THE FCC GETS THE SMACKDOWN

Cher = Not indecent (photo not included)

Today, the Second Circuit delivered a fantastic opinion for free speech advocates. The court of appeals essentially struck down the FCC's approach to profanity and gutted its right to fine stations for airing "fleeting" expletives.

This litigation stems, in part, from the FCC concluding that its ban was violated when the Billboard Music Awards inadvertently aired Cher saying, "Fu@k 'em" and, in a different year, Nicole Richie asking, "Have you ever tried to get cow sh!t out of a Prada purse? It's not so fu@kin' simple."

The surprisingly strong opinion slams some of the FCC's explanations for its language policy as "divorced from reality."

Best of all, the Second Circuit calls out the government on its hypocrisy by naming Bush and Cheney as violators:

Similarly, as NBC illustrates in its brief, in recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe references "sexual or excretory organs or activities." See Br. of Intervenor NBC at 31-32 & n.3 (citing President Bush's remark to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the United Nations needed to "get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit" and Vice President Cheney's widely-reported "Fu@k yourself" comment to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate).

Brilliant. You can read the whole opinion here.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin angrily responded to the opinion by saying, "Today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said the use of the words 'fu@k' and 'sh!t' by Cher and Nicole Richie was not indecent."

Except that the FCC Chairman's statement didn't "bleep" the bad words like I did.

Ironic.

--Junichi