Getting back to the matter of the F.C.C. investigating the Janet Jackson breast flash on the Super Bowl…
Some folks seem to be troubled that it takes weeks, sometimes months, to get the Bush administration to agree that an inquiry is warranted into a matter that involved security leaks, people being sent to die in a war founded on faulty intelligence, whether 9/11 was preventable, etc. But show a bare breast on TV and ten seconds later, a thorough investigation is underway. The comparison is stretching a bit to underscore how reticent the current administration to do anything that might point up its errors or shortcomings but the mindset is the same: We only want to do investigations which will help us politically. I suspect that's a lot more common in all corners of government than we like to admit.
The troubling thing to me about the Super Bowl investigation is this: What's to investigate? Either it was or wasn't planned. If it was (as seems likely), then a couple of MTV producers, Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake made the decision to flash nipple and the F.C.C. is not going to prosecute them and may not even have the authority to do so. What the F.C.C. can do is stick it to CBS. The idea here is to see if they can find some way to argue that the network was culpable and to use that to pressure them in other ways. At the same time, it puts all companies that hold broadcast licenses on notice that they'd better not tick off the folks in power.
There are people out there who think television has gotten too raw and too sensationalized. And you know what? Those people cannot win. They can pressure the networks to tone it down for a little while and even dole out a few punishments…but the liberation of public language and standards only goes in one direction, which is to get looser. Trying to roll that back is like trying to stuff toothpaste back into the tube. Can't be done.
What F.C.C. Commissioner Powell may be able to do is remind networks that he can make things very unpleasant for them. That's what the "investigation" is all about. They're going to investigate ways to use this against CBS.