Hoping for a remake of Carlin’s 1972 bit “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”, the Trump administration has banned seven new words at the CDC. “Diversity,” “entitlement,” “evidence-based,” “fetus,” “science-based,” “transgender,” and “vulnerable.”

Well, not for that reason … but the ban seems to be true. That action is troubling in and of itself – a dash of groupthink and a heap of naïveté: let’s ban unpleasant (to us) ideas and just hope they go away. More troubling is the reported replacement for [science|evidence]-based: “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes”. Umm … the CDC — the Centers for Disease Control — is going claim its recommendations are made in consideration with community standards and wishes?!? What the fuck?? I wish cancer didn’t exist. Huh, didn’t help.

The FCC doesn’t actually have a finite list of banned words, rather they are guided by the courts view on where First Amendment protection exists or doesn’t. Did the Supreme Court hand down a concrete list of banned words? Of course not. Going back to Jacobellis v Ohio (1964) – where Justice Potter Stewart wrote “I know it when I see it” of hard-core pornography – obscenity and indecency are not clearly defined. Which makes broadcasting questionable material a risk — will someone complain? How will the FCC find on the complaint?

Anyone can submit a complaint to the FCC — I find high pitched made up word baby talk on supposedly educational children’s programming grossly offensive, I can complain to the FCC. Their investigators will likely find that the offense doesn’t reach the level of public nuisance and is thus not profane. Even the test for obscene content includes determining if the depiction has “literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”. Include a good enough story line and your hard-core porn isn’t obscene?

Deciding what to broadcast and what to censor becomes risk analysis. In radio, the risk analysis often considers *local* standards. That’s why, when driving across the country listening to various same-genre radio, words and phrases will be broadcast in some markets and censored in others. I’ve heard references to drug use scratched with varying impact – Petty can’t roll another joint but the song is mostly there or D12’s Purple Pills becomes a series of instrumentals and scratches. Even ‘radio edits’ are sufficiently edited in some markets but still have redacted bits in others. Syndicated radio programming – and most broadcast television – needs to consider what the most prudish broadcast area will consider offensive. I may live in a city where local radio broadcasts drug references or ‘shit’, but the national content may omit these to avoid offense elsewhere.

OK – extrapolate that to MEDICAL ADVICE. Medical advice should now take into consideration the ‘medicine is evil, God will cure us’ set? The ‘contraception means a moral failing’ set? Making America great, huh.