The War on Language
Our readers will have noticed that we have been quiet for the last few days, one of those occasional lulls in finding things to blog about. We did find this Frank Rich piece in the Sunday New York Times to be of some interest. Rich describes in appropriately mocking terms the new crusade of the US Federal Communications Commission against on-air obscenities, and as part of the get-tough policy, they reopened a seemingly shut case in which Bono was judged not to have been obscene with his exclamation of "f*cking brilliant" upon winning a Golden Globe award -- the exuberance and apparent lack of intent to offend being the mitigating factors. Or so FCC staff had said. However FCC chairman Michael Powell -- perhaps anxious to show that he is in the job for some reason other than being Colin's son -- reopened the case and found that the usage was obscene. No direct penalty flows from this to either Bono or the TV network that carried the show, but the latter is clearly being put on notice about future conduct. Rich did the obvious thing and asked Bono what he thought of the whole affair:
"I guess I don't speak American, but I thought I did," he said. "There are some obscenities in our culture, and this is nowhere near the top of the list. I never meant to be offensive. That language was genuine exuberance. It was a great moment for our band. If you're Irish, you love language, and if you do, you're going to fall on the occasional expletive; it's the percussive side of language. For me, it is preposterous to have good, conservative people whom I like and respect taking on an expletive while the right to pack heavy ammo goes by. It says something eloquent, if not pretty, about where we are."
Other than the implicit equation of Larry Mullen with foul language, there's not much to argue with there. Indeed Bono could easily have fallen back on the Irish word feck, a related but more sugar-coated version of the banned f-word, and the FCC wouldn't have had much to do. He'll know the next time. Meanwhile, just to help along the contrast with European TV, Johnny Rotten and Britain's ITV will face no penalty as a result of Johnny's live exclamation of "f*cking c*nts," with reference to the British reality TV voting public which had just failed to vote him off the celebrity reality show I'm a Celebrity, Get me out of here. Or maybe there's something about Irish family connections that allows us to generally get away with bad language. Perhaps Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will try pushing the envelope on his 2005 St Patrick's Day tour of the US.