Back to Common Sense

I'm not saying it was right when it went on the air, but I do think a half-million dollar fine for Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction was one of the more foolish things to come out of Uncle Sam and now a federal court agrees.

The real issue, of course, is just what we have a right to expect to see (and not see) on the tube while relaxing at home with the kids. Not everyone wants it to be the "boob tube" or worse, and that little thing called "community standards" is taken pretty seriously. Personally, I find it ironic broadcast television won't replay nor will most newspapers reprint the full breast version of this picture, including myself, although the BBC and British newspapers are already having a field day with it. (photo from the Daily Mail)

Unfortunately, real life doesn't always honor community standards. That other little thing called "free speech" shows up when Bono drops an f-bomb during an awards show, or when a piece of costume gives away, or even more recently when David Carradine (yeah, Kung Fu) let loose with the f on a Chicago television station's live morning show.

When it gets to the point where you can't even interview the Grasshopper without a delay we've got serious thinking to do, and the problem is the Federal Communications Commission and most of our elected officials in DC were pushed into a corner where it was easier to react than think.

Following the wardrobe malfunction on the Super Bowl, every politician worth his/her salt wanted to wrap themselves in the comforting blanket of protecting families from their own TV and radio sets. Public-interest groups now able to generate thousands of complaint letters with prepared email campaigns made the most of this golden opportunity, and vote-hungry political figures found it was easy to launch a tirade on the erosion of American values and slap EVERY expression of four-letter word speech (even a visual boob) with a fine heavy enough to sink a battleship. This'll teach 'em.

Problem: the FCC also had a rich tradition of recognizing the "fleeting expletive" wasn't a purposeful expletive. There are even times when the expletive carries with it meaning intended to illustrate ("Saving Private Ryan", for example, led ABC stations such as Channel 5 in Cleveland to not air this important movie because combat is all about F.) Throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But the Third Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal appeals bench in Philadelphia) has tossed out the heavy fine against CBS instead.

It is more than a win for the network; it recognizes that life isn't always sanitized, that sometimes bad things happen because life isn't scripted and expecting our view of life to come only through a 14-second delay is pretty foolish. It isn't a license to let loose but it is a swing back in the pendulum to help set a baseline on what true community values are, and that includes common sense and speech.