not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, of which a by-product is methane gas.
As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and did) happen; methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came below at night with a lantern. BOOOOM!
Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was discovered what was happening.
After that, the bundles of manure where always stamped with the term "S.H.I.T" on them which meant to the sailors to "Ship High In Transit." In other words, high enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane.
Bet you didn't know that one.
Here I always thought it was a golf term.
Many of us think George's mother was going to take care of the problem in no uncertain terms. How strange to be sixty and still have your mother watching over you. How fortunate.
I thought it meant Special High Intensity Training.
Why the heck are we discussing this? Geez, someone use a word on tv and people freak. Never heard of anyone dropping dead from the use of the English language.
Exactly. To think there's a human being with some amount of responsibility and following out there unable to distinguish between like you said a Howard Stern smut moment and the president being eavesdropped on by a bunch of losers in the MSM. But alas, I think the man is just insulting our intelligence, knowingly, to advance his stupid agenda of non-regulation of the airwaves. He believes we're all too stupid to distinguish a difference.
Nothing George Bush ever could say would come close to Bill Clinton getting caught on camera at Ron Brown's funeral,laughing until he realised he was being filmed,and then quickly pretending to brush away tears. But it was too late,he'd done been caught,LOL. What an azz!
A US fine for an action that occurred in St. Petersberg?
True!!!!
WTF? Bush was at a publicly reported meeting.
The author's point about the idiocy of the FCC (and, ultimately, the Congresscritters who authorize them) is spot on.
Yeah, I remember that one too. In fact , I think I have a copy somewhere. He didn't just stop laughing. He produced a tear in like two seconds. Didn't see that one on MSM either.
There's footage of Bill Clinton, as President, using foul language and running off a reporter who asked a question that was "out of line".
He goes from laughing to crying (wiping away a tear) within a few frames but his buddy is still smiling and laughing at their joke.
Did you run this through snopes.com first?
Bingo. It was a "slip" as much as Regan's "We just outlawed Russia, and the bombing starts if five minutes." Psychological warfare, and a secret handshake to the world that we know exactly what is going on in the "Arab street." You notice that the pali's "Arab brothers" aren't issuing a peep on this.
Oh geez, develop some logic guy. The president wasn't putting himself on a public broadcast. He was put there entirely against his will by someone eavesdropping. So you should get an FCC fine if some news reporter listens in to your conversation with you being totally unaware?? Sorry, but those who chose to broadcast it are liable, not the person being overheard. If NBC took a tape of an Eddie Murphy concert and broadcast it uncut, would it be Eddie Murphy that would get the fine or NBC? Take off the Libertarian blinders and think.
Obviously you don't have children if you are for totally unregulatated airwaves. Go to Europe if you want unregulated smut coming into your home. And let me guess, you'll always be able to predict when someone lets fly with a curse word or a bare tit such that you can know when to turn the TV channel. Spare me.
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