The FCC has been given leeway to further censor free speech on the radio. Justice Scalia, according to the article, says "It was [reasonable] to determine that it made no sense to distinguish between literal and nonliteral uses of offensive words".
Why were no linguists involved in this decision? Words themselves, as one could ontologically argue, have no meaning, and are more accurately defined as sounds we've adopted to represent a series of emotions. If the FCC effectively "bans" words we use now, our language will evolve to create new emotive facilitators.
The big picture, Justices, is that you've given the architecture to the FCC to ban words at their own discretion. The bill of rights was created to protect dissenters and minorities in a nation ruled by democracy. This is a blatant breach of the 1st Amendment, and in time, you will lead our people to suffer.
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1 comment:
While this is enough of a blatant breach of free speech, I think more importantly as you suggest, it is a sort of precedent that signifies the destruction, or mere ignoring, of the 1st Amendment.
I'll be writing a series of blogs on all the Amendments as they relate to the Constitution, etc., look forward to your input.
The idea that words are simply emotive sounds is even more the case with so-called expletives.
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