If U2 singer Bono is not mad enough, some US broadcasters and entertainment companies sure are seething.

　　Rock star and singer Bono has apologized for uttering "f-ing brilliant" during a live broadcast of the 2003 Golden Globe awards. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) found him to be "indecent" and "profane" earlier this month.

　　Bono's apology shows that he is not that bad or angry. After all, you are despised if you hardly open your mouth without shouting the expletive.

　　Much to our surprise, however, is that about 20 broadcasters, artists' groups and media organizations such as Viacom Inc, Fox Entertainment Group Inc and the Screen Actors Guild, formed a coalition last week to challenge the FCC's ruling as having unconstitutionally violated free speech rights of broadcasters and performers. Some even called the FCC's decision a new sexual McCarthyism.

　　NBC, which aired Bono's show, has decided to launch its own petition for a similar review by the FCC.

　　Even more weird was an editorial published in the New York Times last Thursday, entitled "An Indecent Crackdown."

　　All the opponents to FCC's ruling basically have three allegations: that it stifles creativity, violates free speech rights and puts broadcasters at a disadvantage against unregulated cable networks.

　　None of these allegations holds water. A song or whatever artistic piece will still be creative and valuable without an expletive - unless all Americans think that creativity must include uttering the four-letter word. I don't believe that is the case.

　　Certainly, cable networks are not subject to indecency regulation, but the difference does not justify uttering indecent or profane words by broadcasters.

　　The rationale behind different standards for broadcasters and cable networks is that the former uses public airwaves and is much more pervasive than the latter.

　　As to the alleged violation of free speech rights, no one would agree that "f-ing" as uttered in Bono's context, however fleeting and nonsexual, is protected by the US First Amendment.

　　The New York Times editorial dismissed the FCC's decision as "capricious censorship" played as part of election-year politics.

　　The author was turning a blind eye to US constitutional history, in which indecent words have been protected only in certain contexts, like those aired at a time when children are unlikely to be in the audience.

　　In the eye of protesters of FCC's ruling, the historic case of FCC v. Pacifica (1978) seems to have never existed. They insist that times have changed, but few have labored to understand the wonderfully convincing logic of the court.

　　The court said words that are commonplace in one setting are shocking in another, and that one occasion's lyric is another's vulgarity.

　　Which means you can say an expletive one hundred times to yourself in your own house but you can't do so publicly when children are listening.

　　Twenty-five years is not long, but why are many Americans, even some at the famous New York Times, ready to discard a revered traditional value?