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A Short History of the Janet Jackson Super Bowl Halftime Fiasco

Printable Version

by Jason Roth

Since I wasn't alive when JFK was shot, let me tell you where I was when Janet Jackson's fucking tit made its appearance. To be accurate, I think I was in high school when I first saw the breast in question. On second thought, maybe that was LaToya's.

You know, this Janet Jackson controversy has got me thinking. If you stabbed the President of the United States while you were naked, think about how much frustration you would cause the television news media. Especially if you held your knife at groin level. If you have any friends in the TV industry who are paid for their ability to blur out human genetalia, I bet the best thing you could do for their careers would be to strap a knife onto your penis and fuck the president to death.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, I was telling you where I was. I was in my apartment watching the Super Bowl with my mother.

As soon as halftime arrived, I put in a video of a boxing match I had taped the night before. I had seen the beginning of the match, so I knew that one guy would taste the canvas in a matter of minutes. When the inevitable happened, I turned back to the Super Bowl in time to see the end of the pitiful halftime show. Some illiterate, crotch-grabbing idiot, who I wouldn't toss a nickel to if I saw him yelping for change on the goddamn subway, was strutting around on stage spouting some non-melodic, English-desecrating nonsense.

Here's a question. Do you think these rappers practice that strut in front of a mirror? Or do you think they just tweak it based on the degree of "mojo" they see reflected in the eyes of their brothas? I hate to tell you, guys. Anyone who puts that much effort into walking "like you just don't care" sure as fuck cares.

So then the mostly-exposed tit shows up on my TV screen.

Just to make the picture clear for you, let me mention that one reason my mother was watching the game at my apartment was that I have a big-screen TV. In other words, we didn't have to squint to see anything. There were plenty of pixels per square inch of breast.

Now, I don't know about you, but I have a very basic litmus test for obscenity. If I can look at it while sitting next to my mother and I don't get embarrassed, it's not obscene. Granted, if you had a camera on me at the time, you would have noticed a greater than average degree of pupil dilation. And I think I may have even said the word "interesting". But no way, not one chance in hell, did I ever think that within a week I would be hearing about FCC investigations.

The next morning, I saw that Matt Drudge was hyping it up as would be expected. The guy is a great newsman, but inventing controversy is more his style than flashing football scores that everyone already knows. Little did I know at the time that there were people out there, like in the real world, who were actually bothered by this breast. There were people, thousands of them, who took time out of their lives to dial a telephone in the name of this cause.

And then came the talk shows. And the syndicated columns by conservatives. What CBS did was "offensive" and, only by slimy, gutless implication, "hurt kids". FCC Chairman Michael Powell said, "I am outraged at what I saw during the halftime show of the Super Bowl...Our nation's children, parents and citizens deserve better." Notice which group Powell lists first: the innocent goddamn children.

Outraged? Are you fucking kidding me? I'm outraged at you, you stupid religious cunt. We're talking about a part of the female body which is nearly as visible at the goddamn beach as it was at the Super Bowl. The tits I saw in my friend's father's Penthouse collection haven't made me rape anyone yet, and I think we can be equally sure that one second of one breast will be equally non-eventful in the average eight-year-old boy's rape career.

Here's what really pisses me off about these religious conservative assholes. They hint, insinuate, and otherwise spinelessly imply that some sort of damage is done by the unexpected exposure to a fucking tit. Well, let's hear it. What's the damage? What is it that's supposed to happen in the mind of a child when a pop-star flashes her tit?

Since none of you assholes have the balls to say it, I will. I thought about this extensively, and I came up with one possible negative consequence of the Janet Jackson halftime fiasco. Girls may stop flashing their tits.

Young girls may overhear young boys talking about how disgusting Janet Jackson's tit was, in comparison to the thousands of other great tits they've seen while their religious-conservative parents were out of the house, and young girls might become self-conscious about exposing their own tits.

Fortunately, all these girls will unlearn this little misunderstanding on their first trip to New Orleans. A bunch of guys yelling "Show your tits!" followed by drunken cheers and a barrage of beads, will thoroughly convince these nudity-shy chicks that guys are, in fact, happy to see any tit, regardless of the size, shape, color, or age of the fucking thing. Girls might even be a little perturbed that guys misled them back in elementary school on that fateful day after the Super Bowl.

If only there were a Democratic presidential candidate who didn't like terrorists. Damn, do I want to vote against religious conservatism. The best "argument" by these religious conservatives has been to point out how full of shit Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson were in their publicist-penned apologies. No fucking kidding. The apologies were bullshit. But that doesn't point out any facts in favor of your case. Someone else's lies don't prove the morality of using government force to regulate what a TV station can broadcast or what a TV owner can watch.

These hypocritical conservatives are like liberals who denounce the war against Iraq because G.W. Bush was full of shit in making his case before the war. The liberals steer nice and clear away from: (a) whether the war was a good thing, and (b) what the fuck else we should do to prevent terrorism. They could care less about reality, as long as they can point out inconsistencies in someone else's thinking. The conservatives are doing the same thing with the censorship issue. They're content to point out flaws in the other side's argument rather than make a legitimate argument themselves.

The reason conservatives have gotten away with this is partly because people like Janet Jackson and the people who employ them are too fucking gutless to defend themselves. It's amazing to me that Janet Jackson has the guts to show a tit on national television, but is scared shitless to tell people to go fuck themselves if they can't stomach it. People have no problem selling their souls, but are stingy as hell when it comes to spending one dime for the sake of their souls. I guess that next MTV gig is worth more to Janet than some stupid abstract concept like the right to perform any gig. Fortunately for her, the heads of corporations have the same concrete-bound, shortsighted mentality. The left hand certainly knows what the right tit is doing.

I really don't care if you're offended by something you see on television. You have no "right" to watch a television program. A television program is produced by the efforts of individuals for the enjoyment of those who choose to purchase televisions. Your family not watching television doesn't prevent you from pursuing your life, liberty, or happiness. In fact, if seeing a breast during a football game gets you so goddamn upset, I suggest you get rid of your television set entirely. You're obviously incapable of handling it, so leave the tits and balls for the rest of us, you sex-fearing, human body-hating, witch-hunting prudes.

Funny, isn't it? The purest birth to a Christian conservative was the one without all that icky sex.

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