I’ve written about SpeakSpeak before. Right now, SpeakSpeak mainly functions as an antidote to the poisonous Parents (sic) Television Council, which seeks to use the Federal Communications Commission to impose their narrow, bigoted, repressive, uptight and generally odious worldview on the entire country. The FCC can “revoke a station license, impose a monetary forfeiture, withhold or place conditions on the renewal of a broadcast license, or issue a warning, for the broadcast of obscene or indecent material”, and just what constitutes obscenity or indecency is pretty broadly defined. To be obscene, material must satisfy all of the following tests:
- An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
- The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law; and
- The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
So the FCC has a lot of leeway in carrying out its executive function; moreover:
Enforcement actions in this area are based on documented complaints received from the public about indecent or obscene broadcasting. The FCC