Salocin

Bare flesh causes mass apoplexy

The Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake bare breast scandal has the US in apoplectic fits. As a person with a French/Belgian background, I don't think the bared breast issue is much of a story (have you ever seen a French shampoo commercial?!), but the Great American Reaction has eclipsed even the candidature for the next Democratic candidate in terms of share of gossip - it's absolutely hysterical.

The BBC has an article which sums it up very nicely. What a country of contradictions.

Of particular humorous value is the quote from from baseball coach Tommy Lasorda. Although he was likely just having an opportunistic dig at American Football, I find it ridiculous that one second you're watching grown men wearing body armor doing their best to beat each other to a pulp, while risking serious bodily harm, but two seconds of bared breast results in the comment, "That was the most disgusting thing that I have ever seen at a sports spectacle". Not to mention that on a pay per view channel not three clicks away was the rampantly commercial "Lingerie Bowl" (which the members of my Superbowl party switched to briefly at regular intervals to see if anything of interest was happening, before eventually giving up on the whole thing).

Meanwhile, the same people who are furiously calling CBS to complain about the residual image of a Jackson breast that was indelibly burnt into their cornea, are watching commercials in which a guy throws a football through a rubber tyre to get you to buy a drug for erectile dysfunction, and no doubt hanging up on the CBS complaints department to place an order. Don't worry guys, it comes in a plain brown wrapper.

I'm going to be chuckling about this for a while.