so now spike and justin can go have a beer somewhere and talk about how appalling the world of entertainment is...while they plan their next shocking movie/video.

SassierBritches said:

Also, I know Janet is a very big admirer of Spike Lee, and I thought that they were friends.

theVelvetRoper said:

its cool if he disagrees but i think, with his history, he should have just had a chat with j instead of making a public statement. i mean, really, who gives a warm turd what he thought of it?

Janet's 'Reveal' Lays Bare An Insidious Trend

By Donna Britt, Washington Post

So I was sitting at my desk Monday, studying an Internet photo enlargement of Janet Jackson's breast. Wondering whether its superstar owner was the innocent victim of a "wardrobe malfunction" or had conspired with rumored ex-beau Justin Timberlake to flash The Breast -- and its metal, nipple-encircling starburst -- to 90 million stunned Super Bowl viewers.

A boob studying a boob.

I'm not a boob merely because Jackson later admitted in a statement that the "decision to have a costume reveal at the end of my halftime show performance was made after final rehearsals."

I'm a boob -- and a rube and a hopeless naif, if you will -- because pop culture's journey to that surreal Super Bowl moment has been so unwavering that only a simpleton wouldn't have seen it coming. Who but an innocent would be shocked by any stunt performed in an MTV-fueled entertainment before a humongous audience?

Especially one performed by a diva with a soon-to-be-released album?

My boobdom revealed itself three days earlier during an "ER" rerun. In it, a preteen who'd accompanied her unconscious grandmother to the ER was distressed when medical personnel tore open the elderly woman's blouse for a procedure -- fully exposing her bare breasts to the TV camera. When the girl pleaded, "She wouldn't want to be naked," medical staffers duly covered Grandma.

At home, I sat wondering, "Did I just see that?" Just like Sunday at halftime.

Sometimes, it takes the mind a moment to accept the eyes' report of that which makes no sense. Jackson's exposed breast on a Super Bowl broadcast during family hour didn't conform to anything I'd seen on network TV. Nothing had prepared me for it -- not the Madonna-Britney tongue-lashing, not the nude female corpses on "CSI," not BET's relentless rump-shaking, not J.Lo's assorted transparent gowns.

I wasn't alone. Watching the show in her Cabin John family room with her son, 12, and daughter, 13, economic consultant Alice Makl was already uneasy -- "everything was objectionable: the dancing, the lyrics" -- before Timberlake ripped and The Breast emerged.

"My son immediately burst out, 'That's nasty!' " Makl recalled. "My daughter just sat there." The "costume reveal," her daughter later said privately, reminded her of a novel she'd read in which a female slave was repeatedly raped.

"For my daughter, it was a violent devaluation of women portrayed as entertainment," Makl said.

Next came the media firestorm. Then the obligatory "explanations" that somehow conjured a wacked-out space technician intoning, "Houston, we have a problem at the Bowl. It's a wardrobe malfunction! No, a costume reveal!"

Thanks to the stunt, one of the most exciting Super Bowl games ever was all but forgotten. Josh Groban's stirring vocals and Beyonce Knowles's beauty and class during her superb rendition of our nation's anthem became moot. Even a string of smarmy commercials -- a pet monkey hitting up its owner's date for sex? -- went poof.

All because of a breast.