It's not just the most TiVo-ed event of all time or the most searched for item in internet history anymore. Now it appears Janet Jackson's "releasing of the hound" is making some serious waves:
SINGAPORE - Viewer outrage over singer Janet Jackson's breast-baring Super Bowl stunt is forcing the U.S. television industry to change its programming style, the president of music channel MTV said today.
"The artist sometimes can be unpredictable, which is difficult in a live format. We were absolutely mortified by it," said Bill Roedy, president of London-based MTV Networks International, part of the U.S. MTV cable network that produced Jackson's half-time show.
This must be that obscure definition of the word "mortified" which means "cackling and gleefully rubbing hands together while rolling naked in a mountain of press releases."
It's in the OED. Look it up.
CBS, MTV's sister company, used an "enhanced delay" on its recent broadcast of the Grammy Awards and Walt Disney Co's ABC Network plans to implement a similar five-second delay on its Academy Awards broadcast later this month.
In addition to its own time delays, MTV has quietly consigned raunchy material, such as Britney Spears' video for her new single "Toxic," to evening from daytime slots.
MTV couldn't be more overjoyed at this. The Jackson incident has finally given them the excuse to begin the inevitable phase-out of music in favor of total reality programming like Sorority Life, The Osbournes, and Real World: Calcutta. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect Viacom had engineered the whole thing in order to divest themselves of videos entirely.
This, however, is my favorite part of the article:
Upset viewers filed more than 200,000 complaints about the incident, which Timberlake blamed on a "wardrobe malfunction," and quickly prompted the Federal Communications Commission to launch an investigation.
Riddle me this: if 89 million people were watching the Super Bowl at any given time, and 200,000 complained about the halftime show, that means 444 out of 445 viewers obiously didn't care enough to bitch to the FCC. Where are the telegrams and dictaphone calls of support for naked breasts on television? When will this silent majority be counted?
Oh, and this just in:
The House Commerce Committee's telecommunications subcommittee on Thursday voted to increase the fines that the FCC could level against broadcasters for broadcasting indecent material. The new fines would represent a tenfold increase from the current $27,000 to $270,000. The bill, by Republican Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan who chairs the subcommittee, received bipartisan backing and is expected to receive swift passage by the Congress and an equally swift signature from President Bush.
Open-ended wars on "terror"...record national debt and trade deficits...negative job growth for three years and thousands of American jobs exported overseas...good thing this administraton has its priorities straight.
Meanwhile, Georgia Senator Zell Miller declared Thursday that he particularly objected to the halftime performance by Kid Rock in which he wore an American flag poncho. The Associated Press quoted Miller as saying, "This is the same flag we pledge allegiance to, the same flag that is draped over the coffins of dead, young, uniformed warriors killed while protecting Kid Rock's bony butt."
You fucking clown. How is one talent-challenged jagoff sporting a star-spangled poncho more obscene than the fact that we have to continue making flags to drape "over the coffins of dead, young, uniformed warriors?" Would it help if I told you Kid Rock's flag, like most of those sold in this country, was probably made in China? Would that take the pain away?
Ok, unfortunately, the super bowl just got erased from my TiVo, so I can't check, but I sure can't see the difference in the pictures I can find. So I'll bite - how was the poncho different from the American flag? (Apart from the hole in it, of course.)
Hmmm.
Apparently I have suffered one of my famous blackouts. I blame the harmful rays emanating from Janet's sun-pierce, which has apparently blasted all the intelligence out of the American people, so why should I be any different?
I had a distinct memory of the stripe and star count being off. However, upon further review of pictures, it looks accurate. The stars are on the wrong side, but that probably just means the 'front' side of the flag was on the inside.
So, I'm wrong. ARREST KID ROCK!
Forget Janet Jackson: The Veterans of Foreign Wars is peeved at Kid Rock. The VFW is upset that media outlets are ignoring the poncho Rock wore during the Super Bowl halftime show, which was made by cutting a slit in an American flag. Rock later to......
| --Posted to Bannerisms on Feb 14, 2004 6:18 PM:. |
Oddly, I had the same experience of thinking the poncho was not a flag but just flag theme, making the argument and then going back and looking at the photos and seeing that it was just "backwards."
Personally I think the photos were doctored as part of a greater conspiracy.
I'm in favor of anything that gets Kid Rock arrested.
Seriously though, if they're going to give that guy trouble for his flag-themed shirt (it wasn't identical to the American flag), they'd better be going after other dangerous criminals like Lee Greenwood, Jeff Foxworthy and Jeff Gordon -- all public figures who have shown their patriotism by wearing flaglike shirts in their public appearances.
What's really annoying is that this seems to have rekindled the fires for conservatives to argue passionately for a constitutional amendment to protect the flag from naughtiness. Between that and the gay marriage todo, I'm convinced that what we really need is an amendment to prevent the passage of stupid amendments. I'm not sure how we would accomplish this, but it probably involves a census to identify stupid people and the strategic placement of deliriants in the water supply.