It's for Your Own Good!

We're probably all really tired by now of hearing about Janet Jackson and the Super Bowl halftime show. That having been said, I apologize in advance for having to bring it up again. I haven't written anything for a while, and the whole Super Bowl thing has kicked up a cloud of dust that refuses to settle. It's an issue that we should all care about.

First of all, I'll tell you that I didn't see the incident live. The reasons are twofold. First, I despise Super Bowl halftime shows. Can't we all just agree that every Super Bowl halftime show is in bad taste? Though I marvel at how they handle the logistics of something like that--somehow they manage to get stages covering most of an entire football field, many of those stages with elaborate pyrotechnics and/or hydraulics, in place and working, put on their tawdry productions, and then whisk it all off the field and not destroy the playing surface for the second half--I'm amazed year after year not only that anyone watches them, but that somebody actually thinks up this stuff! I usually can't bring myself to watch them. One thing that I find myself thinking about is that people all over the world are watching, and this is what they use to form an opinion of us. Is it any wonder we're hated all over the world? The second reason I didn't see it live is that the precise time that The Moment That Shocked America occurred happened to fall right at the time that MoveOn.org asked us to turn away from the Super Bowl and watch their excellent spot on CNN. I had no difficulty doing this because, as I've already said, I can't stand Super Bowl halftime shows. The real irony is that twin locomotives of censorship met head-on at that moment. CBS censored the MoveOn.org spot, even though MoveOn had the funds to pay for the time. Thanks to their censorship, I was spared the dreadful trauma.

Of course, no one on the CBS coverage breathed a word about it on the air, so after I turned back to the game, I was blissfully unaware that society was in the process of crumbling right at that very moment. When I arrived at work the following day, however, it was all anyone wanted to talk about. And as I prepared piece after piece for our news about the Horrible Events of the previous evening, I saw the video again and again and again and again and...

Since I have the benefit of using professional equipment I was able to magnify the whole thing pretty clearly. My first impression was that I was surprised that anyone noticed anything had happened at all. The shot wasn't all that tight, the lighting was inconsistent, and the CBS director cut off the shot so quickly that I'm sure that a lot of people who watched it didn't know what had happened until they saw the news the next day. [See an animated gif if you somehow missed it.]

Looking closely at the footage, I have to say that there was no possible way under any circumstances that that whole incident wasn't planned. It's clear that Justin Timberlake grabs the cup of Janet Jackson's bustier, and why on Earth would he have grabbed it if he hadn't wanted to pull it off?? The "wardrobe malfunction" remark was so lame that even he couldn't stick with it for very long. Then (and my favorite moment of the whole thing), Justin Timberlake's "look of astonishment" amounts to staring at Janet Jackson's boob and letting his mouth fall open. You can almost hear him saying, "Dude, I can totally see your tit!" After that--BANG--cut to the wide shot. (Note to Justin: good luck with that acting career.)

If you wanted something to be horrified about with the halftime show, then why not get worked up over Kid Rock performing with a mutilated American flag over his shoulders? (But people have been watching country music performers do that sort of thing for so long now that I guess we're inured to it. Mutilate an American flag as a show of your "patriotism," no problem; mutilate one as a show of protest, you're the vilest form of life imaginable.) Or how about this: Though they are ridiculous and tasteless, Super Bowl halftime shows generally have some sort of unifying theme. This year's show, put on by MTV, was a clumsy hodgepodge of poorly matched performers, and didn't even try to pretend to have a theme.

A lot of people I've talked to said things like "I didn't like it because my kids were watching and saw it." Why then was no one uncomfortable with kids in the room during the umpteen commercials throughout the game for erectile dysfunction medications? No one was shooing the Little Ones out of the room when the commercial aired wherein a dog attached itself orally to a man's gonads, were they? And most importantly, the society-destroying female nipple was never actually in full view at all. (This also prompts me to ask the question, "Does a person who is NOT planning to display her breast generally wear a gold nipple shield?")

As a brief diversion, let's ask ourselves why it is that the sight of a female nipple is ruinous to the morality of the general populace, but the sight of a male nipple, no different in construction, coloration or appearance, is no problem at all? I know that many of you out there could provide me with sociological or theological reasons, but the point I'm trying to make here is that there is no difference between a male nipple and a female nipple. That our society draws a distinction ought to tell you more about our society than about the awfulness of seeing a woman's nipple.

It's never more obvious that we're a country founded by Puritans than when Americans get in a lather over sex. We think about it almost constantly, titter about it with friends, try to get it as often as we can, and never want to talk about it in a calm and civil manner. Well sure, of course there's New York and a few other cosmopolitan areas in the U.S., but by and large we want sex to be kept at arm's length. (I would hope that you, as a good American, have inserted your own lewd double entendre after reading the previous sentence.)

The same broadcast networks that were wringing their hands in the weeks following the Super Bowl bring you such tidbits as The Victoria's Secret Lingerie Show and The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Show. There's more skin on display in one installment of those shows than Janet Jackson could show in a hundred Super Bowl halftime shows. Are you going to seriously tell me that no kids are watching those shows?

