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The Federal Communications Commission has long forbidden licensees from using the airwaves allotted by the federal government to broadcast obscene, indecent or profane content.
The rules are very easy to understand. Lenny Bruce and George Carlin did a public service when they made comedy schtick out of the generally agreed-upon standards for broadcast content. Every broadcaster in America got the standards hammered into them before they took to the air.
In 35 years, I’ve never had a complaint about breaching this rule. I don’t know any broadcaster who has. Because the rules are pretty much common sense about language that doesn’t merely offend, but which usually is intended to simply shock. Before there was “clickbait” there were the “seven dirty words,” precursors to “clickbait.”
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There isn’t a reader of this column who doesn’t know some, if not all, of the trip wire terms. Similarly, there isn’t an elected official in the land who uses the forbidden language in paid advertising. That’s because they know it won’t be cleared for broadcast. Most of them also think the use of obscene, indecent or profane language will lose, not gain votes.
It is also understood that most adults and certainly the vast majority of teens routinely let loose with a phrase that would be condemned if aired by a licensee. In the not-so-distant past, however, candidates would never let the language slip their lips in a public event or most private settings.
That day is now past.
This week California Governor Gavin Newsom —a skilled communicator whatever you think of his policies— let loose with the “MOAP” —the mother of all profanities, not least because it includes the word “mother.”
That California’s governor did so on a podcast and not in public tells you he knows the rules. Applying the term to podcaster, Joe Rogan, as the governor did could have been a calculated olive branch to the most popular podcaster. It certainly was a conscious decision, not the “excited utterance” of the sort that makes it into court records. The Federal Rules of Evidence provide for an “excited utterance” as an exception to the bar of hearsay evidence, and is admissible to prove the truth of the statement itself.
And Governor Newsom is hardly alone. A growing number of public officials and legions of public figures have almost no filters on their public utterances. The very few filters that remain are still so disgusting as to not even pass the “I’m trying to impress with my casual profanity” bar because they carry a real political price.
They do not carry a price for comics and podcasters. The reverse in fact. Casual use of the FCC’s forbidden fruit is actually a branding mechanism and serves thus on both left and right wing podcasts.
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It would be a very good thing for a pollster or ten to test the public’s views of profane, obscene or indecent speech. Candidates and the attention-addicted seem to have concluded that there is no downside to the use of such terms.
My guess is that there is still a cost and that the new approach impacts the dead center of American politics, with both blue and red America reluctant to socialize the shocking.
“Prude” or “Victorian” are thought by many to be insults, but when applied to those who simply object to the coarsening of the country’s discourse, such designations are compliments.
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There are few if any people who don’t slip into obnoxious, vulgar or profane speech, which is still instantly regretted by most normal folks if uttered within hearing distance of kids, especially those from toddlers to pre-teens (who have many superpowers including a capacity to recall every phrase used by parents and relatives.)
For some reason, folks on the left side of the spectrum seem convinced that the causal use of the formerly forbidden is now a plus. Doubtful. But it would be useful to have evidence that there is no upside and some downside —if only a few percentage points.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives America home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
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