Colbert joke prompts thousands of FCC complaints from all political stripes 
 
 Disgruntled viewers of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show on CBS complained to the FCC that a sexually explicit joke about President Donald Trump and his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin is “beneath the dignity of American broadcasting,” and urged the agency to sanction the network. 
 
 A sample of the more than 5,700 complaints that flooded the agency since Colbert’s joke on the May 1 episode of “The Late Show” included concerns about indecency, hate speech and homophobia from across the political spectrum. Colbert used a crude term to refer to a metaphorical sexual relationship between the U.S. and Russian presidents in a monologue on Trump’s first 100 days in office. 
 
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 The FCC, in response to a POLITICO Freedom of Information Act request, released samples of the complaints, with the names of the people who submitted them redacted but their geographic locations intact. The agency provided the first 100 complaints received between May 2 and May 17. 
 
 Parents complained about answering questions from their kids, while one viewer thanked God “my children, elderly parents, and other loved ones did not see the dispicable (sic) display of vitriol that spewed from his hateful mouth!” 
 
 Some viewers argued that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama wouldn’t be the butt of a similar joke, and complained that Trump was unfairly targeted by the media. 
 
 “I know all you Commie shills hate this president but it is your job to keep these Leftists from dragging this nation further into the gutter,” one complaint from St. Petersburg, Fla. said. 
 
 Several raised qualms about what they viewed as the homophobic nature of the joke: “By using accusations of being gay as an insult, it implied that there is something wrong with being gay,” an Urbana, Ill. viewer wrote. 
 
 “There is nothing wrong with two men who love each other,” one complaint, from a trans man who identifies as homosexual, said. “I don't like Trump but I also don't like anti-homosexual comments being aired for millions of people to see. I have to say, shame on you for allowing this.” 
 
 “I really thought we left this kind of bigotry in the wastebin of history,” a New York City viewer said. “Instead I have to endure it during dinner with me and my husband's son.” 
 
 Many of the complaints called for fines against Colbert and CBS, but lawyers familiar with the FCC’s indecency and obscenity rules say that’s not going to happen. 
 
 FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has said the agency is reviewing the complaints. Such a review is standard protocol for the FCC, and doesn’t imply the complaints have merit. Pai declined to give an update on the review when asked Thursday at a press conference following a commission meeting. 
 
 The number of complaints about Colbert's joke is dwarfed by the more than half a million the agency received over Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the halftime show of the 2004 Super Bowl on CBS. 
 
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 The FCC’s indecency rules apply to broadcasts between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., and even then, they prohibit material that “depicts or describes sexual or excretory organs or activities in terms patently offensive,” as measured by the community standards. 
 
 Andrew Schwartzman, an attorney with Georgetown University’s Institute for Public Representation, pointed out that what Colbert said was bleeped out, and even if it wasn’t, it would probably pass the FCC’s indecency test. 
 
 But that doesn’t matter because "The Late Show" airs at 11:30 p.m., in what’s known as the safe harbor, where the rules are looser because children are presumed to be asleep. The FCC would have to prove the joke was obscene, and as broadcast attorney David Oxenford wrote in a blog post on the subject, “for a program to be obscene, it needs to be really bad.” 
 
 “A television program like that in question here is never going to be found obscene — the words describing the specific sexual act itself was bleeped out of the broadcast, the description was not designed to appeal to prurient interests (sexual interests — it was not delivered in such an explicit way as to appeal solely to sexual interest), and it did have social significance — it was delivered in a politically motivated statement,” Oxenford wrote. “Under these circumstances, the extremely rigorous obscenity test simply would not be met.” 
 
 Schwartzman was even more blunt, “There is zero chance the FCC would even dream of bringing a obscenity case against this. ... There is less than zero chance it could succeed.” ||||| The Federal Communications Commission is scrutinizing Stephen Colbert's vulgar joke about President Trump on “The Late Show” this week, according to Chairman Ajit Pai, and will consider a possible fine. 
 
 “I have had a chance to see the clip now and so, as we get complaints — and we’ve gotten a number of them — we are going to take the facts that we find, and we are going to apply the law as it’s been set out by the Supreme Court and other courts, and we’ll take the appropriate action,” Pai said Thursday on Philadelphia radio station WPHT-AM. 
 
 On his late-night comedy show on CBS Monday, Colbert said of the president: “The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c--- holster” 
 
 Colbert responded to criticism (#FireColbert trended on Twitter) Wednesday night with a qualified apology. 
 
 “I would change a few words that were cruder than they needed to be,” Colbert said, reflecting on a joke that some viewers considered homophobic. “I’m not going to repeat the phrase. But I just want to say, for the record, life is short, and anyone who expresses their love in their own way, is to me an American hero. I think we can all agree on that. I hope even the president and I can agree on that. Nothing else. But that.” 
 
