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Today's
Stories
February
9, 2004
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with Jewish
Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine in
Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide from
Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure: Our
Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan
Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10, Morris
0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations
and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia
|
February
9, 2004
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment
Boob
Tube Super Bowl
By Dr. SUSAN BLOCK
We
Americans are embarrassing ourselves again. Back in the late 1990s,
a certain Independent Prosecutor showed the world our obsession with
our President’s sex life. More recently, our current President
showed ‘em that America could bomb the crap out of a country,
if we felt like it. Then Janet showed America her silver starburst.
Now Americans are showing the world we’ve gone bananas over a
breast.
We
Americans love to show off, and we love to watch. We make the whole
world watch our stars and our wars. It’s often embarrassing, but
I guess we just can’t help ourselves.
I like to watch, I confess. I mean, for once in my life, I wish I was
a football fan. Yes, I didn’t watch the Super Boob--uh, Bowl,
so I missed seeing the notorious Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake “wardrobe
malfunction” live. However, I have been able to view it in digital
stills on the Internet, from four or five different angles, plus a fine
close-up, thanks to the Drudge Report. And all I can say is: Nice. A
lovely, well-shaped, obviously real, stylishly pierced, middle-aged
breast of color. What’s not to like?
Apparently,
a host of evils of obscene and embarrassing proportions, according to
America’s new Anthony Comstock of the Airwaves: Federal Communications
Commission Chief Michael Powell (whose naked head looks kind of obscene
and embarrassing to me). If only Michael’s Papa, U.S. Secretary
of State Colin Powell, would get as exercised over the missing WMDs
as his son has gotten over a pop star’s missing bra cup, America
might be less embarrassed about being caught with our political pants
down right now. But no. The father keeps his council about the Bushies’
bogus “mushroom cloud,” while the son blows his stack over
a boob.
There
he was, ensconced in the bosom of his family, “gathered around”
the boob tube, for a “celebration” of 280-pound pseudo-soldiers
clobbering one another, when the Jackson Breast busted out upon his
screen for one eternal second in a long shot. Powell was “outraged!”
How dare his delight in the wholesome spectacle of men in dirty tights
body-slamming other men in dirty tights be “tainted” by
such a “classless, crass and deplorable stunt”? Horrors!
A boob! On the other hand, I’m sure the Powell Family really enjoyed
the Viagra commercials. Erectile dysfunction: yes! Wardrobe malfunction:
no.
And
yet, the Super Boob rules. Janet’s ripe right melon is everywhere,
in family newspapers, magazines, TV, all over the Internet. Hey, once
one shows it, the rest can too! We have the prudes to thank, in part,
for this massive media proliferation. What Ken Starr did for blowjobs
and semen stains, Michael Powell is doing for pierced mammaries.
Now all sorts of righteously indignant Americans are speaking out against
the vile sight of a woman’s chest, from MTV’s Tom (don’t-blame-me/blame-her!)
Freston to Knoxville, Tennessee’s Terri Carlin who is suing Janet,
Justin, MTV, CBS and Viacom, claiming she was traumatized, thus entitled
to monetary damages. What will she win: the booby prize?
But
Powell was first to condemn the breast, and continues to lead the pack
in blustering, spare-no-expense sanctimony.. Powell and Jackson are
quite a pair. Both are shadowed by their more famous older relatives.
Powell is Dr. Chillingworth to Jackson’s Hester Prynn. His pompous,
clueless style rivals that of America's Crisco-Headed Attorney General
Ayatollah Asscraft (who earned that name when he forced the Patriot
Act up America’s collective behind--with no Crisco!). Asscraft
spent $8000 in taxpayers’ money for a set of drapes to cover up
the gloriously bare right breast of the “Spirit of Justice,”
an elegant stature that has towered behind American Attorneys General
for some 70 years. Powell will spend far more taxpayer money than this
as he excitedly launches his “thorough and swift” federal
“probe” into just who knew the boob would be bared. Stations
will pay. Heads will roll. Breasts will tremble. Oooh, probe me, baby,
probe me.
Powell’s
breast must be trembling, knowing that it’s his own lust for naked,
unbridled corporate control of the media--the kind of thing that allows
a Viacom to wholly own a CBS along with an MTV--that spawned this “shocking”
Jackson Moment: The Boob that Filled the Super Bowl. Girl Gone Wild!
Huge Bloated Media Conglomerate Breaks Out of its Bra and Devours America!
Boobilicious! Busted.
It’s
all so embarrassing, not for Janet or Viacom, but for us Americans.
It’s not the breast that’s the problem; it’s the cover-up.
