The New F-Word

You know the old one, the one with four letters that you still can’t say
on radio or non-cable TV without getting into serious trouble.

Comedian George Carlin and Pacifica Radio lost a free-speech case in the
Supreme Court in the seventies over his hilarious and now legendary
“Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television” monologue, ostensibly because
it was aired when children could have been listening. This was well
before the advent of porn channels, the Internet, and chat rooms.

Saying the F-word used to be regarded as crossing the line and hazardous
to a comic’s career. It’s now indispensable. Count them if you can in
Carlin’s recent HBO special.

There’s another F-word coming into currency these days, one that does
not refer in any way to sexual activity, body parts or bodily functions,
although it is verboten on TV, regarded as radioactive on the radio,
even in the reportage in what they call “family newspapers.”

President Bush’s “popularity ratings,” they say, have tanked. There have
been problems; the war, hurricane Katrina, “Scooter” Libby, Karl Rove,
Congressional buddy Tom Delay. They’re SO low in fact — around 40% at last
estimate — that they could rightly be called his “unpopularity” ratings.
Sixty percent against you in an election is landslide country. The
Commander in Chief is getting his lowest marks for competence and
credibility. And these, remember, are for someone whose finger is on the
“nucular” trigger. Are you worried yet?

A lot of folks have begun using that other F-word (in addition to the
four-letter favorite, sometimes even in rapid-fire F-F combos) about him
and his regime, er, administration.

It kind of spooked me the first time I heard speakers at anti-war
rallies comparing Bush to Adolph Hitler. Whoa, I thought – This ain’t no
Holocaust, we’re not talking about concentration camps and Gestapo
secret police tactics. Or is it, and are we? The US is not colonizing
Europe or looking to kill every Arab on the planet, but if not fascism,
then what SHOULD we call it when a world leader;

* Invades another country on cooked-up charges and after lying to his
own people and to the world about why, and then explains that his form
of government is better than theirs was and uses boots, bullets, and
five-hundred pound bombs to try to convince them?

* Claims immunity to international laws against war crimes such as
torture and murder, as well as the criminal infractions by his occupying
troops in foreign lands. After claiming the world’s right to prosecute
his enemies for breaking some of those same laws?

* Has taken office without a majority of the vote of the electorate?

* Whose political party states in one breath its aim to spread
“Democracy” around the world, and in the next its goal to cement
one-party rule (its own) in this country indefinitely?

* Equates opposition to its policies with treason?

* Implements and implants more and more means and devices for spying on
his own citizens, claiming the right to do so as a war power, but
without a constitutionally mandated Congressional declaration of war
against anyone?

* Subverts the media with government propaganda, and pressures
newspapers, broadcasters and cable networks to include pro-government
and pro-war opinions?

* Virtually endorses a state religion and teaching the “hand of God” in
biology classes throughout the land?

Is
it fascism yet? If It looks like a duck, talks like a duck, and it
walks like a (lame) duck, it probably is one. Beware its eggs. They
won’t be golden. They
could even be rotten. Swallow them at your own risk.

—————————————————– 

Daniel Meltzer teaches journalism at New York University. He has
written, edited, and reported for radio, television, magazines, and
newspapers. He has received the New York Press Association award for
creative nonfiction, and the O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes for fiction.
He is also a published and widely produced playwright