"Fuck the USA"

There's a certain kind of pleasure in watching a lawyer say to a bunch of judges, "Motherfucker, eat shit, fuck the USA." Carter Phillips, attorney for Fox Television, did a good job being very serious while saying these offensive things. As did the judges who said "fuck" and "shit" and "fuck 'em." Perhaps best of all is the service provided by C-SPAN in airing these hearings before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals today. They're much better than the oral-only (and I mean that in the cleanest possible sense) recordings of the Supreme Court. And somehow all of these words were uttered without causing children to be turned into sex maniacs, or whatever is supposed to happen when the hypothetical child hears the broadcast expletive. The only sad part is that Cher and Nicole Richie (swearing at the 2002 Billboard Music Awards) have to be thought of as paragons of free speech. Of course, the possibility of swearing is the only interesting thing about these awards programs. Otherwise, it's like watching an auto race and knowing that the TV network will cut out all the footage of accidents. Who wants to see driving? Speaking of which, isn't it more traumatic for children to watch some guy die in a fiery crash on TV than to hear some overexposed celebrity say a "bad" word? Let the free market decide all this: if the networks want to air expletives, they should be punished by the marketplace puritans, not the government censors.