Brent Bozell, an execrable asshole who makes a nice fat living out of pretending to be outraged over ridiculous grievances, has unmasked a terrible conspiracy: the major broadcast networks are engaged in a massive cover-up of a Supreme Court decision that will prevent them from getting rich off piping words like "motherfucker monkeyshit God-damned pissy tittyfuck" into your living room 24/7.

When the late Playboy centerfold and tabloid-media celebrity Anna Nicole Smith graced the white marble steps of the Supreme Court in 2006, the network news operations couldn’t get enough of the story. The blonde floozy had married a fabulously wealthy Texas oilman who happened to be 62 years her senior, and now she wanted to collect his estate. It was a serious legal challenge, and a salacious gossip story, and the networks covered it religiously.

But when a Supreme Court decision affects the networks directly, and adversely, there’s no coverage.

The Supreme Court ruled on the case of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox all suing the federal government for the right to drop F-bombs and S-bombs on young children. The Second Circuit had agreed with the networks that regulation of "fleeting" expletives was "arbitrary and capricious." There was great interest then. Both ABC and CBS put on full stories to discuss the issues. But last week, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court. I bet you didn’t know that, and if you didn’t, it’s because the networks didn’t report it.

Well, I confess that I did know it, but that’s only because George Soros passed along a note with my monthly check (liberal bloggers, of course, get a nickel everytime we say a bad word, which explains why we’re all so fucking rich. And…Ka-ching!)

Now, I don’t now if it’s true or not that the major networks didn’t report on this case; but neither can I fess up to any particular shock or surprise, however, that more attention was devoted to the Anna Nicole Smith case than to this one. I also bet that they devoted more to the Anna Nicole Smith case than to 98% of all other Supreme Court cases of the past quarter century, Bush v. Gore included. And that’s because you almost never see pictures of people on the Supreme Court steps that you’ve also seen naked in Playboy (though we do know quite a bit about Clarence Thomas’ tastes in pornstar dick, as it happens). I don’t recall hearing very much about Carlsbad Technology on the broadcast TV news either, and I doubt that’s also because of a cover-up. It just isn’t "sexy." (That I know of, anyhow.)

As it happens I rather disagree with the verdict; I Am Not a Lawyer, but in my considered opinion as a relatively informed citizen, it’s a great big pile of shit. And this is not merely because I am, as may perhaps be apparent, rather a fan of bad words myself. No; I just think it’s totally fucking stupid that millions of dollars in fines should be the result of some celebrity briefly flashing a nipple or "fleetingly" saying "fuck" on the teevee. Bozell, of course, disagrees with me, and attempts "snark" in regards to the dissenting opinions:

Justice Stevens sounded just like the network lobbyists when he lamely claimed that saying F-bombs as an exclamation is not a reference to sex. "As any golfer who has watched his partner shank a short approach knows, it would be absurd to argue the suggestion that the resultant four-letter word uttered on the golf course describes sex or excrement and is therefore indecent." But if it isn’t an indecent word, why did Justice Stewart feel compelled to label it merely a "four-letter word"?

Which would be an excellent rebuttal, if it made any fucking sense. But it gets worse:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent was just aggressively un-factual: "the unscripted fleeting expletives at issue here are neither deliberate nor relentlessly repetitive." Two of the expletives at issue were uttered by Nicole Richie on a Fox-aired Billboard Awards show as a promotion of Richie’s and Paris Hilton’s new farm-based Fox "reality" show. As award presenters, Hilton warned Richie, "This is a live show. Watch the bad language." Nicole added, "Why do they even call it ‘The Simple Life’? Have you ever tried to get cow s–t out of a Prada purse? It’s not so f—ing simple."

The exchange reeked of scripting. In fact, Richie later confessed there was a script, and she tweaked it to make herself sound less ditzy. (Mission not accomplished.) For Justice Ginsburg to claim this wasn’t "deliberate" is simply untrue. As to the "repetitive" argument, we are to believe that "cow s–t" and "f—ing" is acceptable if uttered once?

She sounds smarter than Bozell, though, because, well, who gives a shit? "Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton are OK as long as they don’t curse." He clearly hates them anyhow, so what the fuck? And so someone who doesn’t like the word "fuck" hears it once for a second on the teevee. So…? The government should be able to collect millions in fines? Why?

It also would have been nice for newscasters to pass along Justice Scalia’s cogent brief against the shameless networks: "To predict that complete immunity for fleeting expletives, ardently desired by broadcasters, will lead to a substantial increase in fleeting expletives seems to us an exercise in logic rather than clairvoyance." He said they seek "a standardless regime of unbridled discretion."

That is what the networks want.

And… so? If Americans don’t want that, they’ll turn off the teevee. If they do, then.. so?

More saying "fuck," less torture and stupid wars: that’s my America, godmotherfuckingdammit.


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