I know whereof I speak on the subject of censorship, by the way. I've lived all my life in Cincinnati. Or Censor-nati, as it's referred to in these parts. My hometown has a long, embarrassing tradition of censorship. My first exposure to the world of holier-than-thou posturing (I try never to make it a secret where I stand on an issue) was when I heard about a group calling itself Citizens for Decent Literature. While this may sound like a reasonable idea (maybe they're trying to get John Grisham books off the shelves, for example), the real purpose for this group was to go to war against any "dirty" books or magazines that people might be tempted to look at. Citizens for Decent Literature was founded in the early 60's in Cincinnati by a man you may have heard of, Charlie Keating. Yes indeed, the very same Charlie Keating who many years later was convicted in one of the biggest savings and loan frauds in American history. So we have a pretty good idea of the orientation of his moral compass, don't we? Anyway, the number one enemy of CDL was Playboy magazine. (Okay, you can stop laughing now.) Mr. Keating wanted the world to understand that Hugh Hefner was an evil man, and he used his considerable wealth and influence to try to affect his sales. Citizens for Decent Literature faded into obscurity, and Hugh Hefner turned Playboy into a vast international empire. Pretty effective campaign there, Charlie.

Keating has a successor here in town nowadays. His name is Phil Burress, and he calls his group Citizens for Community Values. (Yes, yes. We get the idea. Moral crusaders are citizens!) Burress likes to tell any and all that he is a former porn addict, and that his addiction to porn nearly ruined his life. He wants to make sure that others don't make the same mistake that he did. How big of him. How altruistic. What was a mistake in his life might be no problem at all for another person, but Phil refuses to see it that way. Nearly every issue that Citizens for Community Values has pursued has been either soundly defeated or thrown out of court altogether. So, see? We're not all a bunch of rubes here. One notable "victory" for CCV has been that they, through a pressure campaign, got some of the hotels in the area to stop offering adult films in their rooms.

But the Big Daddy of censorship and moral posturing in these parts is another guy you may have heard of, Sheriff Simon Leis. Mr. Leis first came to prominence in Cincinnati as county prosecutor of Hamilton County. He ran as a strong law-and-order guy back in the days when "law and order" had the same sort of divisive ring that "America hater" has today. As prosecutor, Leis got to do his bit to clean up the streets, but what he really wanted to do was clean up the "filth" in Hamilton County. His big chance came when he got to try fellow Ohioan Larry Flynt on obscenity charges. It had galled Leis for years that Flynt's Hustler magazine was being sold in the county, but there was little he could do about it. If you've seen the film "The People vs. Larry Flynt" you saw Simon Leis played by, of all people, James Carville! Leis won the battle on that one, but he lost the war. Larry Flynt and his brother Jimmy seem to have made it their mission in life to vex the morality crusaders of Hamilton County. They've opened a Hustler store in downtown Cincinnati, and despite repeated efforts to put them out of business the store remains open. They've also opened one of their Hustler Hollywood superstores north of the city, outside the county limits. Both stores are doing very good business.

Not content with his limited range as prosecutor, he ran for and won a seat as a judge on the Court of Common Pleas. This job didn't suit him either, though. Too many gray areas, too much legal wrangling. Simon Leis has found his niche, though, and it is as Sheriff of Hamilton County. He runs unopposed, and gets to spend vast amounts of money on law enforcement toys such as helicopters and speedboats. Also, he has a huge inflatable Simon Leis Balloon that can be seen in every parade that happens in the Greater Cincinnati area. Sheriff Leis got another chance to grab the national spotlight when he shut down an exhibit of the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe at the Contemporary Arts Center. The case was thrown out of court, but the damage was done. Once again, my town was the object of derisive laughter. Dennis Barrie, the CAC director who was mercilessly harassed throughout the whole mess found another job with another museum in another town, where presumably he would be free to bring art exhibits to town without fear of being busted.

But we here in Cincinnati are not alone anymore. Art persecution has been all the rage among the right wing for a long time. Just about every conservative with a typewriter, computer or microphone has spent time decrying the "crucifix in the jar of urine" as a reason to never let the Federal Government spend another dime on funding for the Arts. And no less than the Mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani, joined the fray a few years ago when he took exception to a portrait of the Virgin Mary with elephant dung smeared on it. It turned out that in the culture of that artist elephant dung is a sacred object, and putting it on a portrait of Mary was an act of reverence on his part. Ooops.

Now, because of Miss Jackson, the slumbering giant of the FCC has once again been awakened. Chairman Michael Powell has vowed to crack down hard on indecency. Fines will be levied. Punishments will be meted out. Ho-hum. It all gets pretty tiresome after a while. The zeal will fade from this crusade, as it always does. Maybe we'll have to get along for a while without Bubba the Love Sponge (no too difficult) or maybe even Howard Stern (don't bet on that one, though), but no one is going to touch your Victoria's Secret Lingerie Show. There's too much money riding on that!

Look, I know that there are people who have problems with sex. There are also lots of people who have problems with food, too. Yet a healthy love of food is something to be proud of, to be cultivated. I don't see anybody hauling up Julia Child or Emeril Lagasse on pandering charges. Of course, let's get help for the ones with problems, but let the rest of the world go on about their lives. And maybe we should try to keep in mind that a human body is something we all come equipped with, and the sight of one needn't be quite that awful a thing.

On the walls at the Hustler stores, the Flynt brothers have signs that read, "Relax... It's Just Sex!" I think it would be wonderful if we as a society could find a way to be even a little bit like that.

So here's my plan: I'm going to start a new group of civic-minded folks. We're going to call ourselves Citizens for Lewdness and Pornography, better known as CLAP. Let me know if you're going to come with me on this one, folks. I think we could get a rise out of the American public, don't you? Our groundswell could be the beginning of waves of good feelings throughout the land. Maybe we can bring American history to a satisfying climax.

All in favor show your nipple shields.

© 2004 - Karl Cable