Everybody's Got Them
 

It is absolutely amazing to me that at a time when we have war on two fronts, an economy in danger of collapse, several investigations going on to determine if our government is guilty of lies or cover-up, the president issuing threats against other countries, that the biggest outcry and quickest action taken is over the appearance of a breast. It wasn't even a completely naked breast. The nipple was covered with a metallic star, not much smaller than some bikini tops. Janet Jackson's performance was startling because it was unexpected in that venue, but people please, it's just a breast. Every species of mammals have them as a means of nursing their young. It is only those with deep sexual repressions who look upon it with horror, or leer at it lasciviously, with spittle in the corner of their mouths.

What's even more amazing is that these people want to use it as an excuse for censorship. How can you look at the instrument with which you fed your baby, or your mother fed you, as obscene or indecent. Will every piece of art that shows a breast now have to have an Ashcroft drape over it? Will the National Geographic series be banned from TV and the magazine hidden under mattresses if it shows "native nudity"? Will overweight men now have to wear bras on the beach?

How do we as a society reconcile our being so scandalized by the appearance of a partially bare breast and yet accept the truly obscene reality shows where people are subjected to humiliation, or that show them eating the most disgusting things imaginable, and call that entertainment. Why was the sight of the female breast so distasteful but a commercial for Viagra, complete with a warning about erections that last over four hours, within the bounds of good taste?

What is obscene and indecent is that there are hearings over what government will allow Americans to see within days of Ms Jackson's exposure and we have taken more than two years before being able to get hearings on what went on in the biggest attack on American soil on 9-11. The attempts to block and thwart the 9-11 commission from having full access to all the information needed to make a full assessment is obscene and indecent. The fact that we have such a hue and cry over seeing a breast and silence over being blocked from information from our government, that has power only from our informed consent, is obscene.

Where have we lost our priorities? Where have we lost our sense of outrage over an attempt at censorship? Why are we not incensed that our legislature will find this a subject that demands immediate attention instead of whether or not intelligence information was manipulated to lead us into war? War is the ultimate obscenity and yet we are willing to embrace a foreign policy of pre-emptive war.

We are allowing ourselves to be whipped into a frenzy in a rush to censorship in the same way we were whipped into a frenzy in a rush to war. We now know we were wrong in the rush to war. Let's not rush into another wrong decision. Let's not make this, "The Breast That Ate The Constitution."

2-11-04