Since I am not a football fan, I did not watch the SuperBowel. I probably would not have watched it anyway, but I had musical things to do while it was going on, so our modern day gladiators had to do their thing without my observation. As a result, I first heard of Janet Jackson's abrupt décolleté here on this very thread. My response was an amused "Sheesh!" So much for that, I thought.

But yesterday evening, somewhat before 6:00 p.m. I popped on the tube in preparation for watching the Jim Lehrer News Hour on PBS, as I usually do. I was somewhat early, so I surfed through the ghetto of cable news channels:   CNN, CNN Headline News, CNBC, MSNBC, and Fox News Service. The first thing that greeted me as Fox News came on (which I sometimes watch for amusement) was a view of Janet Jackson (bizarrely garbed as usual) prancing about a stage with some dude (Justin Timberlake, I presume—never heard of him 'til now) gallumphing around after her. He reaches around, grabs the front of her dress (or whatever she was wearing), and suddenly, for about a second and a half at most, Miss Jackson's right breast is exposed to the world. All of this at a considerable distance, too far to see anything but a flash of flesh, but no detail, not even the ornate pasty she is said to have been wearing. In the meantime, two talking heads are holding forth in an animated fashion, expressing shock and outrage. Then, through the magic of "instant replay," they showed it again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again....

I changed channels to MSNBC, and there I saw Miss Jackson's sudden exposure again. And again. And again. And again....

ALL of the news channels were doing the same thing. Again. And again.... Even ESPN, of course! Instant replay, after all.

The implication of all this replaying was "Look fast, or you'll miss it!"

On the Jim Lehrer News Hour (a fairly serious news program) they did not lead with this. At the very end of the opening news briefs before going into the longer stories, Lehrer mentioned it with a rather wry smile, showed the clip once, then moved on to the sort of things that a good news program should be concerned with.

As a result of this sudden onslaught of displaying feminine attributes (only one attribute, really) on television, three thoughts occurred to me:—

The first is a comment attributed to King Charles II, said to have been a notorious womanizer. Upon observing a woman in his court who sported a gown with an extremely low neckline, he is said to have remarked to a companion, "God's blood, sir! I haven't seen such a display since the day I was weaned!"

The second thought was in noting how outraged the talking heads were at this "tasteless display"—as they continued the "tasteless display" of Miss Jackson's boob over and over. I just heard a media critic on KUOW (local NPR affiliate) comment that he was at home watching the game and taking notes on his clipboard, and apparently reached for his beer at the wrong moment because he missed it entirely. He saw the clip later (again, and again, and again. . . .), noted that the exposure lasted for less than two seconds and was at too great a distance to see anything. His opinion was that if the news Twinkies hadn't gone up like a haystack on fire, it would not have suddenly become the Story of the Year. If it was intentional, which it pretty obviously was, then congratulations to Miss Jackson, because she has gone a long way toward resuscitating a flagging career.

And the third thought was a restatement of the old conundrum about "why are there so many more horses asses than there are horses?" If one were to take the number of human females over the age of puberty and multiply their number by two, assuming normal circumstances, one would then know how many boobs there are in the world. And yet, the actual number of boobs is much larger than that. It is my belief that many of those excess boobs are in the television news business.

Ruminations on a slow Tuesday morning. . . .

Don Firth