Janet's show draws kneejerk overreaction

By By Will Bardwell / sports writer
Feb. 5, 2004
It's not the end of the world, you know.
I didn't see Janet Jackson bare it all (well, at least most of one side) at the Super Bowl halftime show when it happened, but I've seen it about a thousand times on TV since then. I also saw a pretty good (don't take that the wrong way) picture of it on Sunday night on where else? the Internet.
Imagine the excitement! Janet Jackson exposed! The 12-year-old in me had been waiting a long time for this.
And I clearly remember the thought that occupied my mind when I finally saw it for myself: "That's it?"
Yep, that was it. No giant fireworks. No confetti streamers. No "Hallelujah" chorus. No big deal. Just a breast.
Having said that, of course it was inappropriate. Despite the fact that it's not a big deal, a lot of people can make it through their day just fine without watching Janet Jackson's top fly off. I'm one of them.
To boot, a lot of people were watching with their children, which probably made for a pretty awkward moment. But if that sort of thing really bothers you, then you probably should've turned the channel several minutes in advance. The whole halftime show was pretty steamy, and inappropriately so. It was just the wrong venue. Janet Jackson's flash was simply the culmination of it.
But it wasn't a crime against humanity. It was just a breast. Big deal.
And let's face it there are probably no more than five or six kids alive over the age of 10 who haven't seen that sort of thing before. Heck, the first time I ever saw a breast was in the 4th grade when I was scavenging through old magazines for some stupid class project. My 60-year-old teacher, of all people, accidentally brought a copy of "Glamour," and there it was. I was just as unimpressed then as I was on Sunday.
In fact, I went on to overcome my early exposure to nudity, graduate from high school and college, and have gone on to lead a fairly normal life. And after all the trauma I'd experienced! Imagine that!
Today, clothes are a rare find on cable TV after about 10 p.m., and the same thing goes for a lot of department store catalogs. And if you've got HBO, forget about it.
It's not that I'm deploring the prevalence of sex in the media. I'm just saying that's the way it is. No one has to like it, but if someone wants to shield their kids from that sort of thing, they probably should've taken a clue from the bump-and-grind moves that Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake were putting on each other. Janet's big surprise was nowhere near the first raunchy moment of the show.
But it was still just a body part, and not even the worst imaginable. Furthermore, it's probably not the first time your kids have seen it. On top of that, your kids probably thought the same thing I did "If this thing doesn't hurry up and end, I'm turning on the PlayStation."
The only people whose lives seem to have been destroyed by all this are adults. Maybe that's the way it should be, since grown-ups have to be a little paranoid in looking out for kids. But when Kid Rock cut a hole in an American flag so he could wear it over his tank top, was anybody offended? Did anybody change the channel in protest? Nope. But a split-second shot of a woman's breast from half the football field away? Call the priest! Cleanse us!
Sillier than the public reaction, of course, was Janet Jackson's excuse. An accident? Has any man in the history of the world been around a woman who sincerely lost her top by accident? I'm not sure if Justin Timberlake was in on it my gut says no but it really doesn't matter. The whole episode was ridiculous, and the reaction has been much ado about nothing.
The suits with the NFL and CBS should've known what they were getting into. Hire MTV, put Janet Jackson in that skimpy black leather suit, and you get what you deserve. CBS should've known better than to let it go forward. And any parents who watched Janet walk out in that thing and prance around like she did for a couple of minutes also should've known better than to keep watching.
Hopefully, everybody involved learned their lesson.