So Now It's Okay To Say F**k On TV Every Couple of Years.

This one’s about a federal court ruling. During the 2002 Billboard Music Awards show on Fox, Cher dissed and dismissed her critics, saying, "f**k 'em." Then during the 2003 Billboard Music Awards show (on Fox again), Nicole Richie said: "Have you ever tried to get cow s**t out of a Prada purse? It's not so f****n’ simple." Well, the FCC went f****n’ bats**t when they heard that.

(I always wondered who watched the f****n’ Billboard Music Awards year after year; apparently it’s the f****n’ FCC.) So the FCC hears this s**t about Nicole Richie and her f****n’ Prada purse and they launched a crackdown on indecency in 2004. They reversed years of policy and announced that even "fleeting” use of words like f**k or s**t was off-limits on broadcast television and radio. “We don’t care if it is the conservative Fox Network,” says the FCC, “We don’t care if an Australian like Rupert Murdoch uses the word f**k every five seconds in ordinary conversation, we’re not going to stand for any more of that s**t on U.S. television.”

But four years later Fox fights it all the way up to a f****n’ Federal Appeals Court in New York, and now it turns out that the FCC is the one who’s f****d. The court yesterday sided with Fox, which is owned by Murdoch's News Corp., writing that the FCC's "new policy sanctioning 'fleeting expletives' is f****n’ arbitrary and capricious, and anyway, Fox is the network that f****n’ supports the party of family values."

Needless to say, the FCC thinks the court’s decision is a f****n’ disgrace.

"I'm disappointed in the court's ruling," FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said in an interview. "I think the commission had done the right thing in trying to protect families from that kind of language, and I think it's unfortunate that the court in New York has said that this kind of language is appropriate on TV."

“Unfortunate;” that’s the official FCC euphemism for “a f****n’ disgrace.” The FCC Commissioner added that any broadcaster who sees this decision as a green light to send more gratuitous sex and violence into our homes has his head up his f****n’ a**.

The FCC forbids radio and television broadcast material that is sexual or excretory in nature from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., when children are most likely to be in the audience. After 10 p.m., apparently, we can f**k and s**t all we want, but we’ve got to hold it in until the kids are in bed.

This isn’t the first time this kind of s**t has happened, either. In February 2004, during the Super Bowl halftime show on CBS, after singer Janet Jackson's right t*t was briefly exposed, causing a national s**tstorm. The FCC launched an indecency investigation the next day. The agency quickly found that the broadcast violated the FCC's statutes and fined 20 CBS stations $550,000, which is about what they make from three seconds of f****n' airtime during one f****n’ Super Bowl commercial. CBS has appealed the decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia. The court has scheduled oral arguments in the case for September, which should be interesting.