March 13th, 2004
George Carlin Responds to Indecency Uproar
The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it’s all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition. … There’s an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. … It’s reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.
The below is from the Clean Airwaves Act, (H.R. 3687):
As used in this section, the term ‘profane’, used with respect to language, includes the words ‘shit’, ‘piss’, ‘fuck’, ‘cunt’, ‘asshole’, and the phrases ‘cock sucker’, ‘mother fucker’, and ‘ass hole’, compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).
Astute readers will note that the list of banned words matches Carlin’s 1972 “Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV” — except that “tit” has been replaced by “asshole.” My, how times (haven’t) changed. I think Robert A. Heinlein’s take on the matter is appropriate:
Of all the strange “crimes” that human beings have legislated of nothing, “blasphemy” is the most amazing - with “obscenity” and “indecent exposure” fighting it out for the second and third place.