Last week the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of FCC v. Fox Television Stations to decide if the FCC had unfairly changed its policy on indecent language, and more importantly, whether fines levied on TV stations for broadcasting an occasional accidental swear word violate First Amendment free speech rights. An interesting topic, but even more interesting was the fact that the Court had to discuss specific incidents involving words like "fuck" and "shit" but would not use the offending words themselves. According to the Supreme Court blog, the stenographer's report indicates that "F-word" appears in the transcript 16 times; that "F-bomb" appears once, and that "S-word" was spoken six times.

How else did the Justices avoid swearing like sailors? We have a few excerpts from the transcript:

Justice Scalia: The issue at hand is not whether stations can broadcast words like "freak" or "stuff," but whether children who hear "fudge" or "sugar" or even "C-U-next-Tuesday" would be adversely affected. And then you have entire classes of kids going home and saying "frig" and "shamu" and "flip you" and "motherfainting"...it just won't do.

Justice Kennedy: Why should we limit our conversations merely to the S-word or the F-word? What about the B-word or the MF-word? Even something like the A-word which gets a fair amount of play on network television might turn our kids into F-in' A-holes or B's who don't give a D about respecting each other's P's and V's and finally we all get K'd in the Q.

Justice Ginsburg: With regards to your brief, the Second Court initially deemed the discussion about (makes finger through the hole gesture) as potentially unconstitutional. In which case, (points to posterioer) or (reaches into robe, honks breast) would be considered entirely (does that thing where you make a V you're your index and middle finger and lewdly stick your tongue through it...you know the one).

Justice Stevens: I don't know what the fuck you people are talking about.