Raistlin

Yesterday, a federal Court of Appeals decided the fate of a trademark on “cock suckers,” which are rooster-shaped lollipops produced by a woman named Marsha Fox in support of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. The trademark examiner denied her trademark on the grounds that it was “scandalous,” and the federal court affirmed.

In support of this ruling, the court cited a law originally passed in 1905 that prohibited the issuance of trademarks if it “consists of or compromises immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter.” That provision is still enforced today. The Court has interpreted that provision to allow for the refusal of trademarks where the subject “invokes a vulgar meaning to a substantial composite of the general public.” What follows is an overview of the vulgar definition of “cocksucker” and fellatio, which is mildly amusing in a court opinion if you are also mentally 12-years-old (there was also a rather forced semantic argument about whether “cock sucker” was any different from “cocksucker,” but the PTO and court rejected that distinction out of what I can only assume is an irrational anti-cock bigotry).

The opinion, of course, is stupid. This is not another rant about free speech, because the courts have held, rightly or wrongly, that this unequal treatment of speech does not implicate the First Amendment; Fox is still free to use and advertise her “cock suckers,” but the federal government will simply not use its resources to protect it (I would still argue that this unequal preference of the government against certain speech implicates the First Amendment by chilling protected speech that involves profanity/vulgarity; the court’s reasoning for the contrary seems a very strained rationalization for the law’s pathetic attempt at moral authority over language). The decision is stupid because it mindlessly enforces puritanical policies that are about 50 years behind the times.

It is time to get real: swearing is no big smurfing deal. People swear all the time now, and cuss words are ubiquitous in society and in media. Yet in the US, there are no swear words on cable TV before a certain time of night, and on public broadcast channels, a network can be fined for a single fleeting swear uttered by an unconnected person. If you just watched daytime TV, you might think swearing never occurred in public, but you would only have to venture outside to realize how untrue that is. This trademark is denied solely because it references something sexual in a rather obvious double entendre (I can only imagine Gamecocks supporters are well used to such jokes by now), based on a 1905 law that is still being similarly applied today. It is time we as a society grow the smurf up and get over this inconsistent taboo against naughty words.

Plus, double entendres are just great. What red-blooded male hasn’t sent a picture of a rooster titled “mycock.jpg” to a girl on the internet?

So I have a message to the Patent and Trademark Office as well as the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals: suck my cock.