Curse Bush

I'm posting a link to this great article that appeared in Time magazine last week. It is really interesting and really well-written. It talks about a recent decision by a federal court of appeals (one step below the US Supreme Court). In the case, the FCC had fined a number of stations that aired a live awards show that featured Nichole Richie, among others, using profanity. But the court said that that the fines were unreasonable. In making its decision, the court looked at societal norms and determined that profanity wasn't such an uncommon thing as to warrant these large fines. But the interesting part of the decision was that, in saying that profanity wasn't such a big deal, the court cited to recent profane gaffes by President Bush and Vice President Cheney (hence my clever title to this post). Basically, the court said that if Cheney can drop the F-bomb on the Senate floor, then Nichole Richie can do so on an awards show. The article riffs on the irony of the court's decision to use this administration as an example of profanity and how we can now curse Bush, who won two elections by playing strongly to the morality/family values card, for making it possible for Nichole Richie to drop the F-bomb with impunity.