Dig the latest dispatch from the Culture Wars: the “Big 4” television networks and the Hearst-Argyle broadcast consortium have recently filed suits against the Federal Communications Commission in federal and state courts. These suits challenge the agency’s increasingly common and costly indecency fines.

The networks and broadcasters claim that the FCC and the Christian Coalition—which is agitating for the passage of legislation that would increase the maximum amount of indecency fines—are mounting an assault on America’s sacrosanct First Amendment right to free speech; the FCC and the Christian Coalition accuse the networks of endangering America’s commitment to moral hygiene and public decency.

This controversy has its origins in 1978’s landmark Supreme Court case FCC v. Pacifica Foundation. A listener to Pacifica’s New York City station filed a complaint after George Carlin’s infamous “Filthy Words” bit—in which the legendary stand-up comic and counter-culture icon gleefully lists and graphically annotates the anatomical, excretory, and reproductive colloquialisms deemed unfit for broadcast media.

The high court ruled that Carlin’s puerile theatrics were not subject to First Amendment protection, but the narrow 5-4 margin in the FCC’s favor undermined any attempt to establish a definitive standard for indecency. Justice John Paul Stevens—writing for the majority—only confused the matter with his tortured use of metaphor.

He wrote: “[…indecency] may merely be a right thing in the wrong place—like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard. We simply hold that when the [FCC] finds that a pig has entered the parlor, the exercise of its regulatory power does not depend on proof that the pig is obscene.”

But when Irish rocker Bono exclaimed, “this is really, really fucking brilliant” during the 2003 Golden Globe Awards, the FCC excused the expletive because it was not used to refer to the sex act.

In the following year, the FCC reversed this ruling and condemned Bono’s speech as indecent and profane, but issued no fine to the network. The FCC’s flip-flop was almost certainly attributable to Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson’s unforgettable half-time show performance during the 2004 Super Bowl.

The FCC has used the outrage inspired by Jackson’s Super Bowl striptease to legitimize the recent restriction of indecent broadcasts, but the “Big 4” networks argue that the adoption of a ratings system in 1997 and the introduction of the v-chip—which allows users to block programming rated for graphic violence, explicit sexual content, and coarse language.

With these powerful new tools for restricting indecent content, do consumers really need a nanny-state to protect them from the big, bad networks? For the most part, no; even a minimally-informed consumer is empowered to selectively bar offensive material from his or her television.

But the disagreeing parties are enjoying too greatly the advantages of gridlock: the networks get to cast themselves as constitutional martyrs, the Christian Coalition is able to behave self-righteously, and the FCC is allowed to engage in a little political grandstanding. The only losers are the viewers, who would undoubtedly rather watch TV than this three-ring media circus.

—Staff writer Bernard L. Parham can be reached at parham@fas.harvard.edu.