Late last month, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that TV networks are responsible for “fleeting expletives”—coarse, offensive language that briefly, often inadvertently, slips into their broadcasts, typically during interviews.
I am not a legal scholar and please don’t stop reading because you aren’t either. My interest is less in the law and the Federal Communications Commission, and more in what makes language offensive and how Christians might think about all this.
The Supreme Court decision dealt primarily with the so-called “F-word” which celebrities occasionally let fly during award show presentations. As I understand it, the dissenting justices argued that “offensive language” is such a fluid, arbitrary and capricious category as to make prohibiting it nearly impossible. Again, I’m no lawyer, no expert, but I think I tend to agree with the dissenting justices.
I remember when I was young and someone told me that to raise the middle finger was bad. My young mind just couldn’t figure out how one raised digit could possibly have the power to be bad. I concluded that the middle finger must have some sort of magical power, like the ability to cast spells. It is this memory that makes me sympathetic to justices who argued that offensive language is an arbitrary, contrived category. Why one finger but not another? Why this word but not another? Strangely the F-word has morphed into an almost ubiquitous term, the Swiss-army knife of modern English, able to be used in nearly any sentence, to convey both positive and negative sentiment. Its original and offensive sexual connotation seems far in the past.
I have long wondered why in the “hierarchy of swearing,” it is the "offensive language"--terms from the bedroom, bathroom and barnyard that have been considered “worse” than the theological, religious words—words that Christians might claim are irreverent, even blasphemous—hell, damn, Christ, etc. Eight-year-olds on family hour sitcoms routinely blurt out “Oh my god...” Yet the world and the FCC seem far more concerned about words that may be crude and boorish, but hardly sacrilegious.
I am afraid that this will all be misunderstood as championing coarse language. Instead, I am trying to point out that it is simply coarse, perhaps offensive, but not blasphemous. As a Christian, blasphemy, taking the Lord’s name in vain, are my concern and what I am more concerned to avoid.
I’ll let someone else tackle the issue of “swearing-lite”—gosh, heck, darn. I’m pretty sure it won’t be the FCC or the Supreme Court.