Bono a No-go For Super Bowl

[TexasStooge]

By Sarah Hall, E! News Online

The NFL still hasn't found what it's looking for--it just doesn't want Bono.

The U2 frontman's offer to perform a duet with Jennifer Lopez during the Super Bowl halftime show was rejected by the organization.

Bono had hoped to perform his new song, "An American Prayer," which he had planned to use as pitch to attract attention to the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

MTV, which is producing the program, signed off on the performance, but the NFL flinched at the subject matter.

A spokesman for the NFL indicated that the organization didn't find Bono's message in keeping with the atmosphere it sought for the Super Bowl.

"We simply decided that we were going to deliver, as we do annually, an extremely entertaining halftime show," the spokesman told the New York Daily News. "We don't believe it's appropriate to focus on a single issue."

So far, Janet Jackson is the only performer confirmed for the halftime show. Beyoncée will perform the national anthem before the game, which will be played February 1 in her hometown of Houston.

No word on how the musician responded to the NFL's snub; however if his reaction was colorful and involved four-letter words, he better hope there weren't any cameras around.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell has asked his fellow commissioners to overturn a much-criticized decision that a certain f-word used by Bono at last year's Golden Globes was not obscene.

"This is really, really, f---ing brilliant," the musician remarked onstage during the broadcast of the award show. Oops.

However, the FCC 's enforcement bureau ruled in October that Bono's dropping of the f-bomb was not indecent or obscene, because he used it as an adjective as opposed to using to describe a sexual act.

"The performer used the word...as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation," the bureau said.

Powell apparently disagrees with his minions. The chairman is also seeking a tenfold increase in the amount of fines the FCC can seek from broadcasters that violate the profanity code.

Powell believes the current maximum fine of $27,500 is not enough to intimidate broadcasters into keeping their shticks free from the dreaded pottymouth.

"Some of these fines are peanuts," Powell told a National Press Club luncheon. "They're just a cost of doing business. That has to change."

The largest fine in FCC history was a $1.7 million slap at Infinity Broadcasting in 1995 to settle several cases against shock jock Howard Stern.