Making Light:  Painful announcement ::: February 18, 2004, 07:04 PM

Jonathan:

  Excerpt from "Smut" by Tom Lehrer:  ...

I probably didn't make myself clear.  I knew the Lehrer lyrics, but I
was speculating about whether the phrase "lurid, licentious, and vile"
might be a reference to a court decision, as utterly without redeeming
social importance is lifted from Roth v. US (1957).  I searched
through Supreme Court decisions to see if I could find anything.
I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find the case that
Lehrer was singing about:  Memoirs v.  Massachusetts (1966).  I found
it by searching for "lurid", but it is a treasure trove of words that
made up the song--debauchery, licentious, vile, candor, orgy--and
some other words and concepts that you couldn't even suggest on TV
back then.  There's even a long discussion on whether "pandering"
is a criterion that can be used in determining obscenity.  It looks
probable that Tom Lehrer made up "lurid, licentious, and vile" as a
reference to this case, but not to a specific phrase.