Expletive

Coop knows it's coming. The USC women's basketball coach -- full name, Michael Jerome Cooper, of Lakers fame -- knows Saturday morning's game at UCLA will feature a heavy downpour of vitriolic comments, all aimed at him. "They're going to have a pretty nice crowd," Cooper said, "and I'm pretty sure they're going to be yelling and screaming" at him. . That thought comes after Cooper raised a hullabaloo by directing an expletive at UCLA...

Bono has a well-deserved reputation for speaking out on injustice, so imagine his surprise Tuesday when the nation's justices spoke out against him. Justice Antonin Scalia -- the go-to writer when the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority wants to punch up the judicial dialogue -- counted U2's lead singer among "the foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood."

As more Americans receive TV and radio programming uncensored via cable, satellite and the Internet, the Supreme Court said Tuesday that traditional broadcasters can be required to offer families a "safe haven" from foul language. In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld the government's crackdown on "fleeting expletives" and said broadcasters could face heavy fines for airing the F-word or the S-word even once during prime time.

A four-letter word has enlivened an otherwise wonkish mayoral race between incumbent Jerry Sanders and businessman Steve Francis, attracting much more attention than the two Republicans' disputes over infrastructure needs and municipal financing. Annoyed by Francis' multimillion-dollar barrage of television commercials questioning his honesty and integrity, the normally low-key Sanders refused to shake Francis' hand after an Earth Day debate and instead said to him, ". . . you."

On Feb. 3, the Los Angeles Times ran an obituary of Earl Butz, who served as secretary of Agriculture in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Per the obit: "He was forced to resign his Cabinet post in October 1976 after telling an obscene joke that was derogatory to blacks." Two days later, The Times ran another article, this time about its new owner, Sam Zell. A photographer at one of his other newspapers had asked Zell about the type of coverage he expected from reporters.

Three British journalists have been ordered expelled from the country because their newspaper published an editorial that used a mild expletive in describing President Pervez Musharraf. The Pakistani government gave the journalists 72 hours to leave the country, Pakistan's deputy information minister, Tariq Azim, said Saturday.

Lawyers for the Federal Communications Commission have formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court's rejection of the agency's policy on broadcast profanity. In June, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York nullified the agency's enforcement policy on "fleeting expletives" by a 2-1 vote, saying the FCC had changed its policy and failed to adequately explain why.

The battle over dirty words shifts back to Congress today. A Senate committee is expected to support legislation that would authorize regulators to enforce a nearly zero-tolerance policy on the broadcast of certain expletives that was struck down last month. The bill would give the Federal Communications Commission explicit authority to make "a single word or image" indecent. The FCC ruled in March 2006 that almost any use of some expletives was indecent, even in live, unscripted instances.

A court ruling last week easing restrictions on the inadvertent broadcast of obscenities is touching off a new war of the words. A federal appeals court's pointed criticism of attempts to regulate broadcast content could reverberate through the government's entire regime for keeping indecent language and images off the airwaves.

In a victory for TV networks but a setback for efforts to shield children from coarse language, a federal court ruled Monday that broadcasters couldn't be penalized for expletives that were considered impromptu. The appeals judges in New York repudiated the Federal Communications Commission's recent crackdown on broadcast indecency, calling its efforts "arbitrary and capricious." Television networks have long complained that enforcement of the rules is inconsistent and unpredictable.