Janet Jackson phones in a touchback in the
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The same chirpy non-partisan "news" story (Pelofsky/Reuters Feb.02) mentions Bono of Ireland's "f---ing brilliant" at the Golden Globes. Chirpy acceptance of public morality, chirpy reporting of upset parents, chirpy chirpy chirpy. Examining these obscene moments we find at their base...well we don't find much except everybody knows these are bad words and obscene body parts. How does everybody know this? Their parents told them. And their parents learned it from...yep, their parents. All proceeding from some obscure Biblical source evidently, though no one seems to be able to find it again.
How about we consider the pro-life aspect here? Fucking is how babies are made. Breasts are how babies are fed after they're made. Hysterical momentum will carry the argument right past that, shrieking that it's the very sanctity of babiness that's threatened here, but that's a lie. Nursing mothers get busted for the same exposure (plus infant) Ms. Jackson's committed. And most importantly, not only are murders and killings of all kinds and varieties shown to children on television and in movies constantly, the exhibition of degrading and violent mistakes and accidents, many of them leading to injury and death, is a thriving part of the entertainment industry.
It's not about sex, it's not about babies, it's not about anything but control. Sex is an inevitably huge part of everyone's reality. By making kids feel guilty about it before they begin puberty, and then offering it to them in watered-down nasty ways later, the control gets established before they know what's going on. It seems natural, part of the way the world is.
Of course breasts are obscene, everybody knows that. It's an outrage is what it is.
And moral champion Michael Powell of the FCC, a Chamberlain for our time, delivered himself of this Sophoclean thunderbolt:
"...a classless, crass and deplorable stunt," Powell said in a statement. "Our nation's children, parents and citizens deserve better."
Oh they do, Mike, they really really do. Much better. But we have to start somewhere.
Maybe it was a total accident, a partial accident, or a stunt. But it wasn't obscene, whatever it was. The word "fuck" is not obscene, the female breast is not obscene. What's obscene is people suffering needlessly. What's obscene is preying on children for economic gain. What's obscene is playing games with public morality, pretending sex is "naughty" if it's hinted at (cleavage) and "dirty" if it's openly displayed (exposure).
What's obscene is letting mentally ill people determine public morality, while the sanest position, that we're all damaged by this absurd nonsense, is scorned into silence.
