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I resisted this for a while, but I guess I'm going to have to make a small comment on the Janet Jackson thing.

First, maybe she's a good actor, but I'm going to have to go with what I saw in Poetic Justice, and say she's not. Then I must come to the conclusion that it was actually unplanned. If you watch the video, the first thing she does is look down and try and see what went wrong. She even makes a move to reach to her brassier to see if she can undo it. Clearly some portion of the top was supposed to tear away, but the correct portion didn't tear. On the other hand, it's difficult to see exactly what was supposed to remain there afterwards (I know a red lingerie was what they claimed, but I don't know where this would have come from). The other counter argument is why would she have decorated her nipple if it wasn't meant to come out? My only conclusion there would be that it was supposed to show through the red lingerie with the decoration. Honestly, I don't think I'd be surprised if I found out either way was true.

Second, I'm astounded about the efficiency of the Internet when it comes to distributing information of this kind. I actually missed it on during the Super Bowl (I was watching the world series of poker during the half time show), and didn't hear about the incident until the next morning. I was doing mail, and went over to your local file sharing tool and typed in Janet Jackson Super Bowl. 19000 responses came back. 19000! How can the record or movie industries ever think they're going to beat the masses of file sharerrs when something that was totally unplanned and unexpected can be replicated within 10 hours to 19000 different locations.

Third, while it was unexpected and probably would make me feel uncomfortable if I was watching it in front of my kids, the entire brouhaha with the FCC and all is absurd. It's this kind of over emphasis on what can and cannot be shown that makes the rest of the world so annoyed with us. Gimme a break, the thing was on for less than a second. And if people hadn't made such a big deal about it, I wouldn't have even known about it! I guarantee that it's been 100x more noticed than it ever would have been if people hadn't replayed the piece a thousand times. Actually, since I heard about it, I've seen the clip (with the "inappropriate" parts blurred) no less than 10 times on television, on clips for the local news, on sports center and so on. Maybe I'll have more of a sense of outrage when I have my own kids.

D