Tuesday, February 3, 2004

Again with the Boob

I am amazed to find that I am still thinking about this, but the whole brouhaha about Miss Jackson's Tit is a beautiful example of the American Morality at its worst. I alternate between giggling delightedly and shaking my head in dismay. And since I had to come back and delete about seventeen modifiers from my previous post (but worry not, there are plenty left), I thought I'd take a moment to jot down some thoughts.



Instead of cracking open the Proust as I had intended last night, I went back out to the living room and played Prince of Persia for a little while (being defeated several times without even completing the one level), and in between bouts of trying to defeat my own dead father and his crack team of dead bodyguards, I flipped through the TV stations to drown my sorrows in the sweet electronic oblivion.



When I landed on Channel 2 (I think it was Channel 2, anyway), someone was interviewing a Congresswoman from Fremont or somesuch place about Miss Jackson's Tit. She was a perfect interview for this purpose: ash-blonde perm rigidly tamed into a sort of chaste helmet, dull beige suit and a cream blouse tied at the neck with a floppy Diane Feinstein bow, thin passionless mouth drawn tight in a prim grimace, slightly protruberant eyes open wide and flashing with fiery indignation. She looked like the kind of woman who would secretly cheer at an execution while pretending to pray for the convict's soul, the kind of woman who would outwardly profess compassion for unwed mothers and drug addicts and those poor misguided homosexuals while inwardly writhing with delight over the fact that all such sinners will burn for eternity in the lake of everlasting fire.



Of course, she might be a very nice lady whose appearance is against her. I try not to judge. But anyway, the thrust of her comments was that this Superbowl telecast goes out all over the world, and so now all of the world sees America as the Home of Miss Jackson's Tit... and the Congresswoman feels "we can do better than that."



I returned to the poor Prince's doomed battle after that and didn't give any more thought to the nice lady's words until later, when I was thinking about Lance's take on the Superbowl commercials and the particularly lowbrow route most of them followed, with horse-farts and unexpected bikini-waxes and other crotch-centered bits of sophomoric humor. Sophomoric humor has it's place, of course, and I laugh at potty-jokes the same as any other guy; beer pretty much goes in the same place, so it stands to reason the Budweiser would use such humor. But this is the America that the foreigners watching the Superbowl will see and judge us upon: not just the America of Miss Jackson's Tit but also the America of horse-farts and bikini-waxes and talking chimpanzees coming on to your girlfriend while your back is turned and what to do if you have an erection for four hours after taking Ciala.



And let's also remember that the rest of the world isn't nearly as offended by tits as we Americans profess to be... they get titties in their televisions and their morning papers every day. They probably wondered why in the name of God the director cut away from the first interesting moment of the whole show to bore them with yet another episode in the American Males' eternal quest for Bud Light. That is the America that was broadcast all over the world, the prurient hypocrisy that celebrates a farting horse and talks frankly about four-hour erections yet shies back in horror at an exposed breast.



But then I like to keep in mind the fact that the people in other countries who watch the Superbowl are probably pretty pro-American, anyway, so I suppose they expect such things. Or else they hate America and are only watching to make fun of us and our knee-padded, pointlessly complicated, and ultimately pussy sports that can't hold a candle to real manly sports like soccer and bullfighting and kickboxing.



I think the time has come to demystify the tit. I know I tend to flinch when one is released in my presence... but as a born-and-bred American who wasn't breast-fed and doesn't spend any time with female porn, I'm simply not used to them. One expects them to be covered up merely because they usually are covered up. But really, they're not obscene, they aren't reproductive organs, one does not eliminate waste through them, and so there is absolutely no reason to make such a big deal out of them, or any bigger a deal than seeing a man's bare chest.



So go ahead and whip 'em out, girls. You've got my blessing.



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