"Baring Breast and Soul" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Baring Breast and Soul

The FCC showed milquetoastian muscle by announcing that it was fining CBS $550,000. That is $27,500 for each of their 20 owned television stations that exposed Janet Jackson’s right breast to their viewers as a result of what was referred to as a "wardrobe malfunction" during the sleazeball half-time performance during the Superbowl last winter.

Remember the hoopla surrounding the event? Kinda overboard considering the number of boobs who are baring it all these days. Nuditity is as ubiquitous as pot in The Village and people fell all over each other deploring the incident. Imagine if they had focused such opprobrium at the government for the lies they told to get us into Iraq.

Topping the hypocrisy were the absurd theatrics of the FCC, which first took eight months to study the matter and then leveled the meaningless half-million dollar fine. For goodness sakes, the last thirty-second commercials that found slots during that Superbowl cost advertisers more than $2,000,000 apiece. So the fine means nothing to CBS and underscores the wussiness of media oversight in this country.

Television is largely responsible for where we are today, having shaped our ethos for the past two generations. Our standards of behavior and taste have plummeted. We’ve reverted to primitivism. Whereas we used to use our imagination to entertain and stimulate, today we go right to the sex-‘n-violence.

What ever happened to subtlety? To dignity? Have we abandoned our intellect, the only thing separates us from other animals? Is that why the performers can push the limits, the media will air whatever they can get away with and the FCC will diddle-dance like Nero with a sour fiddle?

What’s really scary is that there doesn’t seem to be a way back to grace.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.