I think the NY Times has written an Editorial supporting free speech. In a piece support such free speech the Times notes:
Americans, especially judges, have an obligation to know the law. The limits of free speech are subject to debate, but Ms. Dick’s case does not approach those boundaries. She has the right to curse out the president of the United States, and it should not require an appeals court to deliver that news to Roselle Park. Discomfort with vulgarity is understandable. The word Ms. Dick used is one that this newspaper often avoids publishing. But the decision by a judge in a liberal town to constrain the free speech rights of an outspoken conservative is symptomatic of a troubling trend: a growing sense among many Americans that the United States cannot afford to maintain the full measure of its foundational commitment to free speech.
The word in question is the simplification as an old Anglo Saxon directive allowing intimate relations winch was called, Fornication Under Consent of King. In fact is was one of the first English Crown directives written in what was then Middle English, supplanting some older French directives.
Now the local Magistrate deemed this obscene. Perhaps he did not look at the license plates on the cars in the parking lot. This is New Jersey. Here the word is used as a noun, adverb, adjective, gerund, participle, and is often interjected in between every other word. It is like the "uh" some political commentators use.
My introduction to such an expansive usage was as a Senior in High School when my father got me a job in the New York City Sanitation, to show me what real work was like. Up at 3 AM, to the garage by 5 AM, on the street by 5:15 AM and then listening to my co-workers use this phrase about everything. One got a sense that it helped the flow of New York and New Jersey dialects. Think of the Soprano folks.
In fact the current President was caught on a mic uttering it at a major Press Conference!
Thus the Times has a good point but alas, watch out for those Magistrates. Better yet, Magistrates most likely interject the phrase themselves from time to time. After all, it is New Jersey!
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