AMERICA/Conor O'Clery: When U2's Bono said on NBC television after getting a Golden Globe award last year, "This is really, really, f***ing brilliant," he broke a taboo and inadvertently opened a front in the American culture wars.
The word is one of seven prohibited by the Federal Communications Commission which regulates broadcasting in the US. The FCC won the right to ban the seven words 30 years ago when it took a Supreme Court case against Pacifica radio after comedian George Carlin mentioned them all in a broadcast essay on what couldn't be said on air.
TV networks now have a seven-second delay to censor offensive language, but NBC decided not to cut Bono's remark. In October the FCC decided to take no action, on the grounds that the rock star had used the word as "an adjective or expletive to emphasise an exclamation" rather than as a verb.
This meant in effect that the banned list was down to six words. But a deluge of 100,000 e-mails arrived at the FCC in Washington from parents' groups protesting the decision, and FCC chairman Michael Powell this week asked fellow commissioners to think again.
If a fine is imposed it will confirm the linguistic chasm between the networks and the hundreds of cable channels which, because they are technically private, have the likes of Tony Soprano and his gang flinging around all seven banned words every week.
Linguist John McWhorter argued in the Washington Post that the public is ready for the f-word and that Bono's language was colourful but not indecent. As the f-word gets more widely used, members of both parties in Congress are mounting a rearguard action.
Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House telecommunications subcommittee, is preparing a bill to increase indecency fines tenfold - to about a quarter of a million dollars per swear word - to discourage "raunchy language, graphic violence and indecent fare".
The White House has promised its support, though the President himself has used the f-word in public. Before he became president, George Bush told Talk Magazine his opponents were "out of their f***ing minds."
Almost all politicians have used it at some time. Democratic front-runner Senator John Kerry told Rolling Stone last year: "Did I expect George Bush to f*** it up \ as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did." His clean-cut rival, retired general Wesley Clark, used one of the other seven words when he told a voter he would "beat the shit" out of anyone who questioned his patriotism.
For the record the seven banned words - out of 400,000 in the English language - are the one used by Bono, that same word combined in a certain way with "mother", and words to describe vagina, female breasts, urination, defecation and someone who performs oral sex.
ABC News reported the story this week saying: "Bono is known worldwide as a rock star, but on Capitol Hill he's best known for a slip of the tongue at last year's Golden Globes on NBC."
If they think that was a slip of the tongue, they don't know much about Bono.
Bill Clinton complained this week that he is a bit out of touch with the political scene because he has been frantically trying to finish his much-anticipated memoirs. His publisher's deadline of May has already slipped to June-July, and most likely the book will now come out just before the Democratic National Convention in late July (readers of the New York Daily News have been suggesting titles like Crouching Intern, Hidden Cigar).
The former president took time out this week however to "fire up" Senate Democrats for the November election. At a meeting on Capitol Hill he offered tips on the best way to defeat President Bush - hit him hard on the economy and frame the political debate by asking whether the country needs to have tax cuts or to secure the children's future.
Taxing less and spending more, as Mr Bush is doing, "is fun in the short run but it's a recipe for disaster," he said.
Mr Clinton has not formally endorsed any of the Democratic presidential candidates, but there is undisguised glee in the Clinton camp over the prospect of what they call "Howard's End", the possible eclipse of Howard Dean, who threatened a changing of the guard in the Democratic Party. Clinton showed his preference by saying pointedly after the meeting that John Kerry was electable and it wasn't fair to depict him as a liberal.
Kerry's battle cry: "Bring it on" - the words used by President Bush to taunt Iraqi insurgents - has convinced Democrat insiders that the Massachusetts senator will not be like Michael Dukakis, who lost in 1998 because he did not fight back against George Bush snr's attacks.
Meanwhile, Republicans are starting to attack Kerry as more liberal than Edward Kennedy. Things are shaping up for a raucous presidential election.
Trivia question. Of the 40 million e-mails in the Clinton archives, how many were sent by the president who presided over the era of the Internet revolution? Answer: two. One a test sent to himself to check if he knew which key to press, according to Skip Rutherford, president of the Clinton Presidential Foundation, and another he dispatched to former Ohio senator John Glenn as he orbited the Earth in the space shuttle.
The only thing not moving for John Kerry these days is his hair. Close observers of the Democratic frontrunner have noted that the Massachusetts senator's coif is looking much more stable these days, and stories have even appeared in gossip columns that he has had Botox injections to ease his furrowed brow. "He has absolutely, absolutely not had Botox treatments," said his spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter.