The Irish rock band U2 is trying to quell a flap arising from a newspaper report that the words "Bomb Japan Now" flashed on TV screens during a concert.
The words actually occur separately in a stream of words that flash by rapidly, according to a text issued through the group's Los Angeles public relations firm.A portion of the stream reads: "Everyone is a racist except you bomb whore ultimately Japan chaos I want everything I want it now gun. . . ."
A March 6 concert review in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the phrase "Bomb Japan Now" showed up in "a spree of buzz words flashed at near-subliminal speed."
Music critic Steve Dollar said he wrote down what he had gleaned from the presentation but that the pace is so fast there's only time to pick up certain words.
"It would be impossible to watch it and then repeat verbatim what the actual words were in this segment," he said, adding that there are many "loaded words" and it should be expected that people will instinctively try to get a message out of them.
The words are flashed individually on monitors for a tenth of a second, publicist Paul Wasserman said in a telephone interview from Boston, where the band had a date on its "Zoo TV" concert tour.
"Nowhere are the words `Bomb Japan' next to each other," Wasserman said.
Asked if it weren't possible for viewers to lump words together given the speed with which they are presented and stage distractions, Wasserman said: "No, because there are all these words in between."
Wasserman said it was "just coincidence" that "bomb" and "Japan" were so close to each other. "They're not for bombing anybody," he said.
Dollar said that after "bomb" the next word that makes sense is "Japan." However, he said the presentation seems to be some kind of ironic commentary and nothing gives the impression it's meant to be taken seriously.
Wasserman said that after the review was reported in Ireland, the Japanese ambassador to Ireland protested to the foreign ministry.
The publicist said the band spent weeks working on choosing words, but he said "they're just flash words" and do not have a particular meaning.
"It's not meant to be an intellectual thing. It's a visceral thing," he said.
The band said in a statement issued by its publicists: "U2 have no wish to offend the people of Japan, where they have many fans."