Europeans, South Americans and Japanese bare their boobs regularly on
primetime TV, not to mention the beaches. America’s appalled,
sensationalizing yet sanctimonious attitude toward bosom-baring puts
us a bit closer to the camp of our so-called enemies, those misogynist
Islamic fundamentalists who demand the female body be covered almost
completely in tent-like burqas (why stop with the breast when you can
be “outraged” by the mouth, the ankle, the hair?), as they
glorify muscle-pumping, bone-crunching male brutality on fields of battle
and fields of play.
Thankfully,
unlike their Islamist brethren, our American fundamentalists don’t
make us cover the whole female breast. Some of the most zealous critics
of Janet’s boobage sport or enjoy gazing upon ample cleavage.
Take a gander at the plunging décolletage of the ladies surrounding
some of America’s most conservative preachers, not to mention
the NFL cheerleaders. It’s the nasty NIPPLE that offends the American
sensibility. This has been so ingrained into most of us that we rarely
ask why. Why? If cleavage is okay, then why is a woman’s nipple
more “deplorable” than a man’s nipple? Is it because
it can nurture a child, while a man’s can’t? Must we bite
the nipple that feeds us?
Of
course, Janet probably likes being bitten. Clearly, the girl is no sissy
about pain; those big nasty nipple-shield piercings hurt. Like her talented,
infamous brother, she’s androgynous: tough as a linebacker in
body armor, soft as a natural breast; an exhibitionist (of course),
with a streak of the “naughty girl.” She doesn’t seem
to be as fragile as her brother Michael, but like all the Jacksons,
she’s probably got a bit of a Daddy complex. Even as she apologizes
so submissively to anyone "offended" by the "costume
reveal" that went "too far," she seems to savor being
spanked by the same American prudes who impeached one US President for
a sex lie and now support one who perpetrates a war lie. She doesn’t
seem to mind being gagged by the Grammies, or the know-nothing nudniks
at CBS who censor the likes of MoveOn.org. Though getting bitch-slapped
by MTV (who promoted the Janet Jackson Super Bowl Show as promising
“shocking moments”) might sting a bit.
But
the exhibitionist in her must be orgasming over all the attention. It
might be embarrassing, but it’s intoxicating! And there’s
no denying that most of us love it. At least, Super Bowl viewers do,
as evidenced by the 180% spike in TiVo viewership immediately after
the Jackson Flash. Janet’s number one on the Internet this week,
far surpassing Britney and Paris. Pundits of every type, from Sports
to Music to Politics to Sex, are writing, cartooning and pontificating
upon the meaning of The Super Boob. The Breast Seen ‘Round the
World. It is, indeed, a Moment in Mammarial Herstory.
Why
such a big deal about a bosom? It’s about sex, of course (sex
sells!), but breasts are far more essential to nurturing than to sexual
intercourse. And therein lies the origin of the all-American obsession
with breasts: that deep need we all have for deep nurturance. Sustenance.
Comfort in a Cold World. Food. The breast is food, after all, that unique
part of a woman's body that actually creates food: the milk of life
and love and shocking moments.
It’s
kind of mystifying, the tit that titillated America into a “state
of mass apoplexy” as BBC Correspondent Peter Bowes put it. It’s
also a bit frightening. The Jackson case could have a "galvanizing
effect" on the move to toughen standards, said FCC Commissioner
Michael Copps (while furtively rubbing his crotch). Expect more aggressive,
punitive attempts to control the airwaves from a government hot to get
its grimy hands on all our innocent, tender boobies. Expect the thimbleful
of giant corporations--like Viacom, Time Warner, Disney and Fox News
Corp--who control Big Media to lick the leather jackboots of the FCC
on this issue, like well-paid hookers, so that they can continue to
get the MONEY and gobble up more media outlets. They’re already
burning Janet at the stake. With one Jackson thoroughly demonized, its
no stretch to sacrifice another one, at least temporarily, until Powell’s
"outrage" has abated.
Of
course, it doesn't stop with Janet. It’s already moved on to “ER”
canceling an episode that featured an elderly woman’s bare breast,
and to all stations incorporating five-minute delays into their live
broadcasts, index fingers poised to press the bleep button. Unfortunately,
what the tragedy of 9-11 did for American militarism, Nipplegate might
do for American censorship. We Americans, addicted as we are to showing
off, punishing and embarrassing ourselves, could allow the moral scolds
among us to crack the whip across our tender freedoms.
Then
again, who knows? The boob is out of the bag. Maybe next, we’ll
see the left one!
Dr.
Susan Block is a sex educator, host of The Dr. Susan Block
Show and author of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure. Visit her website at
http://www.drsusanblock.com.
If you'd like to contact her, please email liberties@blockbooks.com
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