When Trump was running the first time for the 2016 election he got a lot of attention for using that word. I remember an NPR host saying how he’d used it before in a similar context that Trump did (a political loss), but at the same time he was regretful about it. I don’t remember the details but actually let me search…
Neal Conan. I’m fairly certain I remember him talking about it on the radio, was why this rang a bell for me. But apparently he even wrote an op Ed about it: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1223-conan-schlonged-20151223-story.html
Conan used it literally once in a political context and regretted it as you can read above. And he seems to have vaguely meant it in a way you might say “wow, they got fucked” as you might say about someone being cheated, or “fucked up” for beaten up. Like ruined in some way, not with a literal sexual meaning, just a vague association because of the word itself.
Not that this makes it any more couth or anything; feel how you want to feel about it. Clearly saying “they got fucked” still has that same vulgar sound, so we avoid it in polite conversation, so I imagined a word that sounds so vulgar would probably be avoided by a high profile politician, as given people feel weird about it. And it happened twice.
I just think it’s interesting that it’s come up again. Language is weird.
A total aside, but I was always annoyed early smart phones had am/fm receivers in them (free on the chip) and relatively few phones ever let them be accessed. I think most of those also could do TV signal, if I’m not mistaken? But that may have been a subset.
Sure, that probably played hell on the battery, but it would’ve been neat to have the option to DVR TV over the air on my phone back then and cast it, in the early days of Chromecast.