Obscenity

A court ruling last week easing restrictions on the inadvertent broadcast of obscenities is touching off a new war of the words. A federal appeals court's pointed criticism of attempts to regulate broadcast content could reverberate through the government's entire regime for keeping indecent language and images off the airwaves.

Shock jocks Opie & Anthony will resume live broadcasts on XM Satellite Radio on Friday following a one-month suspension after a guest described his rape fantasies on their daily show, the company said Monday. Hosts Gregg "Opie" Hughes and Anthony Cumia last month were suspended for 30 days after a guest spoke about forcing U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and First Lady Laura Bush to have sex with him. XM denounced the comments and the hosts apologized.

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg could have used a remote. Less than halfway into a five-minute clip of violent TV excerpts being shown to a packed Senate hearing Tuesday, the New Jersey Democrat became visibly fed up. "We've seen enough," he said, after scenes from "NCIS," "The Shield" and "Rescue Me" played. "I think we all know what's out there is disgusting." Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), who chaired the session on the effect of TV violence on children, agreed to pull the plug.

The battle over dirty words shifts back to Congress today. A Senate committee is expected to support legislation that would authorize regulators to enforce a nearly zero-tolerance policy on the broadcast of certain expletives that was struck down last month. The bill would give the Federal Communications Commission explicit authority to make "a single word or image" indecent. The FCC ruled in March 2006 that almost any use of some expletives was indecent, even in live, unscripted instances.

The Senate Commerce Committee approved a bill to give federal regulators the authority to enforce a tougher broadcast indecency policy in hopes of reversing a recent court ruling. The bill, sponsored by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), directs the Federal Communications Commission to maintain a policy that a single word or image can be enough to trigger indecency fines. Broadcasters strongly oppose the legislation, which passed by a unanimous voice vote.

On a cold morning in January, FBI agents converged on a modern brick office building in Koreatown in a mission conjured up at the highest levels of Washington: to rid the world of adult films by an obscure niche producer named Ira Isaacs. From his 12th-floor suite above Wilshire Boulevard, Isaacs, a stout, fast-talking 56-year-old Bronx native with a short ponytail and a lopsided "soul patch" of black hair under his lip, sent out some stomach-churning porn.

After huge fines and public outrage, the now infamous Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl was supposed to have had a chilling effect on broadcast television's drive to rattle the cages of social convention. But instead, the major networks have only gotten hotter, particularly when it comes to language.

Lawyers for the Federal Communications Commission have formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court's rejection of the agency's policy on broadcast profanity. In June, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York nullified the agency's enforcement policy on "fleeting expletives" by a 2-1 vote, saying the FCC had changed its policy and failed to adequately explain why.

The Federal Communications Commission reduced a record $3.6-million indecency fine against CBS stations for an episode of "Without a Trace" after learning eight outlets aired the show after 10 p.m. The FCC order, which reduces the proposed fine to about $3.35 million, means the penalty is no longer the largest ever sought by the agency. Federal rules bar broadcasters from airing indecent material from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., when children are thought to be most likely to watch.

Brody Paul and his kid brother Zander are making their after-school rounds in this city's Castro district -- one of the most openly gay neighborhoods in America. Brody, 12, shops for mouthwash and Clearasil. His brother wants No. 2 pencils. Veterans of tolerant San Francisco, they're unfazed by the two women holding hands and the graffiti etched into the sidewalk: "Nick Loves Olaf."