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Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 07:58:19 GMT
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From: "Sorrano K. Lovelace" <justme@donotspamme.com>
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Subject: Hypocrisy and right-wing politics fuel furor over Super Bowl episode
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Hypocrisy and right-wing politics fuel furor over Super Bowl episode
and hypocritical outpouring of official moral outrage in the US. It has
given rise to demands for further censoring the television airwaves and
provided yet another opportunity for whipping up the Christian
The guardians of American decency are up in arms, including National
Football League (NFL) commissioner Paul Tagliabue, Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Michael Powell, the religious
right, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and executives from
corporate giants PepsiCo, America Online and CBS.
Tagliabue, who presides over a multi-billion dollar sport-business that
more and more seems to recapture the spirit of Roman gladiatorial
inappropriate and embarrassing to us and our fans. We will change our
policy, our people and our processes for managing the halftime
posed on the sidelines for photographs with former president George Bush.
FCC chairman and an advocate of even more concentrated corporate
my family and I gathered around the television for a celebration.
Instead, that celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and
FCC could fine CBS and its approximately 200 affiliates $27,500 per station.
even more encouraging to see moms and dads rise up in defense of their
the usual character of such stage-managed affairs. Extreme right web
sites and radio talk-show hosts call on their readers and listeners to
bombard the corporation or government body in question with protests and
sex-obsessed that it raises questions all on its own. In a handful of
paragraphs, the Journal editors refer with apparently considerable
on the Viacom entertainment conglomerate (owner of CBS) to rein in its
Executives at soft-drink manufacturer PepsiCo, who buy millions of
dollars of advertising during the football championship game (this year
such advertising cost $76,666 a second), are threatening to pull out of
be no repetition of the Jackson incident. PepsiCo spokesman Mark Dollins
America Online (AOL) is demanding a $7.5 million refund from Viacom
after announcing plans to cancel its on-demand streaming of the halftime
surprised and disappointed with certain elements of the show. In
deference to our membership and fans, AOL and AOL.com will not be
CBS chief Leslie Moonves, last seen in public suppressing the
unflattering mini-series portrait of former president Ronald Reagan in
to offer my personal assurances that we are looking into this matter and
One might be forgiven in the face of this moral effluvia for thinking
that something quite atrocious had occurred on national television. In
even on American television.
No doubt the Jackson-Justin Timberlake number was tasteless, as was the
entire Super Bowl program, as it has been every year. Interestingly,
neither the Journal nor the Christian fundamentalists criticized the
halftime performance by the talentless rapper Kid Rock, an avowed
American flag, flanked by a pair of shapely women gyrating in
Nor did they make mention of the patriotic display during the singing of
were asked to hold up placards of the American flag. Another highlight
of the pre-game show was the planting of a US flag on a mock moon surface.
The drawing back in horror at the appearance of a naked breast is
particularly hypocritical and odious. American professional football is
increasingly violent, played at many positions by almost freakish human
violence continues off the field. Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play
in the NFL (1998) alleged that one in five NFL players during the
1996-97 season had been charged with a serious crime at one time or another.
(In more general terms, the National Coalition on Television Violence
estimates that American children witness 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts
of violence on television by the time they finish elementary school.)
The ritualized violence in pro football is accompanied by fetishized
sexuality. Scantily-clad cheerleaders are a fixture at NFL games. Ian
spent the postseason blitzing viewers with yet another mindless
commercial featuring buxom barmaids and cheerleaders, an ad hardening
testosterone-crazed football culture are to be seen exclusively as
The entire professional football experience in the US is increasingly
with distracting a discontented and alienated population, providing it
with vicarious thrills and encouraging its very worst instincts.
The general political and social context in which the breast-baring
episode takes place makes it all the more obscene. Outraged by Janet
corporate criminals with the closest connections to the Bush
administration, and the launching of a war in Iraq, which has already
killed and maimed tens of thousands, on the basis of outright lies.
There is something extraordinarily sick about this state of affairs.
The outcome of the Super Bowl incident will no doubt be even greater
pressure on the television networks to avoid controversy, produce bland
CBS executives have already promised that there will be no repeat of the
Jackson unveiling or any other untoward occurrence at the Grammy Awards
February 8. The network has long used a five-second delay to cut audio
technology making possible split-second video editing. This creates the
possibility of entirely eliminating unwanted interventions of all types
CBS and the other television networks are being called to order at a
time of increasing political volatility and flux. The FCC investigation
of the Super Bowl stunt will no doubt provide a new forum in which to
discipline and intimidate the entertainment industry. For the Bush
administration and the extreme right, the supposed need to protect the
useful pretexts for the generalized assault on free speech and
democratic rights.
It is worth noting that CBS, in a direct violation of democratic rights,
refused to air a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl from the liberal
policies, on the grounds that it rejects all such controversial
advertising. Viacom, a private corporation, thereby determined what
millions of Americans could or could not see.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/feb2004/bowl-f05.shtml
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