As a born again American who has taken the pledge to make my citizen's voice heard, I'd like to offer my heartfelt thanks to Justice Antonin Scalia and his four conservative cohorts on the Supreme Court. God bless them, yesterday they voted 5-4 to uphold the FCC ban on the use of "fleeting" expletives on broadcast TV, expletives which Scalia, who wrote the prevailing opinion, referred to in court as the "s-word" and the "f-word." Maybe now those pesky kids in schoolyards across the country will cease their fleeting use of those appalling words. Or, since the kid likely never lived who used a filthy word just "fleetingly," perhaps the Supreme Court will consider issuing a second ban on the wall-to-wall use of s- and f-words in the schoolyard.
It could happen. I'd put nothing past the cultural wisdom of Justice Scalia whose prevailing brief included these stunning insights: "We doubt that small town broadcasters run a heightened risk of liability for indecent utterances... their down-home local guests probably employ vulgarity less than big city folks, and small town stations generally cannot afford or cannot attract foul-mouthed glitterati from Hollywood."
Look how he nails us all -- kids; small-town folk; big city creeps; trashy Hollywood types -- does this man know his Americans, or what?! Certainly better than silly Justice Stevens, who in his dissenting opinion, finds it ironic that "while the FCC patrols the airwaves for words that have a tenuous relationship with sex or excrement, commercials broadcast during prime time frequently ask viewers whether they are battling erectile dysfunction or having trouble going to the bathroom."
I can just hear Justice Scalia heaving a righteous sigh and thinking: "Give me erectile dysfunction to the f-word any time!"