Wardrobe Malfunction My Ass!

Michael Nellis 07 Feb 2004
[Revised on 14 Feb 2004]

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02 Feb 2004

I am thoroughly disgusted with all parties involved in this manufactured scandal. With the exception of Joe Browne. He is the only one who's got it right. Just to establish a timeline and to further develop a context, here are the facts of this incident, along with two photographs of Jackson and a close up of the nipple brooch.[01]

Now, I didn't see the event, and the first I knew about the incident was Monday morning when I heard reports that Timberlake said it was an accident. I allowed to myself as to how it could have been an accidental exposure depending on what they had been doing, as a dance routine, at the time. The thing is, I check the Ananova.com news web site on a daily basis, and early in the morning, and I had already seen the two larger photographs above. The presence of the nipple brooch was, to me, a clear and present anomaly. I couldn't fathom why a woman would wear such a thing if it was not meant to be seen.[05]

Later, still on Monday, I think it was, I caught a vid-bite of the event on an entertainment magazine show, and anybody could clearly see that Timberlake's action was deliberate. That's when I started getting disgruntled about what I was hearing. "Why," I asked myself, "was Timberlake saying that it was an accident when the move was clearly deliberate?

Meanwhile, there hadn't been a peep out of Janet about the incident.

This was a key part of my being disgruntled. I felt very much as if my intelligence was being insulted; as if I was being played for a sap. I believe that a great deal of the squawking in this event derives from a lack of communication. What Timberlake should have done was to explain fully that the breast was not supposed to have been bared. Instead, his claim of a wardrobe malfunction was vague; he made no mention of how the move was supposed to go, or, at least, I haven't seen it reported anywhere that he did. As a result, his apology came across as a flip comment and trite treatment of the incident. I ascribe this to a feeble attempt to abdicate responsbility; a "sorry for what I did but it's not really my fault" type of apology. Which brings me to addressing and analysing the various issues deriving from the incident itself.

Apologies

When I hear about someone apologizing to every damned fool for every damn thing from the Big Bang to the heat death of the universe it really sets my teeth on edge. You can't so much as belch in public in North America these days without some snivelling reactionary screaming "offense" and demanding an apology. It especially grates when fools who are hypersenitized to PC snivelling are so quick to grovel so abjectly for things for which they are not in any wise responsible. The guilty parties in this case are Timberlake and Jackson. CBS and MTV clearly had nothing for which to apologize since they were as much "victims" of this incident as anybody. And yet, there they were, in the forefront, wailing not guilty and begging forgiveness at the same time they too were abdicating responsibility. And that's a neat trick. I will allow as to how network programming gives CBS a great many things to apologize for, but the boob baring isn't one of them.

So, how about Timberlake and Jackson; should they have apologized? Not really. Due in part to this incident being an accident, but also for other reasons. I think that in their case an apology was optional and could be reasonably asked for on one ground only. An explanation was clearly warranted, of course, but not necessarily an apology. And we got that explanation all of two days later; after the reactionary knee-jerk had time to build up a head of momentum. Had both Jackson and Timberlake responded immediately and fully, it could have gone a long way to stemming that knee-jerk. It would also have helped if Timberlake had stood up and took his lumps like a man. Something, for instance, along the lines of: "I exposed Janet's breast by accident because I pulled off too much of her costume."[06]

Legal Gobbledy-gook

The big question in this incident, as with anything having to do with cyberspace[07], is the matter of jurisdiction. Where did the "crime" take place? In your living room? Jackson and Timberlake were not physically present in your living room, they were at the Super Bowl. If the exposure is believed to constitute a Gross Indecency, they should be charged in the physical place it happened; whichever city hosted the Super Bowl. Reactionaries, however, are quick to claim jurisdiction no matter how far removed they are from the physical lieu, simply because they can exploit cybernetic access in more libertarian milieus to material they can say is proscribably obscene in their milieu. Such as federal officials bringing criminal charges against a California business from the State of Pennsylvania. These officials can only expect fully that California will immediately conform to Pennsylvanian community standards.

What about the transmission of the baring over the air waves? That's a stickier issue.

Michael Powell probably started screaming "obscenity" even before the end of that single second in which the image of the bared breast was broadcast. He had proclaimed before the end of the next work day that the FCC will launch a full investigation of the incident and punishment will be thorough and swift. What does that mean to Jackson and Timerlake? Nothing at all, in my not so humble opinion. Ken Paulson wrote in his analysis of this aspect of the incident:

[T]hese images were broadcast into our homes on CBS affiliate stations, all operating under licenses issued by the federal government. Doesn't that give the government the clout to impose some standards?

