Seven Dirty Words - Later Use of The Words

Later Use of The Words

Some of the words on Carlin's original list have since been used to some degree on broadcast television in the United States. The word tits was uttered on the first episode of The Trials of Rosie O'Neill in 1990, sparking some controversy. It has been also uttered more recently in the popular Jimmy Kimmel video "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck," in which Ben Affleck utters "Hey, Sarah, he's got bigger tits," which originally aired on the After Oscar special of the ABC show Jimmy Kimmel Live! after the 80th Academy Awards, all without incident. The word piss (usually used in the context of the phrase "pissed off") has been commonplace since the 1980s. The word shit was heard on rare occasions in the 1990s, for the first time in an episode of Chicago Hope spoken by Mark Harmon, and later in the season eight episode of ER in which Dr. Mark Greene dies. The word shit was also spoken in several episodes of NYPD Blue. CBS recently aired the show "Shit My Dad Says" based on a Twitter feed but they spelled it "$#*!" and pronounced it as "bleep."

Producers have often implied the word fuck, although usually obscuring the word with a background sound effect or a beeping sound. One of Carlin's later additions to the list, fart, is also used frequently. Turd is allowed on broadcast TV, though in performance Carlin explained that you can say it, "but who wants to?"

American rock band Blink-182 released a thirty-five second song called "Family Reunion", which is simply a list of Carlin's expanded list (original seven plus fart, turd and twat) repeated four times.

On March 10, 2002, CBS aired 9/11, a prime-time special featuring first responders during the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It contained a number of utterances of the word fuck. One notable early use of this word on American television occurred a few years after Carlin made his list, when the documentary Scared Straight!, which included numerous utterances of the word and its derivatives, was broadcast uncensored.

The FCC has often looked at the context of the use of a word when judging whether it is objectionable. This has at times led to controversy, such as when a bureau of the FCC deemed the utterance of the word fucking (as an intensifier) in January 2003 at the live Golden Globe Awards broadcast by Bono, the front man of the band U2, was not indecent under its criteria since they said that under the context of its use it was not intended to describe or depict sexual and excretory activities and organs. The full FCC, however, later reversed the decision in early 2004, though a fine has not been levied against Bono. In December 2003 Congressman Doug Ose, citing the incident, introduced legislation in the US House of Representatives that would have explicitly deemed six of the words profane (tits was excluded but asshole added).

In a similar incident on October 31, 2008, Philadelphia Phillies second baseman Chase Utley took the stage at Citizens Bank Park during the team's World Series celebration and said "World champions. World fucking champions!" Utley's epithet was aired live on almost every television station in the Philadelphia television market. The FCC took no action.

When Norm Macdonald hosted Saturday Night Live on October 23, 1999, during a "Celebrity Jeopardy!" segment, Macdonald, portraying Burt Reynolds, read "A petit" as "ape tit". This was written in the script.

The FCC does not directly target the networks — only stations carrying a network's programming are licensed. Since most of the networks own some of the stations that carry their programming, these stations can be fined as a way of indirectly fining the network.

In the 2011 NASCAR Coca-Cola 600, crew chief Chad Knaus screamed after his driver's engine blew up, "You've got to be fucking kidding me!" uncensored. The Fox Sports announcers immediately apologized for Knaus's language.

The 2008 installment of "Dead Letters," the Washington Post Style Invitational's annual collection of verse-form obituaries for persons who died in the previous year, included a Carlin obituary in whose text seven words were "blanked out" without explanation, leaving readers to use the poem's rhyme scheme, its meter, and their independent knowledge of the monologue and/or FCC v. Pacifica case to determine which words belonged where.

During the 2010 Winter Olympics, snowboarder Shaun White was heard exclaiming "holy shit!" after realizing that he was going to win the gold medal in men's halfpipe. The NBC commentators immediately apologized for White's language.

FM radio stations in North America, while generally avoiding the words in commentary and using censored versions of recordings when available, will broadcast some notable songs that contain expletives (e.g., The Who's 1978 song "Who Are You", which repeats the phrase "Who the fuck are you?" twice) unexpurgated. The last song played on former Houston radio station KTRU was "Fuck School" by The Replacements, a song which includes the word "fuck" 31 times. It was aired uncensored without incident on April 28, 2011 just after 6 AM.