Murder Incorporated - Perfecting Tyranny by Abu-Jamal Mumia;Davis Angela;Vittoria Stephen;

Author:Abu-Jamal, Mumia;Davis, Angela;Vittoria, Stephen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prison Radio

(Listen to it today and hear the joyful laughter. It's fucking hilarious!)

Two months later, Carlin is arrested on obscenity charges at Milwaukee's Summerfest. In fact this arrest was one of numerous Carlin endured for performing his legendary “Seven Dirty Words.”

About a year or so later, in 1973, “Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits” floated through speakers inside John Douglass’ car while the CBS executive and his teenage son are cruising along. Pacifica Network's New York City station, WBAI, was broadcasting Carlin's “Seven Dirty Words” routine from his new album, Occupation: Foole. It turns out that Douglass was also a member of a group called “Morality in Media,” a haughty assemblage that sees themselves as a Cerberus guarding what is right and holy in the American zeitgeist. A month later Douglass filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (the good old FCC).

Pacifica passionately defended the broadcast, comparing the importance of Carlin's work to that of Mark Twain's. Without fining Pacifica, the FCC issued a warning but the network didn't stop there—a Circuit Court in Washington, D.C. (by a 2-1 vote) declared that the commission did not have the legal authority to regulate the WBAI broadcast—one justice citing constitutional protection, the other citing the Communications Act's prohibition against censorship.

In 1978, the case reaches the proverbial “highest court in the land” where five justices added a nice tight broadcast schedule to the language of the First Amendment. By a 5-4 vote, the Court upheld the FCC's decision, finding that Carlin's act was indecent but not obscene (majority votes: Rehnquist, Stevens, Burger, Blackmun, Powell; minority votes: Marshall, White, Brennan, Stewart) and that the FCC had the authority to protect listeners against what they defined as an invasion of privacy. The Court writing: “[Broadcasters] cannot completely protect the listener or viewer from unexpected program content,” because people are “constantly tuning in and out.”2

Now here's the beauty part: the majority based their decision on this fact—because the Carlin broadcast was during the day (2pm), it didn't have as much constitutional protection as if the broadcast happened at midnight. What? Did they even look at the First Amendment? The language seems pretty clear:

Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech

Justice William Brennan wrote one of the two dissenting opinions. He begins by writing:

For the second time in two years, see Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U.S. 50 (1976), the Court refuses to embrace the notion, completely antithetical to basic First Amendment values, that the degree of protection the First Amendment affords protected speech varies with the social value ascribed to that speech by five Members of this Court.3

With regard to the invasion of privacy issue, Brennan writes:

Without question, the privacy interests of an individual in his home are substantial and deserving of significant protection. In finding these interests sufficient to justify the content regulation of protected speech, however, the Court commits two errors. First, it misconceives the nature of the privacy interests involved where an individual voluntarily chooses to admit radio communications into his home.

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