2004-02-24 - 8:26 a.m.

I never wanted to talk about Janet Jackson and her breast. I felt that giving it time on this diary would be dignifying the whole fiasco, especially when people like LadeeLeroy and Neil Gaiman and quite a few of the DamnHellAssKings had already said what I would have said: that a woman's breast on national television is nowhere near as horrific as the fact that countless people have died in Iraq because of our invasion. Oh, and also that, considering how the entire half-time show was an exercise in sexploitation, that we were lucky to only have to deal with one breast.

I didn't care about the breast. I saw the breast. Honestly, that was not the right outfit to show your breast in. The breast could have looked better.

However, the breast in back in my face, and back in all our faces, and let me tell you, I wouldn't be surprised if the secret service had gone up to Miss Jackson and said, "Ma'am, we're gonna need to see some titty this afternoon. It's your patriotic duty."

The CD player in my car hasn't been working too well lately. If I eject a CD, it's a few minutes before I can insert another one. So when I got tired of Barenaked Ladies (wow, THAT's an interesting coincedence, but seriously, I was listening to one of their CDs) I knew I had to listen to the radio for a few minutes while my CD player dealt with itself.

Now, I try not to listen to the radio, ever, because it's crap. I rarely here anything I really like, and only rarely hear things I can even stomach. Even in a town as great as Austin, most of the radio stations play very boring music.

However, I wasn't listening to boring music. I was listening to a boring morning radio show. It was the boring radio show that I did not find boring in high school, because I was nowhere near as cynical as I am now. It's your typical drive to work, call in a tell us your wacky story, win tickets to see Dave Matthews or somesuch, P.o.S. radio show. Today, however, they said that they were no longer allowed to have live callers on the air. One of the hosts, in a fit of annoyance, said, "Thanks, Janet Jackson!"

Whatever.

You know, with all the people who have said that the worst thing about Janet's breast was that it distracted us from important issues like the war and the economy and the presidential campaign, and with all the moves towards further censorship of "profanity" and "graphic sexual imagery" that are being made by now, I wonder if Janet's breast may have been just what the White House ordered.

If you can't have live callers on certain radio shows, then you can't have unedited opinions, and that really squicks me out.

The Oscars, also, will have a tape delay, although the production peeps have insisted that this will only be used to edit for "profanity" and that political statements will not be edited out. One can only hope that they will stand by that statement, because we won't know until after the fact if they don't.

How convenient, that Janet had her top ripped off. Now the news conglomerates will be able to take away our voices in the name of protecting us from the human body. God, I fucking love living in fucking America right fucking now!

Truth be told, there was a Jackson being far more vulgar, recently, and it wasn't even her brother. The Reverend Jesse Jackson recently spoke at Harvard against same-sex marriage. He took time to admonish those who compared the struggle for queer rights with the struggle for African-American civil rights, because sexual minorities had never been counted as 3/5 of a citizen. He finally said that he refused to support same-sex marriage because it was not part of "his culture."

So, despite the fact that slave marriages were not recognized as valid, or interracial marriages, and despite the fact that slavery and racism have been part of Western "culture" for about as long as homophobia has been, Jesse Jackson refuses to compare the struggle of sexual and racial minorities to acheive equality, and feels that his cultural beliefs are worthy of dominating American policy.

Well, let's do a running tally of how many people in this country had "slave owners" and "lynch mob instigators" in their family tree and then we'll talk about how much of an influence culture should play on running America.

Two Jacksons, both black, both cruxes of the puritanical America that I had hoped was behind us. One, a woman, is begin villified as a whore, and used to take away the freedom of others. The other is a collaborator, upholding the status quo in the fear that his own struggle for his people will be ignored. It's such a convenient illusion. White men have only so much power that they're willing to give; better make sure that it's YOUR people who get it and not THEIR people.

In the meantime, Bush is backing the marriage amendment, and more people are dying in Iraq.

Well done, Reverend Jackson. You really know your priorities.

And Janet, I hope you just wanted to show your tit for fun or fame. I hope you didn't do it because of some huge conspiracy against free speech. If you did, I'd have to loath you just as much as I do the other Jackson. You'd both be doing the master's work.

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