Cussing More Expensive Than Radioactive Waste

Rolling Stone magazine has confirmed what I had long suspected - that the FCC's language fines far exceed other governmental fines. The largest fine levied by the Nuclear (pronounced Nucular) Regulatory Agency last year was $60,000. The largest FCC fine? 1.2 million dollars, for Fox's "Married By America" bachelor party episode, in which all the bad words were edited out, and all the boobies were pixillated. A few years back, this 45-second-long ditty by Monty Python (MP3 download) garnered a $25,000 fine from the FCC, despite the fact that that the worst language in it is the phrase "Sit On My Face." And this was in the old days, before millions of American children were traumatized by being exposed to Janet Jackson's pasty for 11/32nds of one second.

A few weeks ago, I did my own brief survey of federal fines and came up with this list of non-FCC fines imposed by the Federal Government, so you can get some perspective on the current proposed laws to increase the fines for naughty phrases to half a million bucks each:

$10,000 for killing a Whooping Crane.

$54,500 for releasing anydrous ammonia into the environment.

$55,000 for illegally travelling to Cuba.

$70,000 for mishandling and mislabeling hazardous chemicals.

$116,000 for improper disposal of flammable materials and other violations.

$133,000 for exposing employees to infectious diseases.

$1.2 million for broadcasting pixillated boobs (FCC).

Comments

[Jorge]

Finally, some good old fashioned shoe leather reporting on the FMU blog.

It seems to me that broadcast indecency laws are easy to enfore since you're deeds are broadcasted. The tricky part is deciding the bounds of indecency. That and living with yourself after you've pandered to the rapture right for cheap political advantage.

I don't understand why the democrats don't come out for *less* regulation on this issue and turn their liberal stereotypes inside out. Pansies.

[Richard]

How about this one? It's only listed as a proposed fine, but still...

$288,000 for losing track of two nuclear reactor fuel rods:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2002/02-045i.html