The Supreme Court ruled today on its first indecency case in 30 years. In a 5-4 decision (PDF), the justices supported the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sanctions against Fox for a pair of live Billboard Music Award broadcasts containing some, err, “colorful metaphors.” The ruling supports the FCC’s ability not only to ban floods of offensive words, but also to sanction broadcasters for “fleeting expletives” uttered at live events.
What fleeting expletives were involved in this case? The court itself is too squeamish to actually use the words upon which it is ruling hinges (Justice Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion, refers to them as the “S-Word” and the “F-Word”), but neither Cher nor Nicole Richie showed the same sensitivity during their respective time at the mic in 2002 and 2003.
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