As odd as the Stern fine is, the Bono ruling may be even more peculiar. It came in connection with the Jan. 19, 2003, telecast of the Golden Globe awards show on NBC, during which time U2 lead singer Bono, accepting the best original song award, declared the honor to be "really, really fucking brilliant." His comment was telecast unedited.

The Parents Television Council complained to the FCC, asking it to levy fines against NBC and its affiliates for indecency. But last fall, the commission's enforcement bureau ruled Bono's maverick remark was not indecent because "the language used by Bono did not describe, in context, sexual or excretory organs or activities and that the utterance was fleeting and isolated."

For years those have been among the key guidelines the FCC uses in determining indecency fines. To be considered indecent, "the material must describe or depict sexual or excretory organs or activities," according to the commission. And the broadcast "must be patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium."

The FCC has also considered the full context to be of great importance and established three key factors: "(1) the explicitness or graphic nature of the description or depiction of sexual or excretory organs or activities; (2) whether the material dwells on or repeats at length descriptions of sexual or excretory organs or activities; (3) whether the material appears to pander or is used to titillate, or whether the material appears to have been presented for its shock value."

In other words, to be indecent the content should be sexually explicit, go on at length and be used to titillate. No wonder the FCC's enforcement bureaus last fall dismissed the complaint against Bono for blurting out the F-word once, and using it in a nonsexual way as an adjective. (In its defense filing with the FCC, NBC argued Bono used the F-word as an "intensifier.") Based on FCC precedent, Bono's critics had no case.

But that was pre-Super Bowl nipple rings. (The FCC was flooded with more than 200,000 complaints following the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake breast-baring routine.) On Thursday the FCC announced that "given the core meaning of the 'F-word,' any use of that word or a variation, in any context, inherently has a sexual connotation, and therefore falls within the first prong of our indecency definition."

Addressing the question of violating community standards, the commission declared, "The 'F-word' is one of the most vulgar, graphic and explicit descriptions of sexual activity in the English language. Its use invariably invokes a coarse sexual image. The use of the 'F-word' here, on a nationally telecast awards ceremony, was shocking and gratuitous."

Even more amazing, however, was the FCC's decision to cite Bono's fleeting remark not only as indecent, but as obscene and profane as well. Traditionally that has been a far tougher threshold for the FCC to reach, and unlike indecent speech, which enjoys some protection in the courts, obscene or profane material does not. To make their case, commissioners cited a recent profanity ruling by the 7th Circuit, which ruled profanity as any term that's "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." [Emphasis added]

Over the past several decades, broadcast indecency and obscenity guideposts were created after back-and-forth with the courts, as judges, broadcasters, concerned citizens and FCC commissioners wrestled with striking a balance between indecency and free speech. That balance has been paramount because the FCC is virtually unique among government agencies in that it can fine Americans for what they say, if they say it on the shared airwaves.

In its landmark 1978 case, FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation (better known as George Carlin's "seven dirty words" case), the Supreme Court ruled that while free-speech issues are involved in indecency conflicts, the government can regulate broadcasts because children may be listening. It was the Supreme Court that created the indecency benchmark by ruling as indecent "language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory activities or organs."

But still, the question is, does Bono's "fucking brilliant" fall into that definition? It does now. In its Thursday ruling, the FCC essentially waves off its previous guidelines and announces a new indecency day has dawned.

"This sends a signal to the industry that the gratuitous use of such vulgar language on broadcast television will not be tolerated," wrote Powell in his statement released Thursday. He stressed it was needed in order to "protect our children."

It's interesting to note that upon being named the FCC chairman by President Bush in 2001, Powell complained to reporters, "There's a lot of garbage on television. There are a lot of things children shouldn't see." But he stressed, "I don't know that I want the government as my nanny."

What a difference three years make.

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