The answer is yes - and no. Despite FCC Chairman Michael Powell's assertions of outrage, there's relatively little the government can do. Years of deregulation and the enormous political clout derived from media mergers have defanged the FCC. Yes, fines can be imposed on the stations, but that's just another operating expense for major media.

Janet Jackson's exposure also lays bare the unique nature of America's broadcasters - media companies that are licensed by the government, but also enjoy First Amendment protection.

The government can regulate indecent programming - essentially references to "sexual or excretory activities or organs" - between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when children are most likely to be watching or listening. Beyond that, the government generally has to keep its hands off programming unless it meets the very narrow legal definition of obscenity.

That leaves broadcast media with considerable content latitude, inevitably leading to some distasteful and unpalatable programming and the occasional Janet Jackson firestorm.

What it boils down to is this: Powell and the FCC cannot punish Jackson and Timberlake. They can punish only the networks. And CBS might be able to get off the hook. In her statement, Jackson accepts full responsibility[08], and absolves the networks of all the blame, but this incident was just one in a number of questionable actions, acts, and advertisements at the Super Bowl and halftime show:

The advertisement about erectile dysfunction, however was mentioned for comparison's sake by people like myself who are more disgusted with the overblown reaction to the boob baring. Although one article reported:
One father who watched the game with his 12-year-old son said the Jackson dance passed without comment, but he was caught off-guard when the boy asked, "Dad, what's erectile dysfunction?"
Smart kid.

Dragging myself back on topic, however, with all the sexuality contained in the halftime show, and which is apparently typical of MTV produced spectacles, CBS could be held to be culpably negligent; guilty because they should have known up front what kind of a show MTV would produce. How that would affect CBS all depends on how the fines are levied. If the network alone is fined, the maximum allowed is 27,500 dollars. Powell -- and I will state this unequivocally -- is not going to settle for that. He is too much the reactionary and too much the self-appointed moral crusader. What he'll opt for is to fine, to the permitted maximum, each and every individual CBS affiliated station that carried the game.[09]

[Addendum (01 Jul 2004:) Bingo! Reported at Ananova.com: Sources said a staff recommendation to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suggested each of the 20 CBS-owned stations be fined the maximum indecency penalty of $27,500 for the incident. The commissioners now must decide whether to accept the recommendation. A decision is expected in the next few weeks. --MN]

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statisics

A big problem I have with corporate media is sloppy reporting, and this is nowhere more evident than in the way it misrepresents numbers. I first noticed the inflationary model of reporting numbers several years ago when that commercial flight went down off Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, and I observed it in action in CBC reports. At first, the reports gave an accurate count of the numbers and flight crew, something like two hundred fifty seven, for instance, although I don't recall the exact number. After a couple of days, the reports started calling the number of fatalities "almost two hundred sixty", and then a few days after that, the number was reported as a firm "two hundred sixty". Pay attention to the facts in this case: the estimated number of American viewers is 89.6 million, and the estimated number of viewers worldwide is 140 million. In an Associated Press article filed on 11 Feb, the number of viewers was pegged at a firm 90 million. Some articles in overseas newspapers had the number of viewers at 100 million. It is important to be aware of this misrepresentation. Overall, it does not make much of a difference in the crunching of the numbers to inflate 89.6 to 90, but you also have to keep in mind that the difference is 400,000 individuals. It is important to be aware that this inflation creates an even wider margin of error than one would get with the announced estimates.

The second problem with numbers that are to be published is the way they are abused by whichever raving fool is grinding his axe. In this case, the FCC announced on 05 or 06 Feb that it had received over two hundred thousand complaints. What was not reported was how many complaints more than 200,000 they received; 200,001 is more than 200,000. Of course, by the inflationary model of reporting numbers outlined above -- which spin doctors also use rather freely -- if the number had been greater than two and three quarter hundred thousand (275,000), it would have been called "almost 300,000". By this, we can safely postulate that the number of complaints was fewer than 225,000, and probably much fewer than 210,000 since the inflationary model of reporting numbers is best exploited by rounding up.

Lastly, we come to how raving fools juggle numbers. In most cases, and this is certainly one of them, it is due to simple ignorance of statistical analysis. It's a safe bet that Powell is totally clueless about the following, and that nobody has processed the numbers in the following way.

Two hundred thousand does not constitute a statistic. It is raw data. The number has to be processed -- compared to other numbers and placed into the proper context -- to have any real meaning. In this case we need to compare the number of complainants against the number of non-complainants, and that's just for starters. However, this is not at all difficult. You can do it yourself right now. Go to your desktop and boot up the Windows Calculator. Enter 200000, then select the / key to activate the division function, and enter 89600000, then click the = key. Dividing the smaller number by the larger will give you a result that you can use as a proportion expressed in decimal notation. In this case, the answer is 0.00223 etc. Moving the decimal point two places to the right will give you the proportion expressed as a percentage. Zero point two two three percent. Under one quarter of one percent.

