'Today's' Word, by Stephen Colbert

So, here's the thing that bothers me. It's not necessarily what Stephen Colbert said on "Today" this morning. It's that you'd think the show would have learned its lesson after L'Affaire du Jane Fonda.

Or am I being overly sensitive? A party-pooping prude?

Oh, frak. Let's start from the beginning.

Stephen Colbert was making an appearance on the morning show to promote his role as the president in the animated "Monsters Vs. Aliens," a family movie from DreamWorks out March 27. But this being Colbert, leader of the Colbert Nation and "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central, talk turned to politics and his most recent campaign, to get the NASA space module Node 3 named for him. Then Meredith Vieira engaged him on the subject of Twitter, for a report that was next up on the show.

Colbert said he was a participant, and used his own version of the past tense of "to tweet" (rhymes with squat). Vieira turned many shades of red then admitted, "I do that, too."

They went to commercial and came back with Colbert in the studio for the Twitter report by Jamie Gangel. I had to leave for work, but hadn't heard if they addressed his odd choice of word at any point.

You may recall that Jane Fonda, also speaking with Vieira, let slip an obscenity that begins with "c" on "Today" in a February appearance last year. It was in the context of her involvement with a staging of "The Vagina Monologues," but NBC News immediately issued an apology for letting the word slip through.

So my question about Stephen Colbert, master of word play who has a segment on his show called "The Word," was it intentional, to see what he could get away with? Did he wonder, as I had, if "Today" had a delay to get rid of such "slip-ups"? And am I hopelessly old-fashioned to be shocked to hear certain words on TV before 9 a.m.?

Probably some or all of the above.