Posted 2/03/2004 05:20:00 PM by Douglas

I have to apologize for keeping this thread going, but this article about the infamous half-time boobie is pretty durn good:

If the Super Bowl half-time show was offensive and unsuitable for family viewing, I blame Paul Tagliabue and his fellow marketing executives at the NFL. It was their show, start to finish.

Maybe now we'll finally grasp the fact that the league is just another mass entertainment company, the Viacom of sports.

Well, duh. It's not just chronic gamblers that watch professional sports. People are entertained by these children's games, and are willing to pony up Billions of dollars (and that's just in Houston) for their playgrounds. But let's get back to the boobie:

Exactly what did the league expect when it rented the MTV culture?

What do they take us for? But whether you were offended by Kid Rock's shredded American flag shirt, or Nelly grabbing his crotch at every opportunity, or Timberlake's bump and grind with Jackson, the point was obvious: Let's commandeer the audience of a hundred million for ourselves.

Well, that's a bit obvious, too. Anyone who doesn't realize it's all about ratings is either delusional or stupid. Everyone associated with the production, from the NFL to MTV, knew what was going on and at some point, signed off on it.

The league didn't suddenly develop amnesia about MTV. Timberlake and Jackson merely sent the lumber downstream, gave the NFL and its network partners what they were asking for -- only they gave them too much of it.

This is what I don't get. OK, you want to bill the Stupor Bowl as a family show, so you don't really want boobies popping all the way out in front of the children, but no one bats an eye at scantily clad women selling cars, beer, and computers, jumping around on the sideline, or Mike Ditka selling boner pills. Hell, parents wouldn't think twice about taking their kids by Hooter's for some wings on the way home from the game. So why on earth is this such a big deal? Dozens of partial boobies go totally unnoticed (yeah, right), yet one boobie is an unspeakable lapse in decency? We're talking just one freakin' boobie here! Not even a full set!

Good for Jackson and Timberlake for putting a breast smack in the middle of things: The NFL finally got a little payback for its manipulations. That's what the FCC investigation, and your own common sense, should conclude.

So now CBS is going to blame MTV, and vice versa. Know what that sounds like? Watch COPS for about ten minutes and you'll see the obligatory prostitution sting go down. The John (CBS) claims he didn't know anything about the prostitute, and the whore (MTV) claims he was just giving her a ride home from work.

But they both get used, and neither one of them care.

I'd like to thank the whore and the John for finally giving us the Stupor Bowl half-time show this country truly deserves. Next year? Something with interracial midgets.

UPDATE: Just got this from Dad:

I was more offended by seeing the American Flag used as a poncho by the male singer than I was by mis-seeing Janet's silicone injected mammary gland.

Amen to that. I was a bit more troubled with Nelly's performance where he spend four minutes grabbing his crank like a savant with the clap, but I'm a bit old fashioned. But this brings up another issue. Men are not troubled with exposed breasts: women are. Men like breasts. Again I say, what's the problem?