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Fuckin' A - OK?

From the Austin American Statesman:

Let's say you're the singer for this hugely internationally famous pop band about to win a major award in front of millions, and you'd like to make the occasion special by saying a very naughty word that means what people do for fun and procreation -- right there on live broadcast TV.

Well, go right ahead. U2 singer Bono got away with it at the Golden Globe Awards back in January. The Parents Television Council and other organizations that make it their business to monitor what your kids hear complained to the Federal Communications Commission, which ruled without fanfare Friday that it's OK to use that word (for which we will substitute "feep") as long as you're not being literal. Follow the logical bouncing ball: You can say "feep" or "feeping" if you don't really mean "to feep."

All of which Bob Peters finds distressing. Peters is president of the National Obscenity Law Center, which is a project of Morality in Media, in Washington.

According to the ruling, quoting from the FCC's Indecency Policy Statement, indecent material "must describe or depict sexual or excretory organs or activities."

"The word . . . may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory activities," FCC enforcement bureau chief David Solomon wrote in the ruling. "Rather, the performer used the word . . . as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation."

By this logic, Peters notes, Howard Stern could go on his radio show and call someone a cornshucker 68 times -- so long as he meant it as an insult and not as a description of a what a person might actually do.