 At the same time, Colbert doubled down on his general approach to ripping the president in his comedy. 
 
 “Folks, if you saw my monologue Monday, you know that I was a little upset with Donald Trump for insulting a friend of mine,” Colbert said. “So, at the end of that monologue, I had a few choice insults for the president in return. I don’t regret that. I believe he can take care of himself. I have jokes; he has the launch codes. So, it’s a fair fight.” 
 
 Because his show airs late at night, Colbert has more freedom than people who appear on television earlier in the day. But he could still be penalized for using obscene language. 
 
 According to the FCC, “for content to be ruled obscene, it must meet a three-pronged test established by the Supreme Court: It must appeal to an average person's prurient interest; depict or describe sexual conduct in a 'patently offensive' way; and, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.” 
 
 Andrew Schwartzman, a media law specialist at the Georgetown University Law Center, said he believes Colbert and CBS are safe. 
 
 “What Colbert said, if run unbleeped, probably wouldn't meet the test for indecency that applies before 10 p.m.,” Schwartzman said. The FCC's indecency standard is lower than its obscenity standard. Indecent content “portrays sexual or excretory organs or activities in a way that does not meet the three-prong test for obscenity.” 
 
 As Schwartzman sees it, “there is zero chance this could meet the obscenity test.” 
 
 Pai was far less definitive in his remarks. “I don't want to prejudge whatever determination the FCC might make,” he said. 
 
 Whether the FCC comes down on Colbert or not, he might consider the company he keeps by descending into quips about oral sex. 
 
 After Infowars founder Alex Jones said in March that Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) “looks like the archetypal c---sucker,” Jones’s ex-wife tried to submit the remark as evidence in a child custody trial. When Fox News’s Jesse Watters said of Ivanka Trump last week that he “really liked how she was speaking into that microphone,” he took an abrupt “vacation” while the outrage died down. 
 
 Colbert's liberal viewers might take a moment to reflect, too. 
 
 “Our motto,” Michelle Obama said in her address to the Democratic National Convention last year, “is when they go low, we go high.” 
 
 Yeah, about that: The threat of a violent protest prevented conservative commentator and best-selling author Ann Coulter from speaking at the University of California at Berkeley last week. Liberal readers of the New York Times are flooding the newspaper’s public editor with complaints about the recent hiring of conservative columnist Bret Stephens — a conservative who didn’t even support Trump during the election, by the way. 
 
 [The problem with calling Bret Stephens a climate change 'denier'] 
 
 The new chair of the Democratic National Committee, Thomas Perez, can’t seem to stop cussing in public. And every couple of hours, an automated Twitter account created by a Chicago software developer tweets the name, hometown, occupation and employer of an individual who donated to Trump’s campaign. 
 
 Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are holding a week-long series of rallies across the U.S., and Perez has some choice words for Republican leaders. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post) 
 
 “It is very clearly doxxing and harassing small-dollar donors,” Brianna Wu, a Democratic congressional candidate in Massachusetts, told me last week. 
 
 “There’s a real sense — that we have to get past on the left — that every person who voted for Trump is evil,” she added. 
 
 That “real sense” appears to foster a mentality (among some) in which Trump and his supporters deserve whatever venom his detractors feel like spewing. 
 
 Colbert’s comedy is often laced with anti-Trump commentary; it’s usually clever, and it has propelled him to the top of the late-night ratings. But by hitting below the belt Monday, he rushed the bro-ternity of Jones and Watters and became the latest liberal to ignore Obama’s “go high” mantra. 
 
 This post, originally published Tuesday, May 2, has been updated. Paul Farhi contributed to this report.
– Stephen Colbert's well-covered joke about President Trump, Vladimir Putin, and oral sex has netted more than 5,700 complaints to the FCC since the May 1 episode of The Late Show. Upon request from Politico, the FCC released the first 100 of those complaints, which center on hate speech, indecency, and homophobia and come from both liberals and conservatives. One viewer was thankful their "children, elderly parents, and other loved ones" didn't hear the joke. Another told the FCC: "It is your job to keep these Leftists from dragging this nation further into the gutter." Most of the complaints advocated for a fine against Colbert. FCC chairman Ajit Pai says they are reviewing the complaints, but that doesn't mean the complaints have merit. A lawyer tells Politico there's "zero chance" the FCC brings an obscenity case against Colbert and a "less than zero chance" such a case would be a success. Colbert is also unlikely to face punishment from CBS. Both the late-night host and network chairman Les Moonves joked about the situation during a CBS upfront presentation Wednesday in New York, the Los Angeles Times reports. "There's only one word to describe this president, and the FCC has asked me not to use it anymore," Colbert said following a song-and-dance number. Moonves added The Late Show is very popular with "FCC investigators 18 to 49."