The Supreme Court as Parent

"Tsk, tsk," the Supreme Court ruled this week. "You shouldn't talk like that," the judges implied as they upheld a ban on the use of fleeting expletives on television before 10 pm.

But if we don't like the language we hear on television or radio, what about what we hear in corporate boardrooms, in schools and on the street? Should the Court, like the Taliban, attempt to control all public behaviors?

I picture the Court not as it looks today, with judges of both genders and several races, but as it used to look - white men who dictated their social mores on a nation that would not necessarily follow its rulings.

The Court was doing what many of us parents do so ineffectively; i.e., trying to control our teens from the top down.

Thus, if we parents do not like the language we hear from our children we might punish them, for example, by slapping a fine on them (since we are the Supreme Court of our families). I doubt, however, that it will be effective.

Maybe the Courts of both the family and the nation need to think of more effective strategies to influence social behavior.