Fleeting expletives
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York on Monday overruled the Federal Communications Commission that had determined expletives uttered on network television violated decency standards. In the justices' words, the FCC's new policy against "fleeting expletives," i.e. Cher and Nicole Richie using the words "fuck" and "shit" on live television, is "arbitrary and capricious."Most interesting was that the court pointed to the use of those two words by the President and Vice President as evidence that they are not necessarily sexual, execratory, or indecent. Specifically, they referred to Bush's remark to U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair that the United Nations needed to "get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit," and Cheney's widely-reported request on the Senate floor that Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy go "fuck himself."
The United States of America-- saved for the moment by the innate decency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
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Former Yankee Clete Boyer died Monday at the age of 70. Clete was a big leaguer for 17 years, and along with his brother Ken, long-time of the Cardinals, became the first pair of brothers to hit home runs in the same World Series. (They were opposing thirdbasemen in the 1964 Classic.) There were 14 children in the Boyer brood in Alba, Missouri, and brother Cloyd also enjoyed a seven year Major League career. In 1995, during a cross-country trip along historic Route 66, Aaron and I ventured about 20 miles off the beaten path in order to lay our eyes upon tiny Alba, Moe, and "Boyer Field" therein. Ken, whose uniform #14 has been retired by the Cardinals, died of cancer in 1982 at age 51.
Whenever the Boyer name surfaces, I call back on a morsel of information in Whitey Herzog's 1987 literary masterpiece "White Rat: A Life in Baseball"-- four Midwestern guys, established big leaguers, shared the same apartment in New York City in 1966. In those days, baseball saw to it that a city with two teams would always have one team playing at home while the other played on the road. Herzog, then a third base coach, and Ken, in the twilight of his playing career, inhabited the apartment when the Mets were in town, and Clete and Roger Maris resided there when the Yankees played at home.
It's a different baseball world today.
posted by CM @ 8:41 PM
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