Let's keep Carlin's list in context

Remember when you couldn't drink coffee?

Man did it look and smell good. All the grown-ups did it, so it must be cool.

"No, you can't have any," you were told. "It will stunt your growth."

Checking the scale, I wish I would have started drinking it sooner.

Something about the lure of the forbidden fruit must go back to the Garden of Eden. The fact that something is forbidden seems to make it seem that much more delicious -- never mind the consequences.

When we got older, we found out that (fill in the blank) isn't really all that great. Whether it's the jitters, a hangover or emphysema, the consequences are all ours to enjoy.

Somehow, drinking coffee every day takes the joy out of it. The next thing you know, you're chug-a-lugging espresso.

Some of the same principles apply to language.

Remember George Carlin's famous bit, "Seven words you can't say on television?"

I've made an informal study of them over the years, and they've been picked off, one by one.

Not on cable TV, mind you, but on commercial broadcasts, the last bastion of official puritanism.

One of the words has long appeared on shows such as "Friends," where I also noticed another of the terms turning up, unnoticed.

The third, the infamous F-word, popped out of the mouth of U-2 lead singer Bono's mouth as the ultimate expression of pleasure in receiving a Golden Globe award a year ago Monday.

After a storm of complaints, the Federal Communications Commission's enforcement bureau ruled that the Irish singer's use of the F-word was OK, because it was used as an "adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation," not, apparently as a verb.

Well, duh.

That probably would cover about 90 percent of the cases where the word was used.

Just as I was about to endorse a local radio station as acceptable teenage listening fodder, I took an inventory. Quite a few of the Carlin list turn up regularly, including Bono's choice, but, sure enough, it was an adjective.

Not to be left out, Congress is getting into the act, considering a bill to provide for the punishment of "certain profane broadcasts" of some eight words of phrases, covering six or George Carlin's seven words, as well as "such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle and infinitive forms."

Got that?

We generally didn't hear many words on Carlin's List around home, except perhaps in their proper clinical context in the milking barn.

Dad did have an old radio which, when turned on, attracted cows ready to release their burden of milk.

The mice used to chew the speaker out of the radio, which Dad then repaired, using old newspaper as a cone.

Any word on Carlin's List of words that made its way out of that radio would been so distorted as to be unrecognizable.

If we felt the need to generate any them live, however, we certainly would have objected to a SWAT team rappelling off the chicken shed, duct tape in hand.

Anyone who has broken a heifer to milk, not to mention anyone who uses a Macintosh computer, should be able to understand the temptation.

As someone who puts the First Amendment to use every day, any move toward more governmental restriction of free speech leaves the taste of day-old coffee in my mouth.

Instead of a new law, how about if we just use our constitutional rights to leave Carlin's List out in the barnyard where it belongs.