calmI always enjoy the unscripted outbursts by celebrities during live award shows. They are infinitely more entertaining than the obviously staged and mostly unfunny pablum we endure for the majority of the broadcasts. I am looking forward to lots of "fleeting expletives" now that the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out a Federal Communications Commission ruling against the Fox television network, saying that the agency's new policy on indecency was "arbitrary and capricious".
"The court examined the wider issue of profanity on American TV and in public life, and First Amendment protection of profanity, as it rejected the FCC's policy that the words 'f***' or 's****' always had a sexual or excretory connotation.
Specifically it noted that both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney were on record as having used those words in a non-literal way, Mr Bush when he told Tony Blair that the United Nations needed to 'get Syria to stop Hezbollah to stop doing this s***' and Mr Cheney when he told a senator, on the floor of the Senate, to 'f*** yourself'.
The court also rejected the FCC's argument that an exemption for fleeting expletives would 'permit broadcasters to air expletives at all hours of the day so long as they did so one at a time' - saying that had never happened in the past."