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We're living in a post-Nipplegate world -- and apparently it's only going to get worse. In case you haven't heard, Fox has already rejected a Super Bowl ad starring Mickey Rooney for Airborne, the natural cold remedy. Why? Well, in the ad, the 84-year-old Rooney is in a sauna. Someone behind him coughs. He overreacts, jumps up, screams, heads for the door, and drops his towel. His bare bum is exposed for two seconds or so. Clearly scandalous. Who doesn't want to see Mickey Rooney's bare behind? Turns out the Mickey Rooney commercial isn't the only new ad that's already...

This is sort of a quiet time of year for most people. Most news organizations do that tired old “that was the year that was” review, telling you all the stuff that you went through in the previous twelve months, as if your attention spans had been MTV’d down to around the goldfish level. You’re still sorting through all the wrapping paper you used at Christmas, hoping that your local Earth Liberation Front cell doesn’t get back at you for your blatant destruction of the forests by burning your house down. You’re still recovering from having relatives come and visit...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - Shortly before becoming chairman of the Federal Communications Commission nearly four years ago, Michael K. Powell said it was time to eliminate the double standard that allowed the government to subject broadcasters, unlike their competitors in cable and satellite television, to indecency and other speech regulations. At the time, Mr. Powell received a Freedom of Speech Award for advancing what broadcasters and civil liberties groups viewed as a courageously principled position. Now, he is being harshly criticized for significantly expanding the indecency rules. He blames a quest for higher ratings for the "increasing coarseness" of programming...

Sex and True Love   The news has recently reported that a leading media company, with preeminent positions in broadcast and cable television, radio, and advertising, has agreed to pay the Federal Communications Commission $3.5 million, one of the largest fines ever given by this agency, to end allegations of indecency.  Yet even as the debate about public decency goes on, TV continues to challenge its viewers with ever new boundaries about public decency.  Not to be outdone by an alleged wardrobe malfunction that bared a performer's breast during halftime at last January's Super Bowl, a Cleveland news anchor, a...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Paul McCartney will be the featured performer in the next Super Bowl halftime show and organizers promised there won't be any breast baring this time. Last February's broadcast on CBS in which Janet Jackson's breast was bared during a duet with pop star Justin Timberlake spurred hundreds of thousands of complaints to federal regulators. Jackson blamed the incident on a "wardrobe malfunction." National Football League spokesman Brian McCarthy told Reuters on Sunday there won't be any such malfunctions during the 12-minute performance, which will air on the Fox network. He said the Feb. 6 show will...

Why do liberals feel the need to use an expletive in virtually every sentence? With the advent of the Internet, it has become rather commonplace for writers to include e-mail addresses at the end of their columns to welcome input from their readers. Invariably, a respectable percentage of the responses that come to a conservative writer will of course be from members of the opposite camp. Unfortunately, these are typically not PG-rated. For example, an article that I had written after the first presidential debate evoked hundreds of e-mail messages from around the country, with many of them referring to...

Make no mistake about this. The President and his brilliant, disciplined political team won the election. They did so against a stacked deck. But as impressive as the President’s victory was, Senator Kerry got close. The irony-in-chief is that he only got that close as a result of the same factors that ultimately produced his loss. Self-serving, agenda-driven election analysis will continue to gush from all corners of the political box with Pandoraic abandon. While some of that may well be useful to those who say it, most of it will be wrong because it will focus too closely on...

ABC television, backed by Republican Sen. John McCain and other leading conservatives, sought on Thursday to keep nervous affiliate stations from deserting a Veterans Day broadcast of the acclaimed World War Two film "Saving Private Ryan." Several ABC affiliates, including eight stations owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group and four owned by the Belo Corp. (BLC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , scheduled other programming, citing concerns about profanity and graphic violence in the film. In Dallas, ABC's Belo-owned affiliate, WFAA, broadcast Oprah Winfrey's talk show and the movie "Hoosiers" instead of "Saving Private Ryan" on Thursday night. Sinclair said the recent...

CBS will try to get the FCC to cancel the $550,000 fine the agency slapped the network with in September as a result of the Super Bowl halftime show in which Janet Jackson's breast was bared. In a 78-page letter dated last Friday that the network filed with the Federal Communications Commission, CBS argues that it didn't know about the breast being exposed in advance and is therefore not liable. "No one at the network knew, or had reason to suspect, that the halftime show would end with a glimpse of nudity," the letter said. But the fine, "is...

