Janet Let the Dogs Out

So one of Janet Jackson’s puppies slipped the leash during Sunday night’s big Super Bowl halftime show. Offensive? Sure. Tacky? Of course. But there’s nothing surprising about any of that. Tacky, tawdry, crassly sexual - those are modern-day show biz’s trademarks. Complaining about a loose booby during a hip-hop pop-slop halftime show is like complaining that the floor at the car wash is wet. MTV-style “music” is nothing but soft-core porn these days. Why would the Super Bowl be any different?

And spare me the anguish expressed on behalf of “the children.” First of all, it’s not children making a big deal out of this. They probably didn’t even notice. I don’t think there’s much reason to “protect” anyone from Janet Jackson’s chubbly. Children can see that much flesh in an advertisement for Tomb Raider. Cosmopolitan has more cleavage displayed on its cover. Any child going through a grocery store line has probably seen more skin than a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon.

They see it every day in electronic games, music videos, magazine advertisements, and the hallways at school. Half-naked pre-teens are the status quo these days, now that Madonna and Britney Spears are tonsil wrestling on live TV and Bono is cussin’ like a drongo in a Belfast bar. If that’s okay, how is Janet’s mad flash wrong?

If networks are willing to air this crotch-grinding pole-dance 364 days out of the year, it can’t be any more appalling just because it’s done during a football game. Hell, the cheerleaders were probably scribbling notes so they could incorporate some of the moves into their sideline routines. Sex certainly isn’t anything new during football games. Cheerleaders don’t wear those short skirts to keep their buns warm.

It’s always amazing to me that it’s amazing to Americans when they’re confronted with the evidence of the nation’s debauchery, as if they had just discovered that [gasp!] pop culture is a degraded wasteland of superficiality, cheap eroticism, and gutter morals! Do tell! You mean Britney Spears isn’t a virgin, she just plays one on TV?? You can’t just wake up one morning and discover morality.

If you’re going to protect children from Janet Jackson’s boob-boo, why aren’t you equally concerned about protecting them from P Diddy? Or Snoop Doggy Dogg? Or Tupac Shakur’s ghost? Smut doesn’t just drop trou on stage at the Super Bowl. It permeates modern society from infancy onward. It’s “art” when Karen Finley strips naked and writhes around on stage. The Vagina Monologues are “art.” “Piss Christ” is “art.” Why should Janet Jackson’s strip show be any less “art” just because it’s not funded by the NEA?

Maybe I’m just a prude but I see it every day, so seeing one more example of it doesn’t upset me much. From the time they were pubescent, the Jacksons have risen to fame on androgynous sexuality. Not the cooing, seductive sensuality of thinly clad models selling Chevies, but the overt, wanna-hump coarseness of a half-drunk waterfront hooker. This is just the latest page in a family scrapbook of marketable sleaze.

Should you be upset? Sure! But if you’re going to get mad, get mad over the right things. Get mad about the strip shows on VH1 airing nonstop daily. Get mad about filth expounded by loudmouth punks like Eminem and Ludicris. Get mad about cuddlesluts like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, sirens of nubile sexuality who exude pheromones so thick they’d fog your glasses.

Get mad that your culture is being hijacked by pimps like Jack Valenti and Rob Reiner. Get mad that rudeness and coarseness are the hallmark’s of today’s social intercourse, and that the wrong word in a ticket line can get you shot. Get mad that Howard Stern isn’t even shocking anymore, and that we’re already looking for new lows to plumb. There are architects of this decline, people who have actively labored for decades to decompose the bonds of decency.

It didn’t happen overnight. It’s been a steady rot, like a leak in the attic, slowly eating out the substance of our national conscience until we’re so inured to depravity that Sunday’s raunchy choreography would seem like a good idea to the same entertainment megalith that used to keep Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore in separate beds.

From the gutter humor of Lenny Bruce to the drug-addled stage shows of Jim Morrison, the cheap scat laughs of Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock, from Springfield to South Park, from sea to shining sea, the nation has been awash in cultural sewage for half a century. Our idiom has decayed from the flowing rhetoric of Emerson to the broken-glass vocal abrasions of Godsmack. Vulgarity is the order of the day, whether conversing in a restaurant or closing a sales deal. Bodily functions that used to be of interest only to proctologists are now the stuff of standup routines. And I’m supposed to get the vapors over this???

Frankly, I find it hard to be offended by the sight of one booger in a bathtub full of snot.

The grossest offense is that the media elitists who concoct such rubbish thought so little of me as to think this chintzy, flashpot-spangled grind would entertain me. It might have if I’d been marooned on Gilligan’s Island for half a century, or if I was a member of the rubber sheet crowd. But I haven’t been, and I’m not. Nor, I suspect, were any of the millions of viewers who retched at the site of boy bimbo Justin Timberlake and a fading giggle mistress copulating vertically in between ads for car insurance. This was as catastrophic a misread of viewer demographics as “The Reagans,” just one more example of CBS’s inability to keep its dogs at heel.

Whether they knew Janet was going to expose herself or not, CBS’s people definitely knew the halftime pageant had the flavor of a Bourbon Street strip joint minus the cigar smoke. Yet nobody said a word, and had Ms. Jackson’s headlight not flashed, it’s not likely anyone would have. CBS would have just taken it for granted. And started planning for next year’s Super Bowl, which will feature Madonna and Cher Jello wrestling in a firepit of half-naked Nubian dwarves.

[i]Children can see that much flesh in an advertisement for Tomb Raider. Cosmopolitan has more cleavage displayed on its cover. Any child going through a grocery store line has probably seen more skin than a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon.

They see it every day in electronic games, music videos, magazine advertisements, and the hallways at school. Half-naked pre-teens are the status quo these days, now that Madonna and Britney Spears are tonsil wrestling on live TV and Bono is cussin’ like a drongo in a Belfast bar. If that’s okay, how is Janet’s mad flash wrong?[/i]

Excellent points. Using this logic, "its no big deal" if I walk into Viacom HQ with a suicide belt strapped around my waist because "everyone does it".

BTW - someone pls clue me in on the html tags here b/c they don't match the other forums I use - confusing.

As I've said before, my buddies and I were disgusted with the halftime show and we didn't even see the boob incident. We all got up, probably at the point where Jackson started doing the 20-year old "Rhythm Nation" number & dance routine for THE 20,000,000TH TIME. THANKS MTV.

And thanks for the same old crotch-grabbing, mush-mouthed idiots rapping about ... I have no idea. And for that white-trash moron Kid Rock doing his only hit from about five years ago. Oh, and don't forget Aerosmith ...THAT was a fresh act in the pregame. What, was Bon Jovi unavailable? And where was the tribute to Biggie Smalls? Or the lifetime achievement honor for Madonna? Get with it, MTV.

Good point. In addition to its complete lack of taste, the entire Super Bowl "entertainment" extravaganza was stale, cliche, and obsolete. I kept waiting for Boy George or the Village People to do a tribute to "Saturday Night Fever."

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