Adam Liptak wrote about the impending Supreme Court argument in Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television without ever mentioning the word at issue.  It was a remarkable feat.  If I wasn’t already aware of the content, it would have taken me a few paragraphs to figure out what he was talking about, but then I can be a bit slow at times.

The Supreme Court specializes in law, not lexicography. But it will soon have to consider the meaning of that most versatile of four-letter words.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s three core entries on the word — noun, verb and interjection — are about six times as long as this article. That doesn’t count about 30 derivations and compounds, all colorful and many recent. The nimble word, the dictionary tells us, can help express that a person is incompetent; that another is not be meddled with; that a situation has been botched; that one does not have the slightest clue; and, in a recent addition, that someone has enough money to be able to quit an unpleasant job.

You know the word I mean.

We all know the word he means, though it isn’t exactly obvious from his description.  I laughed and laughed when I first listened to George Carlin’s comedy routine, the seven dirty words you can’t say on TV.  It made its point for me, that words are nothing more than sounds uttered from the mouth, to which others attribute meanings for which they alone are responsible.

Many people find particular words offensive.  Some because of the pejorative connotations.  Others because the origins were sexual.  Still others because they are just “bad” words.  But words lack the ability to be bad.  They don’t, however lack the ability to offend.

Back in the old Ozzie and Harriet days, curses were not to be heard on television.  Then again, married couples didn’t sleep in the same bed either.  A naive purity was the image intentionally projected, to save the most sensitive amongst us from discomfort.  No one should be forced to hear or see anything that could be arguably untoward. 

I do not use curses in my writing here.  I do utter them on occasion, and may include them in private writings, but I believe that I can express my thoughts without them otherwise.  I’ve seen others who use them in a near constant flow, some because they hope to desensitize others through exposure.  Others because they have not matured beyond 12 years and think cursing is a really cool way to express themselves.  Still others because the use of certain words is so culturally pervasive that they have never thought about not using them.

As Liptak explains, the gist of the FCCs argument is that these bad words cannot be separated from their sexual connotations.  As the Second Circuit decision makes clear, there was absolutely nothing sexual about their use:

The federal appeals court in New York disagreed. “As the general public well knows,” Judge Rosemary S. Pooler wrote for the majority last year, four-letter words “are often used in everyday conversation without any ‘sexual or excretory’ meaning.”

Bono’s exclamation, Judge Pooler added, is “a prime example of a nonliteral use” that has “no sexual connotation.” In support of that proposition, she cited remarks from President Bush (about the need to get to stop doing, uh, stuff) and Vice President Dick Cheney (urging Senator Patrick Leahy to start doing something not biologically possible).

Even Judge Pierre Leval, in dissent, recognized that the sexual argument was a sham, concluding instead that the inherent offensiveness of the word, regardless of reason, was enough of a reason to ban it from television.

But, whatever the speaker’s intentions, Judge Leval added, “a substantial part of the community, and of the television audience, will understand the word as freighted with an offensive sexual connotation.”

I would be just as happy if there was far less, indeed no, cursing on television.  It’s just a cheap use of language, concealing cloudy, lazy thought and expression.  There’s no need for it and it enhances nothing.  And it has long since lost any overt connection to anything sexual, so let’s please put that tired claim to rest. 

And there was sex in the air, the commission said, when Nicole Richie, at a third awards show, veered from these scripted comments: “Have you ever tried to get cow manure out of a Prada purse? It’s not so freaking simple.” Ms. Richie did not say “manure,” and she did not say “freaking.”

There is nothing Ms. Richie has to say that evokes any sexual thoughts whatsoever.  Ever. 

But this isn’t a decision on whether we want to hear television characters or performers curse more.  It’s a decision about whether the censorship that we took for granted in the 1950s is still alive and well.  It’s a decision about whether we want our nanny at the FCC spanking TV networks for fouling our ears with these nasty words.

They are nasty, for the most part.  They aren’t necessary.  But they are just words.  If I don’t want to hear them, I can change the channel.  Thank you, FCC for your deep concern, but I will deal with my sensitivities myself and you can find something else to do rather than smack television networks for airing the word “fuck”.

And now, a basic lesson in censorship from George Carlin, courtesy of Howard Wasserman.