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“Obscenity is the Crutch of Inarticulate Motherfuckers”
It probably doesn’t really need saying, but we here at QuizLaw are admirers of profanity. Sometimes, the complexities of the law, the dumbasses who are arrested, or the infuriating way Justice Scalia uses logic and reason to draft opinions we disagree with simply warrant a string of gratuitous swear words. What can I say? The rate of alcoholism among lawyers is double that among adults generally, and since whiskey loosens the tongue, and since we often blog while drunk … well, let’s just say that we don’t worry about whether or not Tipper Gore is reading.
But we like to think we know where to draw the line, unlike — say — Robert Eckhardt, who managed to do what few people outside the control of the FCC can accomplish, namely get convicted for verbal obscenity. Indeed, the standard for obscenity is very high, established by the Supremes in the Miller decision, which defined obscenity as “a work that 1) taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest under contemporary community standards, 2) depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and 3) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, political, or scientific value.” That may not make much sense to our lay readers, but rest assured, there aren’t very many people who don’t peddle in child porn that are convicted of obscenity, and the number is even less when we’re talking about verbal obscenity.
But Eckhardt, a former Teamster with a lot of residual anger, managed to do the near impossible. In a two-year period he left over 200 voicemails to a Teamster office worker, Sue Ann Creech, and as many as 30 a week during a two-month period. And a jury apparently took enough offense to his messages to convict him of an obscenity charge (as well as several other harassment counts), and that’s now been upheld by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
And believe you me, whenever anyone hears about charges of obscenity, the immediate reaction is to wonder what was so bad. And we won’t leave you hanging. Eckhart’s diatribes included, in part, messages to this effect: “Hey Sue, why don’t you take one of them fuckin’ school buses … and use it like a vibrator up your cunt” and “use them fuckin’ garbage trucks like a fuckin’ dildo and stick em’ up your cunt.” Clearly, Eckhardt had issues with the female genitalia.
At any rate, check out the opinion for a full account, which wins bonus points for the pure joy of reading a judicial opinion constructed around crude language. Hat tip to Bashman for pointing out the opinion.
