Supreme Court case tests FCC’s power to police TV indecency

[Heywood J]

7. I have to agree with this.

It has nothing to do with children, and everything to do with enforcement of morals on others.

Parents buy games like Grand Theft Auto and CDs bearing the explicit lyrics logo every day for their kids. Play a multiplayer game like Call of Duty online some day: you may be astonished by the number of kids taking headshots at each other or watching the jibs fly as someone explodes, they swear like sailors. Kids use the Internet to discuss who the class slut is or how high they got last night. Latch-key kids have full access to Mom and Dad's DVD collection until they get home from work hours later, not to mention the liquor cabinet, cigarette pack, and more. America has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the western world and our schools have smoke pits outside the front doors. I learned the word fuck and how to use it when I was six years old... from the other six year olds at school in the mid-1980s. All of this, even, says nothing about what they hear from the parents.

But I can't hear Jon Stewart say "shit" or "asshole" at 11:00 at night because it's censored for the next day's re-run and some hypothetical kid, somewhere, might be watching the re-run.