As you may recall, on the New Year's Eve edition of The Tonight Show, broadcast live to the East Coast, singer Vince Neil uttered the "f" word. According to this article which ran a week or so ago, the F.C.C. will launch an investigation into the matter.
Let us leave aside for the moment the fact that it's absurd for our government, which has more important concerns, to waste time and money over a concern that people who were up at 12:25 in the morning heard that word coming out of their TV sets. (The F.C.C. says it has "received complaints" but doesn't say how many. I'm guessing five. NBC says they had zero.) But like I said, leave that aside. Here's the question I want to ask…
What exactly is there to "investigate" here? He said it. Obviously, no one planned it. If they haul Vince Neil before some committee and ask him why it happened, he's going to say, "It just slipped out" and no one can really argue that point. The F.C.C. knows how many complaints came in. (Come to think of it, five is probably high. Make it three.) They also know just what NBC did to bleep the word from the West Coast replay of the program.
The word "investigation" means someone's going to expend effort to learn something or ascertain the facts. What is there about this incident that is not known or has yet to be discovered?
Obviously, I don't think any fine or discipline is warranted. Frankly, the concept that an arm of the United States Government would or could spend more than five minutes on this offends me more than what Vince Neil said.