Better safe than worry

I don’t follow North American style football at all but I hear in the news that at this year’s Super Bowl half-time entertainment was provided by famed rockers, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The conventional wisdom is that good buddy Tom was chosen to play because; 1) most people have at least heard of the guy, and; B) he’s safe. That’s go to be hard for a rocker guy to hear, that he is safe. Nobody really gets into rock and roll because they’re safe. At least that is probably what they tell themselves. In their own minds they are “rebels” and “bad dudes”, but apparently those days for Tom Petty are over. At least in the minds of the powers-that-be who arrange the shows for the Super Bowl. And those guys, and if fact many of our friends to the south (the US), are still reeling from “Nipplegate” at Super Bowl 38 (AKA: Super Bowl XXXVIII) in 2004.

To recap: part of the halftime entertainment for Super Bowl 38 was the singer/dancer Janet Jackson (sister of Tito, Jermaine and Marlon Jackson). She was doing some funky dance steps and “bustin’ some moves” when one of the “guys” onstage with her reached over and accidentally tore her costume open. Thus began the ‘breast heard ‘round the world’, also known as, “Nipplegate”. Of course all the usual suspects were outraged, with the right-wing political action group, the Parents Television Council, condemning the show and filing indecency complaints with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), and several newspaper columnists complaining and even a US senator bringing the subject up in the US Senate (sure, there was a war going on with US soldiers dying, but you could see her HOOTER on TV. Now that’s serious!) The FCC received complaints from almost 540,000 United Stations, many of whom had, in a uniquely United Station reaction, pulled out their handguns and blasted their TVs. It was like the only place that hooters should be seen was in Internet porn and in men’s magazines (and in the Hooters sports-bars, obviously). I mean, yikes! It all sounded pretty serious. My thing is that I just don’t get what the uproar was all about.

Granted, I am Canadian and although I didn’t and don’t watch football on TV many of my fellow Canadians do (and did). The Canadian broadcasters of the game received about fifty complaints, mainly from people who whine about all sorts of things and who can be safely ignored. Below the 49th though, it was a wild situation. I’m not sure why, but it was. Was it the fact that certain people discovered that Janet Jackson was parading around packing a pair of breasts? Was it because Ms Jackson’s show was cut short due to her ruined top? Was it because their favourite team was winning/losing and they wanted to get back to the game? Or, and this is the reason that I am leaning towards, are these people just a little bit dim? So there was a split-second shot of a naked boob on TV. Big deal. Get your kids into therapy and move on. If the sight of a mostly naked breast is the worse thing in your life, drop to your knees and give thanks. If I were to be offended at all, and I’m not, it would be at the sight of that “nipple shield” thing that Ms Jackson was wearing. Now that was ugly.

I think the worse thing is that I suspect if Ms Jackson had some out wearing a burkha, and torn off that burkha then used a machinegun to perforate some guy dressed up like Osama Bin Laden, that would have been okay. She probably would have been hailed as a great patriot then, instead of some chick with a boob hanging out. Of course I could be wrong. I have been before.

Anyway… Humouroceros

One gawd ugly nipple shield