Jerkoff If You Want, but No Fucking, Please

In case broadcasters were not confused enough about what they're allowed to air between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., the FCC has muddied the waters further by rejecting 36 complaints about TV show content from the Parents Television Council. I gather from the Washington Times report that the targets of the complaints included the use of the word jerkoff on shows such as NYPD Blue, Dawson's Creek, and Boston Public. The PTC's followers were also offended by an episode of Scrubs "in which a male doctor ribs a female doctor because she aroused a patient during a pelvic exam."

Three FCC commissioners determined that the content cited in the complaints did not constitute indecency ("language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities") or profanity ("language that denot[es] certain of those personally reviling epithets naturally tending to provoke violent resentment or denoting language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance"). But two commissioners disagreed, which makes you wonder how broadcasters can be expected to predict what sort of content will trigger fines. That task will become even trickier when FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who voted with the majority on these complaints, steps down in March.

As evidence of the confusion fostered by the FCC's malleable standards and inconsistent enforcement, a Fox executive notes that the network blurred the bare bottom of Stewy, the baby on the cartoon comedy Family Guy, for a repeat of an episode tham ran uncensored four years ago. That example illustrates another arbitrary aspect of the indecency crackdown, since Family Guy also airs on Cartoon Network, which as a cable channel needn't worry about the FCC's content rules and therefore can show Stewy's unblurred butt with impunity.