Of course, that's not the proportion of viewers who were offended; that's just the number of viewers who were offended enough to file a complaint.

And how does that compare to the "real world"? Ordinarily, proportions happen in pretty much balanced amounts, or so I believe. I would say that the number of truly humanitarian people in the world is the same proportion as those who are truly intolerant. To determine if that is the case here seems pretty much impossible to me. We could start by taking the number of offended people, comparing that to the number of Super Bowl viewers who have subsequently done internet searches to see more of Janet's breast and compare the two numbers. The impossibility arises from trying to figure out how many people made searches who had not seen the halftime show.

The FCC said in its announcement on 05 Feb that this was far and away beyond the previous record number of complaints; those filed after television actress Nicole Richie used a curse word on the 2003 Billboard Music Awards. What we don't know, however, is whether that is a greater or lesser proportion of the viewing audience. My guess is that the two proportions are pretty close, and if that is the case, it is not at all the record it is touted to be. At any rate, there are too many disparate elements between the two events to make a valid comparison.

Artistic Expression

So, is this obscene pornography or is it artistic? A tiresome question that is asked by simplistic thinkers who can't understand how some things can be more than one thing at once. Art and pornography are not mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed; like day and night. The thing about art, what makes it art, is that it is non-quantifiable. You cannot measure the artistic quality of something with a yard stick, beaker, or oscilloscope. How artistic a person finds a work is completely a subjective determination. The same is true of pornography. Even the Miller Test of the United States is based on a subjective determination. Pick twelve people from a community at random and they might well decide something is proscribably obscene. Replace just one of them and that jury could easily swing the other way. Plus, the ratio of ultra-conservatives is also variable from locale to locale. I doubt that Robie Harris's It's Perfectly Normal will ever be challenged in San Fransisco the way it was in Montgomery County.

Of greater import is whether or not the boob baring constitutes an indecency. While material that is obscene under the Miller Test is banned from tranmission over the air waves, indecent material is another matter. Indecent material can be broadcasted, but only during the Safe Harbor of 2200 to 0600; the time when young children are least likely to be watching television.

In the U.S., indecent material is not as offensive as obscene material but still contains references to sexual or excretory activities or organs. And that complicates the issue. If the phrase were genitals or genitalia, then that would refer specifically to the external reproductive organs: the penis and the vagina.[10] The breasts, however, are usually seen as being sexual organs, even though they really have nothing to do with reproduction. They are an adjunct to reproduction, being used to feed the offspring produced, but are independent of that process. The likely counter-argument to that point is that the breasts serve as a focus for sexual gratification in groping and petting or for excitation during foreplay. However, it is the skin, and not the breasts, which serves as a sexual organ in those regards. The sensations we feel in petting and stroking are due to nerve cells responding to a stimulus. The nerves which enable us to feel the sensation of touch, as opposed to pain or heat or cold or pressure, are identical regardless of where they are situated in the body. What makes a part of the body more sensitive than another part, such as the glans penis or the clitoris, is the concentration of nerve endings per square millimeter.

So the question arises: Is the breast sexual in nature?

Well the issue is complicated by the answer. Sometimes it is. Whether it is or not, however, depends solely upon whether the person to whom it is attached, invariably female, wishes to use it for sexual gratification or whether she wishes to breast feed or is just comfortable going around au naturel.

In this case, Janet was just going around au naturel, albeit inadvertantly, and no sexual activity pertains to the exposure in any way, shape, or form.

Could this incident reasonably be called artistic expression if it had been deliberate? Absolutely. It was perfectly in keeping with the context of the lyrics. And that brings me to my next point.

Should It Have Happened At Super Bowl Halftime?

No. Absolutely, unequivocally, and beyond any shadow of a doubt it should not have. And if you are sitting there going ballistic and screaming in frustration, that is your problem, not mine. I am not waffling or vacillating at all. There is a perfectly rational and free speech friendly explanation for why a performer should not expose him- or herself at a halftime show. And oddly enough, it does have to do with the target audience. It does not, however, have anything to do with ultra-wrong wing claptrap about Harmful To Minors or family values.

