Tomorrow, most people in the United States will be celebrating our Independence Day. However, today should be one of mourning. Today marks the 30th anniversary of the "landmark United States Supreme Court decision that defined the power of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over "indecent" material as applied to broadcasting" (1) from the case Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation. This case revolved around a WBAI-FM broadcast of the recently deceased George Carlin's routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television". A father who had his young son in the care with him was upset that his son heard the broadcast during an afternoon drive in 1973 and alerted the FCC. There had already been other court cases deciding that obscenities were not protected by the First Amendment, but the FCC was seeking the ability to regulate what it considered indecent content which previously had not been tested.
Flash forward 30 years and this case is still very relevant and is used to enforce language standards on broadcast television. In that time a rarely used standard allows broadcasters to air indecent, but not obscene content (generally defined by sexual content) during the hours of 10PM to 6AM. This of course does not apply to cable networks such as MTV, FX, or Comedy Central. They are not bound by FCC decency standards, but generally self-regulate themselves for fear of losing advertisers. Of course, all this regulation or self regulation begs the question of whether or not it's necessary. As an example, in the original case of FCC v Pacifica how hard would it have been for the parent to simply change the station once the first utterance of say, cunt was heard? I don't know the details of this particular instance, I would assume that this child became a healthy well-adjusted adult. I watched the 7 words routine when I was a kid and while I didn't understand some of it at the time (namely cocksucker and cunt), I feel like it in no way imposed on my innocence. I can't count the number times my mother would say that I or one of my siblings where pissing her off, or her telling us she didn't give a shit that it was hot outside to go out there and play anyway. Then there were times where my dad was referred to as motherfucker and that he was fucking pissing her off. Lastly, there were some embarrassing moments as a child when my mother would tell my father to stop grabbing her tits. Even though we heard these words frequently we knew there were two rules about them The first was they were "bad" words and that we weren't allowed to say them. The second, which is a reaction to the first was when we did inevitably say them we made sure we weren't heard by our parents, or our teachers for that matter.
I realize there are plenty of parents out there that have more of a verbal filter than my parents did. I also understand that children who are younger are prone to repeating words that they realize will illicit a reaction out of others and that it probably isn't appropriate for Big Bird to refer to Snuffleupagus as a cocksucker. However, at what point did parents stop being parents? If you don't want your kids to see Denis Franz's ass on NYPD Blue don't let them stay up that late. If you don't like the content of a particular ready station don't listen to it when your kids are around, and explain they aren't allowed to listen to it either. Limit your children to the exposure of these potentially indecent outlets. Encourage your children to read, play sports, or beat up their siblings. The TV is not a babysitter. No matter how educational a program is, it cannot replace the knowledge you could gain from reading a book and exploring the subject on your own.
"But I can't always be with my kids 24 hours a day. It should be the government's job to regulate material so I don't have to worry about their being naughty content on in the afternoon." Here's a newsflash, your 12 year-old will find ways to listen or view this content anyway. It's well know that you have to 18 to purchase pornography. Guess what? I was looking at it when I was 12. My parents also didn't want me to watch MTV either, so I watched it friends' houses. I wasn't allowed to buy music that had Parental Advisory stickers on it because my parents didn't want me to listen to music with curse words in it (quite hypocritical considering the language that was used in my house). So what did I do? I copied the music from friends, had them buy it for me, or just outright stole it. Once kids get to a certain again they will seek out the material that you or the government has decided is raunchy. Why not have candid conversations with your kids about this so-called indecent content and explain there is a time an place for it. If you expose them to this content at an earlier age and explain to them that it's not big deal maybe kids wouldn't go nuts about it as teenagers. Maybe that transition would go smoother. I realize this isn't the best written piece and that plenty of objections could be brought up. I am fine with that. Really I just wanted to point out how long the FCC and most of the country has had a stick up its collective ass.