OPINION:The F-word was once reserved for special occasions, but it has now been reduced to the status of a punctuation mark in everyday speech, writes Deaglán De Bréadún.
YOU MIGHT have thought there was little left for Bono to achieve at this stage of his glittering career. But it now looks as if he could change the course of American legal history.
Receiving a Golden Globe award in Hollywood in 2003 for U2's soundtrack number in the Martin Scorsese film, Gangs of New York, the U2 frontman said on live TV before millions of viewers: "This is really, really f***ing brilliant!"
Except that Bono doesn't do asterisks. It caused a storm of protest and NBC, which aired the show, could have incurred a hefty fine. But the networks fought back and now the US Federal Communications Commission has asked the US supreme court to rule on whether "isolated or fleeting expletives" should be banned from the airwaves completely until after 10pm.
Perhaps someone should tell the supreme court that the F-word is an integral element of common parlance in Bono's native country and is used thoughtlessly and freely at all times. You might even say it is the National Expletive.
There was a time when the F-word was reserved for special occasions to express the depth of anger or disgust felt by the speaker. Them was days, Joxer, them was days.
At that time, the city that produced Seán O'Casey and Brendan Behan and, before them, James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, had a reputation for robustly creative use of the English language.
Let us perform the long- overdue obsequies of that dear ol' dirty Dubbalin in the rare aul' times when even the ordinary citizens at times seemed to speak a kind of vulgar poetry. In that long-dead era, the F-word was regarded as the equivalent of a jewelled dagger or deadly missile, to be used only on particular targets with devastating effect.
Now it is reduced to the status of a punctuation mark, a comma in everyday speech. The currency is debased, the market is flooded with F-words and a once- powerful and even shocking expletive has been devalued to the point of uselessness, like the Zimbabwean dollar.
It's not just Dublin; the disease is prevalent throughout the island. But Dublin sets the tone and, much as I love this city and its people, it has to be said that the Dubs are worse than most.
No doubt Dubliners would advise me to "go and [ expletive deleted] off back where you came from, ya culchie bogman". It's true that, after several decades living here, I still haven't adopted the mindset of the locals.
Take Hill 16 in Croke Park, which is meant to epitomise all that is colourful and entertaining about Dublin's citizenry. During my last visit there, for a Gaelic football match where the Dubs were playing, there were F-words to the right of me, F-words to the left of me and, just in front, a young father swearing viciously at the players in the presence of his four-year-old son.
Next time the Dubs were playing, I fled to the stands, assuming money and privilege would make a difference. But no, the language was almost as bad and the expletives were, if anything, more casual than on the Hill.
Best of all was a woman in a coffee-shop regaling her friends in expletive-laden terms about some episode in her daily life. Her audience laughed heartily and appreciatively, and then it was for her to go. Waving goodbye, she smiled and said: "God bless!"
It's not a question of censorship and nobody wants to go back to the dark days when this country went through a form of "inquisition-lite".
But we need clean up our linguistic environment and put a preservation order on our precious expletives so that they are not devalued to the point of worthlessness. Now there's a nice job for the Greens.