Free speech is not without its limits. The reason for that is that there must be a method by which you can be held accountable for what you say. If you are allowed to say anything at all, no matter how base, scurrilous, or slanderous, that is not liberty. Personal freedom is based on the concept that you have sole authority over and are solely responsible for your life and actions. Without a method by which you can be held responsible for yourself, you live in a system of anarchy rather than of liberty. What is important is that any restriction on free speech be a reasonable restriction as to time, place, or manner.[11]

The corollary to restrictions as to place is that there are appropriate and inappropriate milieus for various content. The best example of that is the Safe Harbor provisions required by U.S. Supreme Court ruling. That ruling said very clearly that you cannot ban indecent content just because you don't like it, but it can be relegated to a time frame when children would not be exposed to it.

Exposing yourself in the name of artistic expression is just fine and dandy if you are at a Playboy or Penthouse photo shoot. It's perfectly appropriate for MTV sponsored and organized live concerts so long as it is within context. But halftime at the Super Bowl? The purpose of the halftime show is entertainment, not to throw out oddball performances for the masses to judge the artistic merits of that performance. If the boob baring was a deliberate and willful part of the performance in the name of art, then it was art that was aimed well over the heads of many of the viewers.

It is for that and that alone that Jackson and Timberlake should have apologized. For an artistry that was inappropriate to the milieu.

Practical Joke Or Artistic Expression; P.R. Value Either Way

Janet has said the exposure of her breast was an accident. I am still (as of 09 Feb), troubled by the lag between the event and her statement, and I have a hard time accepting her statement on the face of it given the way Timberlake made his statement about a wardrobe malfunction. I don't have any reason to not believe her, however, but let's take a look at why this could have been deliberate. There are four reasons why the event could have been planned to deliberately expose Janet's breast. I've just looked at the reason of artistic expression. Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times does a brief examination of a couple of other reasons in an article called After Flash of Flesh, CBS Again Is in Denial.[12]

The first thing that comes to this layperson's mind is the latest big thing to celebrityhood: Google rankings. There is a function of search engines that tracks the number of searches for keyword terms. Britney Spears, at least, seems to have exploited this feature as a measure of celebrity stature. For some months Spears was ranked the number one search topic at Google.com. Then she slipped. Then she shared a little tongue on stage with Madonna at the MTV Video Music Awards and BANG! -- right back up to the top of the search term ratings.

Whether or not Jackson wanted something along those lines she has succeeded admirably on that score. It was reported in an article at Ananova.com that between Super Bowl halftime and 0756 GMT, Tuesday, 03 Feb, approximately the same number of internet news pages had been created about Jackson as had been created about Bush's budget proposal, according to a Google news search, and then the reports from Lycos and Yahoo! were published on 06 Feb.

The second reason the boob baring could have been deliberate was to promote the more standard type of public relations. If so, Jackson's success was equivocal at best.[13] Ms. Stanley wrote in her article:

Even trussed as she was in a shiny "Matrix"/dominatrix outfit, Janet Jackson, 37, has never had much luck being taken seriously as a sex symbol, and it is unlikely that her Super Bowl surprise will be of much help there. But if her aim was to grab all the attention, as Madonna did when she kissed Britney Spears at the MTV Video Music Awards, then she did herself proud. And if she wanted to distract attention from her older, more famous and now more infamous brother Michael, then she achieved even that for a moment.

Her sudden flare of pre-Grammy attention and publicity came at a slight cost. Perhaps the one moment of honesty in that coldly choreographed tableau was when the cup came off and out tumbled what looked like a normal middle-aged woman 's breast instead of an idealized Playboy bunny implant.

The third reason is that it could have been a simple and straightforward practical joke. Something with no more overt cause than to shock and outrage and get tongues a wagging about anything at all. I don't know if Jackson is any kind of prankster, but the projected audience numbers would have been attractive. In all the articles I've seen, the audience was pegged at anywhere from 89.6 million American viewers to 140 million viewers worldwide. At two eyballs a pop, that's a lot of popping eyeballs.

Given the statement Timberlake made on 05 Feb, however, and the way Janet seemed to be embarrassed about the exposure in the second large photograph above, I no longer have any doubts that the exposure was not deliberate (as of 11 Feb).

For Every Sex Action There Is An Opposite and Unequal Wrong Wing Reaction

Sex sells. Unfortunately, marketroids always overdo a good thing, and too much of a good thing is bad because it leads to saturation and boredom. That's why advertizing campaigns change so often. Of course, that only applies to the rational people in the general population. Reactionaries will be very happy to go on throwing hissy fits perpetually over everything no matter how remotely "offensive".

