Do you remember the catastrophic tragedy of 2004? I’m not talking about the massive Indian Ocean tsunami that killed over 266,000 people in coastal regions of Asia and Africa, the Islamist terrorists that murdered 340 people (mostly children) held inside a school in Beslan, Russia or the re-election of George Walker Bush. No, I’m talking about the single worst moment in the history of man. An event so undeniably heinous that it makes all those things I mentioned above look like a walk in the park.
 
The horror of which I speak is the momentary exposure of Janet Jackson’s right nipple on national television. Oh, the horror. It took me months to get over seeing that disgusting display of female anatomy during the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Even after all these years, I still carry the emotional scars of that moment and a cold chill runs up my spine when I recall seeing that dirty, dirty nipple.
 
This week, a federal appeals court dealt a significant blow to the U.S. government’s attempts to police the airwaves after the “nipplegate” ruling that the Federal Communications Commission could not fine CBS Corp. $550,000 for airing a Super Bowl halftime show in 2004 in which Ms. Jackson briefly bared her right breast. The court said the FCC deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so “pervasive as to amount to ‘shock treatment’ for the audience.” “Like any agency, the FCC may change its policies without judicial second-guessing,” wrote Judge Anthony Scirica of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “But it cannot change a well-established course of action without supplying notice of, and a reasoned explanation for, its policy departure.”
 
Jonathan Rintels, president of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, had this to say when the ruling was handed down this past Monday. “Given the change in administration, and the support President Bush enjoyed among the religious right and the conservative movement, I think his appointees decided to take up his cause. And they did politicize the decision as to what was indecent.”
 
Ain’t that the truth.
 
This decision marks the second time in the past year that the court system has thankfully reined in the hysterical (and illegal) policies of decency police that run the FCC. In June of 2007, a New York federal appeals court dismissed the FCC’s attempts to fine Fox for its broadcast of the Billboard Music Awards in 2002 and 2003, when Cher and Nicole Richie each muttered the F-word. These rulings are reassuring to those of us who believe that first amendment rights are worth protecting.
 
In both of these cases, the divide and conquer practices of partisan politics were used to make mountains out of molehills. Our system was hijacked by a well-organized and well-funded minority who want to inflict their notions of decency on the rest of us. Tim Winter, president of Parents Television Control Council, the media watchdog group that was responsible for over 99% complaints filed with the FCC over the infamous wardrobe malfunction, was (surprise, surprise) not happy with the court’s ruling. “Once again, a three-judge panel has hijacked the will of the American people. We are not surprised that the legal venue hand-picked by CBS would rule in favor of the network, the court’s opinion goes beyond judicial activism; it borders on judicial stupidity.”
 
Sadly, this is not the end of the story. The Supreme Court has agreed to review the case this fall to determine if less than a second of nipple exposure on national television qualifies as indecency and worthy of a half a million dollar fine.
Let me state the obvious here: Nipples are never indecent. Wasting valuable time, effort and money debating it is.

How in the world can that be disgusting?

Disgusting!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes molehills are the most beautiful breasts…

Good job Chris.  Millions of people throughout the world shared your trauma from nipple vision, so purposefully and blatantly orchestrated by CBS.  Unfortunately these scars may prevent us all from growing up and understanding the importance of life, like Tim Winter and his squadron of book burners.
I guess we will simply see mountains and miss all the lethal molehills.