Friday, February 18, 2005
did carlin's 1973 routine result in more censorship ?
“free speech” is becoming a pretty frequent topic here. wonder what that's all about.
craig is ranting on about potential censorship of a frontline episode, and i did it earlier about “saving private ryan” censorship. it reminded me of carlin's old bit about the “seven words you can't say on tv”, and as usual, i wandered by wikipedia to see what they had to say about it.
a short article, with some interesting links. but this part of the “history” section caught my eye:
“This decision formally established indecency regulation in American broadcasting”
is this a fair evaluation of the impact of that case ? don't know; could be. following the link to the case itself and doing some browsing around is eye opening about things like fcc powers. it also has a huge volume of links and references to first amendment issues.
but what occurred to me was that, if that statement is true, then carlin inadvertently turned the tide of censorship - in the wrong direction. nasty backlash effect, eh ?
could a radio station broadcast that bit today ? how might the supreme court's decision have differed had the case been heard in a different era ?
i don't know if we should be fearful of poking the bear, but perhaps timing is important. unfortunately, that was part of the supreme court's decision as well.
there was an interesting observation i saw while browsing around:
The interesting thing about "swear" words is that children routinely use them when speaking with each other, but rarely in front of adults, and adults routinely use them when speaking with each other, but rarely in front of children.
pondersome ;-)