Or at least it looks that way.[14]

The thing is, marketroids are always pushing the envelope a bit further. Not alone to circumvent saturation and boredom, but also to hold audience ratings against the competition. You've got to have that little extra something your competitors don't have. Unfortunately, marketroids and network and Hollyweird producers don't really know squat about art. To them, the way to push the envelope is to be more outrageous and daring. That is because they pander to the least common denominator. They do not understand that one can push the envelope with the dramatic rather than the flashy, and that by doing so, one would turn out a product geared to quality rather than to quantity. But the mindset, as of this writing, is and will almost certainly continue to be for the bright and flashy over material of substance.

I think that a lot of the ultra-right wing nut reaction to this incident is merely a reflection of that. In sociology, for every social action there is an opposite and equal social reaction. For every manifest function, a latent function. As I have written elsewhere in these pages, the manifest function of liberty allows for the latent function of advocating censorship. You cannot stop someone's speech because they are calling for suppression of speech.[15]

Then, of course, there is Terri Carlin's law suit. I cannot understand how a woman with two boobs of her own, assuming she has not had a mastectomy, can possibly be outraged, angered, embarrassed, or done a serious injury by another woman's boobs. Hasn't this woman ever looked at herself in a mirror after showering? Unless she's as flat as two eggs sunny side up and is suffering some kind of breast envy.

And serious injury? How do you possibly figure that? It's not like the nipple brooch -- or the nipple itself -- was going to come shooting out of anyone's television screen and put out somebody's eye. This babbling lunacy is, of course, just the standard unwarranted assumption that: Something "I" don't like must pose a threat to children and we must protect them from it.

So, how far is the backlash from this incident likely to go? No one can say beyond an educated guess, and I don't even have that much. About all I can say right now is that someone has very clearly gone too far in pushing the envelope and has just suddenly burst right through it. And just as with the death of Princess Diana, there are a lot of people who had a part to play who can never be convicted of anything. Unlike with that tragedy, everyone is going to be punished for this incident. It's happening already as can be seen below in the list of chilled expressions and censorial policies.

I can predict some likely fall out. First, legislators are going to push for Powell's ten-fold increase in indecency fines. That's a given, especially in light of support for the bill by the Bush adminstration. And I can see them voting for it, too, and not alone because of this incident or even similar incidents, but mostly because they can try to use it as: a) a cash cow if they're Democrats, and b) as a stick to bludgeon free speakers into silence if they're Republicans.

Second, I predict that the knee-jerks are going to happen more quickly and more often for the next little while. Emboldened by the furor of self-righteousness and a censor-friendly and censorial and dogmatic administration in the White House, every ultra-conservative group and its dog is going to be out hunting for something to make into a cause celebré; and mark my words: there is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone, somewhere. It would not in the least bit surprise me if Where's Waldo came under attack again because of that drawing of a breast done in profile.

Third, some fool is going to introduce legislation to make bare breasts illegal. It will either fail or not survive constitutional challenge because boob baring can be slotted into the Safe Harbor. That's mostly speculation.

Fourth, assuming solely for the sake of this editorial that the elected lackeys of the religious ultra-right could legislate broadcast content, people would simply start signing up for cable; which is subject to completely different guidelines.[16] And that would happen as a latent function to the manifest function of the censorial legislation.[17]

The Spreading Ripples Of Censorship and Hysteria

Last Words On The Topic

And now a few comments about the whole kafuffle from various sources:

But as for the titty-baring . . . Now it has come out that Janet Jackson and Jason Timberlake planned the move after the rehearsals were over, so she says in her "apology." That says to me that neither one of them has any confidence in their ability to entertain, they don't have any faith in whatever talent they may have (or they or others may think they have). Personally, I don't see much talent in a lot of the popular music today -- especially when they have to "enhance" it with fireworks and loud accompaniment and other nonsense that has nothing to do with entertainment, really (never mind that the lyrics of many of these songs these days are just garbage). Yeah, I'm a sourpuss when it comes to this. I just don't see that a lot of it has value -- but then, that's just in accordance with Sturgeon's Law, after all.

But that they felt they had to resort to this desperate measure says volumes to me about what they really think about themselves and about their audience.
--Karen Rhodes, 04 Feb 2004

The government can regulate indecent programming - essentially references to "sexual or excretory activities or organs" - between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when children are most likely to be watching or listening. Beyond that, the government generally has to keep its hands off programming unless it meets the very narrow legal definition of obscenity.

That leaves broadcast media with considerable content latitude, inevitably leading to some distasteful and unpalatable programming and the occasional Janet Jackson firestorm.

