Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas R.
Actually I'm not sure there's anywhere in the US you can't swear other than maybe some workplaces.
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In 1999, a Michigan man was arrested, fined and sentenced to community service, for swearing when his canoe tipped over, within earshot of women and children. (The conviction has been reversed, but he still had to spend a huge amount of time and money defending himself.) If you swear at a police officer, you can be arrested for assaulting an officer. In Louisiana, you can be arrested if your bumper sticker contains a 4-letter word. A TV station can be fined literally hundreds of millions of dollars if certain words or images slip onto the air, even accidentally. When you watch the super bowl, it will not be live. It will be subject to several seconds delay, to protect the network from any accidental content for which the government-imposed penalties could be enough to bankrupt the network. Americans are not "free" to watch any programs of foreign origin on cable, because the cable companies can't afford the exposure to penalties if a live non-American telecast shows one of the things that Americans have no "right" to see, such as a nipple. While that may not be the intent, US government threats have made it impossible for Americans to see any channels of foreign origin on basic cable. The only other country in the world I know of where there are no foreign channels on basic cable is China. Even the BBC News on BBC-America is taped at the studios in Maryland, screened for appropriateness of content, and replayed an hour later.
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