Thought Theater

Christian Goals, Super Bowls, Swimming Holes, & Switching Roles genre: Hip-Gnosis & Polispeak & Tongue-In-Cheek

Hold onto your hats...I sense a boycott's a brewin'! Yes, the American Family Association better step up and call upon outraged Americans to stand up support family values. Why, you ask? Well, because an appeals court has just overturned the $550,000 fine levied against CBS for forcing America's unsuspecting families to witness a traumatizing frame or two of Janet Jackson's almost fully exposed breast.

In a decision that clears CBS of any wrongdoing for airing the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that featured Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction," a federal appeals court overturned the $550,000 fine that the Federal Communications Commission levied against the station, calling the fine arbitrary and capricious.

The decision was handed down Monday by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which found that the fine was unfair because the commission, in imposing it, deliberately strayed from its practice of exempting fleeting indecency in broadcast programming from punishment.

The controversy surrounding the incident yielded a record-breaking 540,000 complaints to the commission in the weeks following the show.

I don't know about anyone else, but I find myself longing for the good old days...the one's when evangelicals could shout jump and George Bush would get on a plane and rush to Washington to save a woman, in a vegetative state, from the evildoers. I miss the days when a half million family values voters could cause a knee-jerk reaction by a "Christian friendly" government agency.

Sadly, ever since our dear leader sat idle for four days while New Orleans became a toxic public swimming pool, we seem to have lost our zeal for all things pompous and pious...and that really troubles me. Why should a little old flood (not "The Flood", mind you) be allowed to spell the end of a conservative Christian crusade against all things secular?

What's the world coming to? It won't be long and scientists are going to succeed in shutting creationism out of our children's public school curriculum. No doubt Ford will soon announce the production of a rainbow colored car. How long will it be before McDonald's starts putting Tinky Winky dolls in their Happy Meals? When will Heinz start selling Kweer Ketchup? Who will battle the likes of Marriott - insuring that they don't sell pornographic movies to ministers having affairs with hookers and doing lines of coke in their hotel rooms?

Yes, the times they are a changin'! Where will it end? We've gone from leveling a huge fine against CBS for "allowing" a black woman to expose her breast, all the way to having a black man being celebrated for leading his pasty white patriot opponent in the race for the presidency. I fear it's just a matter of time before white folk are pickin' cotton. Oh, the humanity!