Yet the system is fundamentally sound.
--Ken Paulson, Flashpoint: Janet Jackson and government regulation of TV, 05 Feb 2004

Employees of corporate defendants knew or should have known Ms Jackson and Mr Timberlake were including the act of Mr Timberlake ripping off part of Ms Jackson's costume to expose one of her breasts. All of the defendants knew that the Super Bowl would be watched by millions of children. Families have an expectation that they can trust companies and individuals not to expose families to sexually explicit conduct.
--Terri Carlin's lawsuit filing by Wayne A. Ritchie II

All of the defendants knew that the Super Bowl, the pre-eminent sports event in the United States, would be watched by millions of families and children. Nevertheless, (they) included in the halftime show sexually explicit acts solely designed to garner publicity and, ultimately, to increase profits for themselves.
--Terri Carlin's lawsuit filing by Wayne A. Ritchie II

Big deal. We saw Janet Jackson's breast. This [controversy] is just the most absurd thing I've ever witnessed.
--Joe Saltzman, professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, who studies media and pop culture

Then, just when you thought the commercials couldn't get any more tasteless, we're 'treated' to a talking chimp, blatantly asking his owner 'babe' if she would like to go upstairs to have sex with him! This, all on family prime-time TV? I for one think this has gone too far!
--Jim Mitchell, viewer, from Vancouver

Media observers have pointed out that there is much more exposure on several TV shows every day and every night but Superbowl is regarded as a superclean show -- except for the injuries many players suffer as they tackle each other to floor them or snatch the ball from them.
--The Times of India, article on Carling lawsuit, 07 Feb 2004

I think we are a pretty tough society and I think we can deal with 'inappropriateness' sexually or socially. We have tough skins. The kids are not going to be scarred by seeing Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl. If anything they are just going to be curious if that's what all nipples look like.
--Tim Robbins, 09 Feb 2004, quoted in the Phillipine Manila Bulletin

What are they afraid of? Spontaneity is great. Who's going to make the judgment of whether something is appropriate or not?
--Tim Robbins, 09 Feb 2004, quoted in the Phillipine Manila Bulletin

What happened at the Super Bowl, I thought, should have been censored because it wasn't very interesting. Janet Jackson's performance at the Super Bowl was dull and hackneyed. We'd seen that before.
--Alec Baldwin, quoted in the Phillipine Manila Bulletin, 10 Feb 2004

They can apologize all they want, but this was wrong, and heads are going to fall.
--Robbie Vorhaus, New York-based media strategist

Our view is that it's important for families to be able to expect a high standard when it comes to programming.
--Scott McClellan, White House spokesman

The show was offensive, inappropriate and embarrassing to us and our fans. We will change our policy, our people and our processes for managing the halftime entertainment in the future in order to deal far more effectively with the quality of this aspect of the Super Bowl.
--Paul Tagliabue, NFL Commissioner

While AOL was the sponsor of the Super Bowl Halftime Show, we did not produce it. In deference to our membership and the fans, AOL and AOL.com will not be presenting the halftime show online as originally planned.
--AOL, owned by CNN parent company Time Warner, attempting to distance itself from the dispute in a statement

This particular event might be, for the moment, the straw that broke the camel's back on the patience of the audience. Tolerance of this sort of sexual imagery may have reached its peak.
--Carson Daly, talk-show host and veteran presence on MTV

The Jackson incident could have a "galvanizing effect" on the move to toughen standards, said FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who has complained his commission has been toothless in responding to complaints.

At the very least, he said, it punctures the argument of people who say that those who are bothered by things on TV just shouldn't watch.

"How do you turn off the Super Bowl?" Copps asked.
--AP article, Super Bowl antics prompt debate about broadcast decency, 06 Feb 2004

In a sense, they [the networks] asked for this. This is not something that happened out of the blue.
--Neal Gabler, Social Historian

Parents wouldn't know to turn their television off before that happened.
--first lady Laura Bush in an interview with CNN, 05 Feb 2004

Give me a break. There are a lot more trashier things on television than Janet Jackson.
--Charles Barkley, former NBA star

The excision of that [ER] scene shows that people have not grown up enough to make a distinction between artistic expression and vulgarity for profit. That's what happens in the context of a witch hunt.
--Martin Kaplan, a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications.

I grew up in California. Every time there was a major earthquake, people would come in to school and say, 'My parents say we're going to move.' But three or four months later, nobody's gone anywhere. Complacency sets in and you forget about it.
--Carson Daly, commenting on the likelyhood of this incident changing anything

Much as I don't care for David Letterman, I do think he had the last word on this: He said that he was glad the incident occurred, "because for at least one day, I wasn't the biggest boob on CBS!"
--Karen Rhodes, 04 Feb 2004

Addenda

2004:

Feb 24: About a week ago I came across a very fine commentary about this affair entitled A tit is just a tit; which is reprinted at Yellowtimes.org.

