no doubt we’ll all sleep better at night knowing that while the supreme court isn’t busy protecting the interests of big business, it has agreed to consider the doomsday question of “fleeting expletives” — those passing notes that came to us on broadcast TV courtesy of bono and cher, also sometimes called f-bombs.
laws around broadcast cursewords have liberalized considerably in recent years and are now, according to dr. timothy jay, (who has, extraordinarily, made this his life’s work) “moving beyond ’suck’ and ‘ass’ and are now fixating on f– and s–.” lower courts and appeals courts have declined to criminalize the f-bomb, and the supreme court has agreed to hear the case. it’s worth noting that they only hear 80-150 cases in any given year.
well f– me sideways for thinking the supremes had weightier matters to consider, like waterboarding and holding people at guanatanamo bay for years without any charges, or federalizing environmental protection or maybe making sure we don’t buy too much poisoned food from china. but no! they are concerned with keeping radio and television safe from dirty words.
how about keeping us safe from shady construction inspectors like edward marquette, who was arrested for first failing to inspect, and then lying about having inspected, the crane that killed seven people last week. very contrary to initial reports of a “random flying metal object” severing the crane’s mooring, a retired construction worker had actually called in a report 11 days prior to the accident, saying that the braces did not look right and he was concerned. marquette was dispatched to inspect the crane, and filed a report that everything was fine and dandy.
except he never even visited the site, much less did any actual inspecting. and if the other statistics reported in this article are true, it’s not because he didn’t have the time.
marquette has supposedly conducted 500 inspections in the last 6 months. that’s a 26-week period, but let’s give him two weeks off for vacation or sick days. that’s 500 inspections in 24 weeks, an average of just under 21 inspections each week, about four per day. is this an unreasonable workload? considering that the reports are so simple you can complete them without even showing up, i’d guess that 2 inspections in the morning and 2 in the afternoon are not impossible goals (and wait: we haven’t even learned yet how much OT this guy was clocking — bet you anything he billed 10-12 work hours every day, practically a given in the NYC construction trade).
okay, okay, i don’t know what else a crane inspector might be responsible for, so these could be unreasonable assumptions. but the other statistic in this article makes me think there’s a WHOLE lot wrong here that ain’t my math: bruce silberblatt, the retired whistleblower who originally called in the safety complaint, says there are about 250 such cranes in use presently in NYC. 250? and marquette is doing 500 inspections every 6 months?
these cranes would be safe enough for toddlers to play on if they were really checked out every quarter.
but no, the inspectors are busy elsewhere (where, exactly? will we find another prostitution connection here? was he off doing tax-free paid jobs on the side during work hours? chugging a few pints in his favorite bar?) and the supreme court can’t be bothered with such trivia while it’s hobnobbing with the FCC over dirty words that, as far as i know, don’t kill people. stick & stones (and cranes) will break my bones, etc.
and i think that sucks ass.
