Peak hour no time for mature antics
CBS and MTV should be taken
to task for the
halftime incident.
The FCC has vowed to come down hard on CBS for Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl shocker. Well, that’s a start.
But a lot more needs to be done to make sure these kinds of X-rated antics don’t happen again.
Sure, there’s plenty of outrage over the shocking scene of Janet Jackson baring her breast with Justin Timberlake at Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show on CBS.
But since outrage is one of the hoped-for responses to such exhibitionistic displays, how can people get angry without playing into the artists’ hands?
Should CBS and MTV be blamed?
Absolutely.
MTV is at fault for not altering what it packaged for CBS as the producer of the halftime show, and CBS because the buck stops there.
But what happened at the Super Bowl is much more disturbing than previous incidents – such as Madonna’s smooch with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the MTV awards show last year.
That live lip-lock, of course, became the new bar for artists to slither beneath.
But at least it happened on MTV – a cable channel where such kinds of sexual behavior are expected and where a big night, viewerwise, is a very small night on CBS.
The Super Bowl, on the other hand, is the biggest of all network shows – the most-watched event of the year.
Sports events are not rated, so parents have no warning about questionable content ahead.
That’s bad, real bad, because it’s no secret the Super Bowl is one of the few broadcasts that the entire family is likely to watch together.
CBS isn’t MTV and it shouldn’t be.
If the artists can’t be responsible enough to play by broadcasting’s established rules, then they shouldn’t be given the mass-media spotlight.
And that’s the thing to be really furious about.
Did Jackson and Timberlake know what they were doing?
Of course they did.
I saw the halftime show on High Definition TV, where the exposed breast was as clear as the performers’ intention to expose it. Jackson stood there, posed and waiting, and Timberlake knew exactly what he was reaching for.
In one twist of his wrist, television took one more step down a dark alley we should all be wary of visiting.
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