Jul 19: A wire service article from Associated Press on this day reported that CBS will fight the fines. Of particular note: this article stated that an FCC staff recommendation did not call for fining CBS affiliates that had aired the Super Bowl halftime show but which were not owned by Viacom. I do not have enough information on this allegation to put it into context. If true, it is patently unjust. The FCC had announced in June that it would indeed, as I surmised above, fine each of the twenty CBS stations the maximum.

May 23: On 18 May, the U.S. Senate approved a bill to raise indecency fines to $325,000 per violation (X 10) for television and radio broadcast stations that air profane or indecent material outside the safe harbour. The House of Representatives had already passed a similar measure a year ago; that measure would raise fines to as much as $500,000 per violation and require the FCC to also consider revoking a station's license after three indecency violations. The two bills still have to be merged into one. This policy will not apply to cable or satellite services. Opponents of the measure said parents should not expect fines to ease their responsibility for what their children watch; Jim Dyke, the executive director of TV Watch, commented: "No amount of government control will help parents make decisions about what their children should see on TV."

Jun 07: On this day the House of Representatives was to vote to adopt the senate version. That this movement is questionable in nature is borne out by a comment by censorial blowhard Fred Upton, R-Mich, who said: "By raising the fines to $325,000, I am confident that broadcasters will think twice about pushing the envelope, and our kids will be better for it." In other words, broadcasters will be penalized for exploring new territories and new modes of expression. I don't know how kids will be better off for it since they will be faced with ever increasingly stultified pap and decreased thinking skills.

Jun 15: George Bush ratified the above mentioned legislation. He said that it will force broadcasters to "take seriously their duty to keep the public airwaves free of obscene, profane and indecent material." It does not surprise me in the least that he is woefully ignorant about the fact that indecent material cannot be kept off the air, only relegated to the safe harbour, and that profanities, as common defined, are protected speech. As for "obscene" material, it is already banned from airing or circulation. I'm guessing he meant pornography; which is also protected. Bush did get something right, however, and apparently not merely by accident. He also said: "The problem we have is that the maximum penalty that the FCC can impose under current law is just $32,500 per violation. And for some broadcasters, this amount is meaningless. It's relatively painless for them when they violate decency standards." The problem with this whole action is that it is the result of reactionism stemming from exposure to what is not a sexual organ. And I shudder to think that the only remaining superpower which still has hundreds of nuclear weapons at its beck and call is being run by a pack of fools who are afraid of a bare tit.

July 28: CBS asked the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to set aside the $550,000 fine it for airing Justin Timberlake's wardrobe malfunction. CBS did agreed to turn over the fine money, however, albeit as a prerequisite for filing the appeal. FCC spokeswoman Tamara Lipper commented: "CBS' continued insistence that the halftime show was not indecent demonstrates that it is out of touch with the American people. Millions of parents, as well as Congress, understand what CBS does not: Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction' was indeed indecent." Kindly note the following two points:

In as much as tits are neither sexual or excretory organs the exposure of one cannot possible constitute indecency by the U.S. legal defintion of the term. So even if CBS is out of touch with the American public, for other reasons, it is patently obvious that the FCC is out of touch with reality, both factual and legal.

FOOTNOTES:

[01] The two larger photographs were copied from the Ananova.com article and are mirrored here without permission. The smaller close up is copied from Masturbate For Peace and is mirrored here without permission.
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[02] Looked pretty deliberate to me. I interpret this statement to mean that they didn't know about it, since this statement has the same shortcomings Timberlake's statement had: lack of information about what was supposed to happen.
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[03] I don't believe for a second that CBS executives had any part in this. If it was up to them they would have shot it down as too much of a threat to advertizing revenues. The only thing network execs care about at the end of the day is the bottom line, and even network flacks would have to be highly sensitized to the likelyhood of obscenity lawsuits and boycotts against advertizers.
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[04] The suit alleges: "As a direct and proximate result of the broadcast of the acts, (Carlin) and millions of others saw the acts and were caused to suffer outrage, anger, embarrassment and serious injury."

"Employees of corporate defendants knew or should have known Ms Jackson and Mr Timberlake were including the act of Mr Timberlake ripping off part of Ms Jackson's costume to expose one of her breasts.

"All of the defendants knew that the Super Bowl would be watched by millions of children. Families have an expectation that they can trust companies and individuals not to expose families to sexually explicit conduct."

