April 21, 2004

The FCC and the S-word (again)

It looks like CBS may be in trouble over Mary J. Blige saying the S-word on 60 Minutes. Here's an mp3 of the alleged offense, which the Schnitt Show (radio, Clear Channel, Miami) is helpfully hosting on its web site (slogan: The Web is Full of Schnitt. No, really). More information on the S-word is available here.

[Update: Even before this latest issue came up, Stuart Benjamin at the Volokh Conspiracy suggested that far from being stupid, this is all a clever libertarian plot by "some FCC Commissioners and Members of Congress who have supported this new regulation regime" because they "secretly wanted to bring about the demise of broadcast indecency regulation", since "the Supreme Court probably would -- and in [his] view should -- find these indecency regulations unconstitutional". In fact, he leads off his post by calling it a "'fucking brilliant' regulatory strategy". Is this a rare example of double reverse sarcasm, in which he effectively calls the strategy clever by using "brilliant" with such obvious sarcasm that we realize he can't possibly mean something as obvious as the opposite of what he says, but must mean the opposite of the opposite?]

Posted by Mark Liberman at April 21, 2004 02:52 PM