FCC Tacitly Acknowledges That 'Fucking' Can Be a Great Fucking Word

On Saturday, just before the Boston Red Sox took the field in the first game since the city was shut down to find the marathon bombers, the team handed the mic to beloved slugger David "Big Papi" Ortiz. In front of the mayor, governor, Neil Diamond, and a huge live broadcast audience, Papi dropped one of the better F-bombs you'll see:

Transcript here. As amazing as it may seen, the Federal Communications Commission is still pondering whether and how to punish such "fleeting expletives," even after having some of its FE punishments struck down by the Supreme Court in 2012. As the FCC asks in its request for public comment on its indecency policy [PDF],

For example, should the Commission treat isolated expletives in a manner consistent with our decision in Pacifica Foundation, Inc., Memorandum Opinion and Order, 2 FCC Rcd 2698, 2699 (1987) ("If a complaint focuses solely on the use of expletives, we believe that . . . deliberate and repetitive use in a patently offensive manner is a requisite to a finding of indecency.")? Should the Commission instead maintain the approach to isolated expletives set forth in its decision in Complaints Against Various Broadcast Licensees Regarding Their Airing of the "Golden Globe Awards" Program, Memorandum Opinion and Order, 19 FCC Rcd 4975 (2004)?

While a jumpy nation waits to see whether an agency set up to divvy up scarce spectrum continues making a mockery of the phrase "Congress shall make no law," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has issued an official Tweet pre-absolving Big Papi (and the broadcasters who carried him live) from blame:

David Ortiz spoke from the heart at today's Red Sox game. I stand with Big Papi and the people of Boston – Julius

Why, it's almost like "fucking" is a rich, colorful word capable of conveying a nearly infinite set of meanings!

There may be an extra benefit to Genachowski's attempt to get on the popular side of a profanity: The Supreme Court's decision in FCC v. Fox reprimanded the agency for enforcing regulations that are unconstitutionally vague. Surely any policy that depends on the definitionally slippery standard of whether Julius "stands" with the curser cannot be anything but arbitrary. It'll be damned hard carving out a new fleeting expletive policy that navigates through the new Genachowski exception while also satisfying SCOTUS. Nice fucking job, Papi.