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A note on Dirty Words

By Jack M. Balkin

Balkinization readers might be interested in the following proposed footnote for the discussion of FCC v. Pacifica Foundation in Gillman, Graber and Whittington, AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM.

For the transcript of Carlin?s broadcast, see http://www.cba.uni.edu/decencyl/7words.html.
For Carlin?s original ?Seven Dirty Words? routine, see http://www.erenkrantz.com/Humor/SevenDirtyWords.shtml.
Most professors, eager to demonstrate what they perceive of as the silliness of FCC
restrictions, gleefully repeat these words when writing or lecturing about
Pacifica. The coeditor of this text responsible for this excerpt (Graber) does
not and did not include any of the words in the headnote to this case. He
believes, perhaps mistakenly, that at the turn of the twenty-first
century, teaching students by example that some people still find these words
and the Carlin routine offensive (and not particularly funny) is more important than
desensitizing students to words he suspects most of them use quite
regularly.

So, gentle readers, in 2009, which is the better pedagogical strategy. I have deliberately enabled comments in the hope of enlightenment on this subject.

[Type the rest of your post here.]

Full post as published by Balkinization on July 12, 2009 (boomark / email).

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