Full disclosure: it was not my intention to use this week's column to address the unremitting controversy that is the Monday Night Football/Desperate Housewives/T.O./Nicolette Sheridan mess.
The whole thing set off my crap detector as being a prepackaged button-pusher invented to juice the ratings for ABC's franchise player and its hottest rookie. I imagined a room full of Disney interns calling the FCC at 9:02 PM EST on Monday night, doing their best Ned Flanders impressions and feigning hysteria with Talabanian tales of female turpitude. It's really no different than some production lackey leaking information about a racy sex scene or an on-set fight before a film is released to get the gossip rags buzzing.
I believe it was the late Irish poet Brendan Behan who said, "There is no such thing as bad publicity ... except your own obituary."
(And when I say, "I believe," I mean to say, "At least that's what Google told me when I entered 'bad publicity' and 'quotation.'")
But who am I to judge moral outrage? As the last election taught me, I have to be wary of my own arrogant and elitist "blue state" attitudes.
Sure, to me, any impertinence towards the MNF skit is hypocritical, idiotic, and actually quite pathetic.
Sure, to me, you're taking your children's morals into your own hands anytime you let them watch television after 9 PM.
Sure, to me, I've seen racier content on The Simpsons, Days of Our Lives and several shampoo commercials.
But hey, what do I know?
I voted for the other guy.
I wanted to find this moral outrage about the towel-tossing skit, to see it for myself. So I did what any elitist blue-stater would do in this situation: I turned on conservative talk radio.
And there they were, call after call after call on Washington's 630 AM, all of them begging for some smiting of ABC management or the NFL. All of them talking about how Americans "won't stand" for this continuing moral decline on our airwaves. All of them saying many of the same things that were heard after Jackson/Timberlake Affair last February, save for "where did she get that fabulous nipple clamp?"
Now that we've established that this skit actually insulted some of our puritanical friends, let's get specific, shall we?
1. The MNF intro sure was race-y, wasn't it?
Just like Kobe and the white girl, O.J. and the white girl, and Janet and the white boy...
Anyone who tells you there isn't a racial subtext to a black man being seduced by a white woman is l-y-i-n-g. Yes, I, too, would like to believe we've come a long, long way as a nation. But close your eyes and imagine if Brett Farve were standing there instead of T.O.
Think the FCC's phones are ringing off the hook for that one?
Now, let's be clear: claiming some of this "moral outrage" is fueled by suppressed bigotry is different than when Colts coach Tony Dungy comes out and claims the skit is Birth of a Nation, Version 2.0. "I think it's stereotypical in looking at the players, and on the heels of the Kobe Bryant incident I think it's very insensitive," he said.
While it did mimic the Kobe "incident" by having the white girl seduce the black athlete (according to Kobe's story at least), let's get real here: is Dungy actually saying it's just African-American jocks that get stereotyped as sex-crazed panty hounds?
Doesn't that generality apply to -- oh, I don't know -- any football player who ever tried out for his high-school team, in the hopes that he'd end up at the bottom of a cheerleader pyramid?
2. Michael Powell, chairman of the aforementioned FCC (Motto: "Defending Our Homeland from Baba-Booeys Since 1957"), said he was disappointed in ABC's judgement, adding that he wondered "if Walt Disney would be proud" of the skit.
Well, Mikey, if you were around back in 1953, Tinker Bell might have been fluttering around Neverland in a potato sack.
3. I'm really having a hard time sifting through the inconsistencies of this moral outrage.
Most of those who share my views are correctly asking whether a towel hitting the locker room floor is as offensive or provocative as those commercials on NFL games trumpeting a cure for erectile dysfunction. But the hypocrisy goes well beyond that fairly case-closed comparison.
This entire affair is yet another example of the types of things we accept or reject as a society. More specifically, we tolerate violence, but wage wars against sexuality. I blame the Baby Boomers. After decades of decadence, they're battling against the same sexual freedoms they once trumpeted because, one day, their child will ask them what an orgy is and, after 20 minutes of red-faced bumbling, they'll have to explain Woodstock.
