The Federal Communications Commission continued their crackdown on free speech, finding rock singer Bono’s use of the phrase ““fucking brilliant” during the live NBC broadcast of the 2003 Golden Globe Awards was "indecent and profane."
No fine was issued because the majority of the commission felt that it would be unfair to fine a company for rules that had been changed without their knowledge.
Yesterday’s opinion reversed the FCC's Enforcement Bureau’s decision in October that Bono’s usage of the word did not meet the indecency standard as there was no sexual connotation involved, accepting NBC’s argument that the word had been used as an intensifier, a part of speech used to indicate the level or intensity of an adjective or another adverb.
FCC Commissioner Michael Powell noted in his commentary on the fine that this is the first time that the world “fucking” has been found indecent when used in such a manner. In fact, Bono himself had used the word in a prior televised broadcast without any problems.
“Given that today's decision clearly departs from past precedent in important ways, I could not support a fine retroactively against the parties,” Powell wrote in his statement on the opinion issued yesterday.
Commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy also admitted that the Commission was reversing precedents in this case, writing in her statement on the opinion that, “(a) series of prior Commission and staff decisions, moreover, have indicated that isolated or fleeting broadcasts of the f-word, such as the case here, are not indecent.”
The opinion always used "f-word" in lieu of "fucking," except for a few uses of the word "fucking" in the footnotes of the twenty page document.
The Commission expanded the definition of profane by ruling that “fucking” was not only indecent, but profane as well. In their opinion the Commission ruled that profanity was not only blasphemy but pointed to a Seventh Circuit decision in Tallman vs. United States.
In that case, the court determined profanity was, “construable as denoting certain of those personally reviling epithets naturally tending to provoke violent resentment or denoting language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance.”
Thus, “fucking” is a word that is so “grossly offensive” that it qualifies as a nuisance, which qualifies “fucking” as profanity.
The FCC states that broadcasters should be aware that from now on, all utterances of the word “fuck” or variations thereof will result in fines.
Bono used the offending phrase while accepting the 2003 Golden Globe for Best Original Song, which his band U2 won for “The Hands That Built America,” a song from the movie The Gangs of New York.