Carlin says damages should not exceed the gross revenues of the defendants over the past three years. The defendants are Jackson, Timberlake, broadcasters MTV and CBS, and their parent company, Viacom.
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[05] But then, I don't wear a lot of jewelry (a watch and a wedding ring), and some girls do wear bellybutton rings even when their midriffs are not bare. It is necessary to keep the hole open. That hadn't occurred to me at the time, however, and that brooch is a fair sized piece of jewelry as these things go.
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[06] There is a recent saying that goes, "Growing up happens between 'It fell' and 'I broke it'."
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[07] Cyberspace is best described as a fuzzy concept in sharp focus. We all "know" what cyberspace is, but try to define it and tell someone where it is in relation to the physical world. Cyberspace was created as a reality -- an alternate reality, thank you -- if not as a concept, with the invention of the telegraph. A better example for this explanation, however, is the telephone. Basically: where do the words go when they are translated into electrical impulses and transmitted through the phone lines? More contemporarily, where in actuality are these words you are reading? Strictly speaking, they are not in your computer's memory, because RAM deals with binary code, not letters or numbers. (Binary code is not really the numbers 0 and 1, it is a series of software switches used either to set, or to describe the state of, the hardware switches, the transistors, where 0 = off and 1 = on.)
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[08] And that alone makes Timberlake look like Hester Prynne's Reverend Dimmesdale. Not jolly good cricket at all, old son.
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[09] I have no doubt that Powell would like nothing better than to get his ten-fold increase enacted and fine CBS stations under a 275,000 dollar maximum; I wonder if he'll be able to do that. Under the U.S. Constitution, you cannot be punished under laws that were passed after you perpetrated your crime, but the indecency guidelines are already in place. Only the amount of the fines would be changed, not the law.
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[10] And if those terms were used one could probably allow full dorsal nudity and frontal nudity including the pubic hair, for men, and full frontal nudity for women as long as the labia majora and mons venus were not seen. One could argue that showing the buttocks would violate the provision forbidding excretory organs, but strictly speaking, the buttocks are muscles and have nothing to do with excretion. It is the anus itself that plays a part in excretion. Plus, the buttocks are no more sexual than the breasts, although they are usually regarded in the same light.
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[11] Manner, in this context, means not only the mode of expression you use, but also the content of the message. Hence, libel laws are reasonable restrictions of manner as much as the laws that say you can't drive through a residential neighbourhood at three o'clock in the morning in a sound truck blasting out a political message at full volume.
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[12] Ms. Stanley's article is for Tuesday, 03 Feb 2004, and is reprinted at Truthout.org. In it, she examines the ramifications of this incident for CBS in particular in light of the network's less than sterling consistent pattern of behaviour. It is very much worth the read. CBS's past behaviour is another factor in why it could have the FCC come down hard on it.
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[13] Unless you subscribe to the philosophy that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
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[14] To be fair, that is not at all the case, of course. Individual censorship advocates do not attack every little thing, and any individual censorship attack is discrete from all other censorship attacks. There are no nationwide movements in the U.S. or in Canada to effect the banning of any books. As to finding the slightest excuse to attack a book, that statement stands. One of the attacks against the Harry Potter books in 2002 was based on the idea that the series consituted an attack against Christianity for no other reason than the fact the books contain stories about using sorcery.
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[15] Although I often think that it would be poetic justice to do so. I am coming to believe that those who advocate censorship should be given what they wish for, but levied against themselves. To whit: censorship advocates should be barred from the internet, viewing television or listening to the radio, or reading any newspapers, magazines, or books not approved for them by the court. This under the principle of leadership that you cannot ask others to do what you yourself will not or cannot do. Censorship advocates never ask to have themselves censored, you see. Of course, and it again seems paradoxical, such a system could not be implemented without violating the Bill of Rights or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The key, you see, is that a person must take such a system of censorship onto themselves. It cannot be imposed from outside even if that is what they seek to impose on others but won't impose on themselves.
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[16] For more about the differences between the broadcast and cable media, see Flashpoint: Janet Jackson and government regulation of TV by Ken Paulson. It's a fine analysis of the interplay between the free market place and Big Brother government.
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[17] And will not make the television networks at all happy, because a falling viewer base means less advertising revenue, and then unhappy political contribution donors are going to take their funding elsewhere. What that means, ultimately, is that there is a good chance that any elected parasites voting to regulate broadcast content will actually be working against themselves.
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[18] I chalk this one up to "Once burned, twice shy," although I will admit my first inclination was to treat it as a slippery slope action. In any event, it is certainly an overreaction. Why not just ask Chasez to sing something without any "offensive" words? (Naughty? Offensive?) Although given that there is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone, somewhere (Naughty?!), that could prove more difficult that one supposes.
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02 Feb 2004

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