In the Bible, violence is a means to an end (Despite the "Thou Shalt Not Kill" malarkey), while sexual expression is a sin. They even managed to find a way to have the hero of the Good Book conceived without a gratuitous sex scene!
We see these values affect everything from music to movies. Take this new "Alexander" flick Oliver Stone is doing. I bet there's a body count that dwarfs "Natural Born Killers." Yet all people want to talk about is trimming down the homosexual relationship depicted between Alexander and his male lover ... because that's more offense than a bloody bludgeoning.
We all tune in to Monday Night Football to watch a sport that glamorizes violence, brutality and, lately, anti-heroes like Terrell Owens. But the minute sexuality is added to the mix (in the form of someone other than a cheerleader or Michelle Tafoya), a segment of the population acts like someone pissed in their Cheerios.
Apathy towards violence, activism against sex.
Maybe Americans would have been more outraged about the Sudanese civil war if a few of the militants had dropped their guns and whipped out their genitals live on CNN.
Back to sports...
This is the second time the NFL has gotten slammed for corrupting America's youth through its "immoral" broadcasts. And this is the second time the NFL has hastily apologized.
So my question is: why does NASCAR get a pass?
Not for sex ... NASCAR is about as sexy as a trip to Jiffy Lube. But in the grand scheme of what does and does not affect impressionable young minds: What made booze more acceptable than boobs?
NASCAR recently said it will allow hard liquor advertising on its races, racers, and race cars. The move comes in the same year in which NASCAR made a much-applauded switch from tobacco to telecom as a sponsor for its championship racing series.
NASCAR races, by and large, do not come on TV after 9 PM. That's the time NBC decided would be the appropriate time after which to broadcast hard liquor ads back when it reversed a decades-old policy against the ads.
So young racing fans will get a gander at a pub's worth of spirit labels on any given weekend afternoon.
Oh, that's right, they already do:
This is the Matt Kenseth Crown Royal IROC Firebird. Or, at least, the toy version of it. It's available on NASCAR's official website, so your little driver-in-waiting can have all sorts of adventures with the Crown Royal car. Maybe you can even loan him your Dale, Jr. Budweiser die-cast toy car for some hard-livin' drag racin' fun.
After all, The Fast and the Furious was rated PG-13...
I wonder if the folks who were morally aggrieved by the MNF towel-drop can answer this question for me.
What's more offensive: a short skit that, at worst, might make little Billy check out Skin-emax while you're not looking ... or tire-to-tire endorsement of his favorite sport by hard liquor companies that, at worst, will encourage him to finish off that bottle of Kahlua you've been holding onto for a rainy-day White Russian?
Elitist blue-stater or not, I know my answer...
Random Thoughts
From the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" Dept., here's an actual headline from Yahoo! Sports on Monday night:
Eagles suck the D out of Big D
Indeed...
Every time I think Gary Bettman's NHL can't embarrass itself any more, along comes news that the Tampa Bay Lightning were given their Stanley Cup rings in a private ceremony before heading across the street to a hotel for lunch.
Well, almost all of the Lightning -- Conn Smythe winner Martin St. Louis, goalie Nikolai Khabibulin, and star Vinny Lecavalier weren't there, as they have signed with European clubs during the lockout.
Pathetic ... although the 15 players in attendance represent a larger audience for hockey than ESPN2 had at any time last season...
Here's something that, had I said it, would have gotten me some quality time in a padded room about 15 years ago: Steve Spurrier will replace Lou Holtz as head football coach at the University of South Carolina.
School officials are confident Spurrier will do a great job, seeing as how the nearest NFL team is nearly 100 miles away...
Nike President Phil Knight announced this week he will step down from his position on Dec. 28.
You know, just a stab in the dark here, but I'm guessing he has a slightly better retirement plan than those five-year-old Indonesian girls who made the shoes he sold...
Finally, tennis star Maria Sharapova has signed on with Canon to promote its products worldwide.
In turn, Canon will now be known as "the Official Camera for Nude Maria Sharapova Beach Paparazzi Shots on the Internet"...
Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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