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Principled Differences

Dec 9, 2009
By .
Effluvia

There are many questions raised by this Jon Stewart clip: what does it mean for the Democrats that Stewart is openly mocking their indecent race to spend $200 billion that we thought, incorrectly, that we had thrown down a rat-hole? What does it mean for Obama that Stewart is openly mocking the emptiness of some of his grandiose promises?

But most importantly, why is it that you can say "hand job" on the air, but you have to beep out the "blow" in "blow job"? Is there an FCC regulation that says that? Is there a principled distinction? Is the concept of a hand job (and therefore a direct reference thereto) acceptable to the public, but the concept of a blow job scandalous? Is the FCC run by Catholic high-school girls?

Last 5 posts by Ken

19 Comments
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19 Comments

  1. Jason!  •  Dec 9, 2009 @11:44 am

    More importantly, does that mean "rim job" is right out? I think more research needs to be done here.

  2. coyote  •  Dec 9, 2009 @11:46 am

    This is so funny. I had the exact same question from the video — even put it in the comments of the Hit and Run post where I saw the video.

  3. Ken  •  Dec 9, 2009 @11:48 am

    I didn't see that, coyote, or I would have cited you.

    If you can get away with "hand job", is "tug job" OK?

    Crap, we are going to get such spam on this one.

  4. DMG  •  Dec 9, 2009 @12:41 pm

    If it leads to answers on these important job questions, a little spam is worth it.

  5. matt  •  Dec 9, 2009 @12:58 pm

    and my favorite boob job (not as in plastic surgery mind you )

  6. Dave (ND)  •  Dec 9, 2009 @2:24 pm

    And oddly, 'sucks' is perfectly ok as well.

  7. Chris Berez  •  Dec 9, 2009 @3:14 pm

    Regarding "hand job" v "blow job" and the FCC, I'll throw another question at you: Why is it that FCC standards are different when it comes to TV and radio? For instance, you may not be able to say "blow job" on TV, but you can't even say "hand job" on terrestrial radio.

    Has anyone ever tried to bring a First Amendment case before SCOTUS challenging the FCC's power to regulate content?

  8. Charles  •  Dec 9, 2009 @4:17 pm

    Has anyone ever tried to bring a First Amendment case before SCOTUS challenging the FCC’s power to regulate content?

    Pacifica, the "Carlin's seven words you can't say on television" case, permitted the FCC to regulate content for obscenity. Consent to regulation is part of the deal when you get the right to broadcast on the "scarce" bandwidth that the FCC has to offer. How far the FCC can go before it becomes a First Amendment violation is an open question. In the most recent case, FCC vs. Fox (Cher and Nicole Ritchie dropping F-bombs at various Billboard Music Awards), the decision to uphold the FCC's "fleeting obscenity" rule was made on administrative law grounds without addressing the Constitutional question because it hadn't been argued in the lower courts. (Though the phrase "any chilled references to excretory and sexual material surely lie at the periphery of First Amendment concern" should give you a hint as to where Scalia, at least, will come out on the constitutional question.)

  9. DMS  •  Dec 9, 2009 @5:14 pm

    Of course, you could come to Australia where we have no such prudishness. "F-bombs" are so routine they are not bombs, and I've heard the "C word" on commercial and public television as recently as Monday night.

    I'm not sure that continuous obscenity is necessarily a good thing mind you, but regulating speech, particularly in an artistic context (and I do NOT count MTV as artistic) is problematic. Where do you draw the line? In my view a long way more liberal than not being able to say blow job.

    As an aside, Stewart is cable, right (at least as I recall from living in the states a few years ago) – are the rules the same in the US for subscription and FTA?

  10. Al  •  Dec 9, 2009 @6:06 pm

    Just hope that you all don't get an Attorney-General with a stick up their ass for TV the way Michael Atkinson has one for games.

  11. BP  •  Dec 9, 2009 @11:18 pm

    I can't get over the last few second of that video clip. That poor guy in a spat with his barber took the time to don a suit and tie and went all the way down to the town hall meeting, patiently waited his turn and came really, really close to making a great point before it all went bad on him: " . . . legalizing prostitution, gambling, drugs and . . . non-violent crime in order to stimulate some of the economy."

    In a few brief seconds, he went from from small-l libertarian champion to WTF.

    Prostitution: well, ok, at this point it's mostly about puritans enforcing their values, since any tangible benefits in reducing the spread of STDs is probably negligible, at best, given that it happens despite being verboten. Good job, dude, and good decision taking off the shades and hanging them in your breast pocket so as to make better eye contact.

    Gambling: another good point, my odd, emo-esque brother; and another fine example of a restriction that only exists to enforce one group's values and restrict freedom on the basis that the government needs to protect you from yourself.

    Drugs: well, perhaps you could have been a little more specific about which drugs, but I'm largely still with you for the reasons articulated above. You are on a roll, dude, and at this point I don't even care that your tailor cut your shirt sleeves at least four inches too short.

    Non-violent crime: yeaaaahhhhh . . . wait . . . what?!

  12. ThomasS  •  Dec 10, 2009 @5:15 am

    I think he probably was, at some level, thinking "victim-less crime" or similar. Unfortunately, the audience reaction may have contributed to the oversight and quite possibly made it even easier for Obama to avoid the real underlying question.

  13. Abdul  •  Dec 10, 2009 @6:49 am

    If blowjob isn't dirtier, then why does it cost more?

  14. PatrickKelley  •  Dec 10, 2009 @9:32 am

    I thought you could get away with a lot more on radio than television. I am thinking of a Michael Jackson joke I heard years ago right after the Lorena Bobbitt affair, where in the joke Michael was driving around looking for Bobbit's husbands dick, and saw it on the side of the road where a rabbit was munching on it. The punchline was Michael Jackson saying, "Silly rabbit. Dicks are for kids." Of course, there might have been some fallout over that, but if there was I never heard about it. This was during a morning show too.

    TV is much more strict. I was even shocked to hear Howard Dean utter the word "crap" once on a news interview show.

  15. Jdog  •  Dec 10, 2009 @10:32 am

    Orthogonally: I'm reminded of the time that the folks on NYPD Blue had a fight with the censors over the word "goonya." It wasn't that it was obscene (it was, the writers said, made up); it was, apparently, the way that Dennis Franz said it that bunched their undies.

    What the frak?

  16. dhmosquito  •  Dec 10, 2009 @4:05 pm

    New show on TNT starring Andre Braugher and Ray Romano: "Men of a Certain Age". Evidently it's OK to say "shit" and "bullshit" (both of which I distinctly heard) but "a-hole" must replace "asshole". And I think I heard Braugher say "mother shit" rather than the obvious term (MF) it was meant to convey… odd.

  17. John Burgess  •  Dec 10, 2009 @5:51 pm

    Ken: You're assumption about 'Catholic school girls' rests on unfounded stereotyping.

  18. John Burgess  •  Dec 10, 2009 @5:52 pm

    * you're = your

  19. Shay  •  Dec 10, 2009 @7:09 pm

    You have an awfully elevated idea of the minds/manners/morals of Catholic high school girls.