WASHINGTON -- CBS got the bill Wednesday for Janet Jackson's eye-catching flash dance during the Super Bowl halftime show: a record $550,000. The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to fine each of the 20 CBS-owned television stations $27,500, which is the maximum penalty for indecency. The singer's right breast was briefly exposed to millions of television viewers during the show. The fine is the largest against a television broadcaster. "As countless families gathered around the television to watch one of our nation's most celebrated events, they were rudely greeted with a halftime show stunt more fitting of a burlesque show,"...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission is set to impose a record $550,000 (310,000 pounds) indecency fine against CBS-owned stations for their broadcast of singer Janet Jackson's breast-bearing incident during January's Super Bowl, the Washington Post reports. The newspaper report, which cited unnamed FCC sources, said on Saturday the agency was expected to vote unanimously for the fine, which would be the largest levied against a television broadcaster. The amount represents a $27,500 fine for each of the 20 television stations owned by CBS, which in turn is owned by Viacom Inc, the paper said. The decision could be...

As G-d is my solemn witness: that's what it actually says on Drudge's site, right now. :)

The singer who brought us Nipplegate feels that she’s the victim of “a plot by conservative forces” in the U.S. according to the Sunday Express of London. “I was used just to take the attention off what was really going on in the world,” Jackson told the paper. “A lot of things that actually happened, the after-effects, all that was already on the desk but everyone’s trying to point the finger, ‘See what you did, see what you did.’ I didn’t do anything. It was going to happen at some point with someone, it just so happened to be me....

Support The DrudgeReport; Visit Our Advertisers KERRY SUPPORTS FCC INDECENCY CRACKDOWN; CITES 'FAMILY TIME' Fri Jun 4, 2004 12:32:11 ET In an interview set for broadcast Sunday on C-SPAN, presidential hopeful John Kerry says he supports the current FCC crackdown on television indecency, but comes out against the greater scrutiny of pay cable channels like HBO and Showtime. "I think there is a distinction between public broadcast and the notions we've had historically about family time, family hour -- and what you buy privately and personally." "I am not in favor of government interference and censorship and restriction of...

CANNES, France (AFP) - Alexandra Kerry, 30-year-old daughter of US Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites), walked up Cannes' celebrated red-carpet for the premiere of Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill 2" wearing an off-shoulder black number that turned transparent under the flashes. Kerry, who is showing a short film at the festival, was tailed by the press during her stay at Cannes but French newspapers reported that her staff had warned journalists off questions concerning her famous father. Her film entitled "The Last Full Measure" is being presented in the Short Film Corner section and describes the ravage...

It looks like NippleGate2, folks. Drudge has this photo of Kerry's daughter from the Cannes Film Festival.

THE dishy daughter of US Presidential candidate John Kerry certainly gets our vote. Brunette Alexandra Kerry left movie fans gasping at the Cannes Film Festival in her daring see-through dress. Film director Alexandra, 30, showed at least two reasons why Americans should vote her dad into the White House in November. Democrat Mr Kerry is hoping for a good showing at the polls. His girl is content with just a good showing.

<p>"Stuttering John" Melendez will officially join The Tonight Show with Jay Leno as regular announcer. Click link for details.</p> <p>Also tonight, Janet Jackson makes her first CBS appearance since "Nipplegate" as a guest on Late Night with David Letterman.</p>

LOS ANGELES - George Carlin (news) famously dissected "The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" as a way to explore what everyone was so uptight about. Thirty-two years later the same debate is still raging, now fueled by Janet Jackson (news)'s Super Bowl flash, the suspension of Howard Stern's raunchy radio show from six stations and new House legislation that would raise a performer's indecency fine from $11,000 to $500,000. So what does the 66-year-old Carlin think of the current handwringing over what is indecent, profane, obscene, immoral, lewd or insulting? "More of the same, more of the same....

By now, I'm sure you've all heard about the Janet Jackson Super Bowl debacle. Many have found the sight of Jackson's exposed, middle-aged breast to be vulgar and offensive, but among my peers, it seems the incident wasn't that big of a deal. "Who cares... it was just a boob," is the common response. Surprisingly enough, I felt the same way, but for different reasons. To me, it wasn't a big deal, not because it was "just a boob", but for the simple fact that we see these sorts of things on television daily. In fact, many times, the scenes...