Wednesday, March 10, 2004

posted by: copernicus on 3/10/2004 09:09:00 AM
HOW GEORGE CARLIN MADE LEGAL HISTORY

Here in the United States -- an allegedly secular Democracy with an "iron wall" of separation between Church and State written into its Constitution -- the Federal Communications Commision has a list of Seven Forbidden Words which nobody may speak on the radio or television. Any attempt to find out why these words remain taboo leads into an epistemological fog, a soup of medieval metaphysics, in which concepts melt like Salvador Dali's clock and ideas become as slippery as a boat deck in bad weather.

One cannot dismiss this mystery as trivial. When comedian George Carlin made a record ("Occupation: Foole") discussing, among other things, "The seven words you can never say on television," WBAI radio (New York) played the record, and received a fine so heavy that, although the incident occurred in 1973, WBAI, a small listener-sponsored station, recently announced that they have not yet paid all their legal costs in fighting the case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Eight Wise Men (and One Wise Woman) thereon upheld the Federal Communications Commision.

The highest court in the land actually ruled on what comedians may and may not joke about. George Carlin has become something more than a comedian. He now has the status of a Legal Precedent. You will pay a heavy fine, in the U.S. today, if you speak any of the Seven Forbidden words on radio or television -- shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. (since this was written, NYPD Blue has gotten away with saying "shit" sparingly, and the geniuses at South Park exploited the same loophole to use it almost 300 times in one episode)

The words have been forbidden, "our" Government says, because they "are" "indecent". Why "are" they "indecent"? Because a certain percentage of people who might turn on the radio or TV experience them as "indecent".

Why do some-but-not-all people experience these words as "indecent"? Because the words "are" "dirty" or "vulgar". Why "are" these words "dirty" and "vulgar" when other words, denoting the same objects or events, "are" not "dirty" or "vulgar"? Why, specifically, can a radio station be fined if a psychologist on a talk show says "he was so angry he wouldn't fuck her anymore" but not fined at all if the psychologist says "He was so angry he stopped having sexual intercourse with her"?

As Mr. Carlin pointed out in the comedy routine which led the Supreme Court to perform their even more remarkable comedy routine, FUCKING seems one of the most common topics on television, even though nobody uses the word. To paraphrase Mr. Carlin, many guests on the Merv Griffin and Donahue shows have written books on how to fuck or who to fuck how to fuck better, and nobody objects as long as they say "sexual intercourse" instead of "fucking". And, of course, as Carlin goes on, the main topics on soap operas, day after day, consist of who has fucked whom, will she fuck him, will he fuck somebody else, have they fucked yet, who's getting fucked now, etc.

Some say "fuck" is "dirty" and "sexual intercourse" isn't because "fuck" comes from the Anglo-Saxon and "sexual intercourse" comes from the Latin. But then we must ask: how did Anglo-Saxon get to be "dirty" and why does Latin remain "clean"?

Well, others tell us, "fuck" represents lower-class speech and "sexual intercourse" represents middle-and-upper class speech. This does not happen to accord with brute fact, statistically: I have heard the word "fuck" in the daily (non-radio) conversation of professors, politicians, businesspersons, poets, movie stars, doctors, lawyers, and most of the population of some-but-not-all classes and castes, except a few religious conservatives.

And, even if "fuck" did occur exclusively in lower-class speech, we do not know, and can hardly explain, why it has been subject to a huge and bodacious fine when such other lower-class locutions as "ain't", "fridge" (for refrigerator), "gonna" and "whyncha" (why don't you), have not fallen under similar sanction. Nor have we seen a ban on the distinctly lower-class "Jeet?" "Naw, Jew?" (Did you eat? No, did you?)

The fact that some enclaves of religious conservatives do not use the word "fuck" seems to provide the only clue to this mystery. The Federal Communications Commission, it seems, bases it's policy upon persons who believe, or for political reason wish to seem to believe, that the rather paranoid "God" of the conservative religions has His own list of Seven Forbidden Words and will become quite irate if the official Taboo list of our government does not match His list. Since that particular Deity has a reputation for blowing a few cities to hell whenever he feels annoyed, the F.C.C. may, in the back of their heads, think they will prevent further earthquakes by maintaining the Taboo on the Seven Unspeakable Words.

The Wall of Separation between Church and State, like many other pious pronoucements in our Constitution, does not correspond with the way our government actually functions. In short, the Seven Forbidden Words remain forbidden because pronouncing them aloud might agitate some Stone Age Deity or other, and we still live in the same web of Taboo that controls other primitive peoples on the boondocks planet.

But let us press further and ask why the conservative's Stone Age "God" objects to "fuck" and not to "sexual intercourse" or such synonyms as "coitus", "copulation", "sexual congress", "sexual union", "love-making", etc.? Should we believe this "God" has a violent prejudice against words which, in reputation if not in reality, seem to reflect lower-class culture? Does this "God" dislike poor people as much as the Ronald Reagan-George Bush Sr.-George Bush Jr. economic policies do?

(Lifted shamelessly from Quantum Psychology, by Robert Anton Wilson)