OFFENDED AND APPALLED AT THIS DISASTER OF CALAMITOUS PROPORTIONS

Yesterday I got into a brief argument with someone over this whole Monday Night Football/Terrell Owens–Nicollette Sheridan/Desperate Housewives controversy. The person with whom I was speaking was arguing (politely but aggressively, I should note) that the outrage over that sketch was justified. That it was a question of context, and 6 PM on the West Coast (when MNF starts) with a football show is not a time to see a naked woman on network television. That if the sketch had been T.O. going to shoot steroids or smoke "reefer" instead of being out on the field with his team, and if it were a real situation, he would have been suspended, but this sketch suggests that if he’s just having sex with some hot starlet, there’s no problem.

Most importantly, however, I was told that my attitude towards the incident – one of, "Are you all crazy?" It’s a sketch, what’s the big deal? – was one of superiority toward the rest of the country who felt differently than me and were horribly offended, and my attitude is what’s creating this whole backlash against east coast liberal elite thinking. I didn’t really have much opportunity to even state my side of this debate, and I definitely wasn’t being heard when I was, which was fine, but I also probably held back from one very important reason. I hadn’t actually seen the sketch (which I hadn’t admitted) so I was speaking in the abstract.

That’s a situation in which I don’t usually find myself. Part of the reason I try to watch everything and be as informed as I can is specifically so that I am able to have an opinion on the topic. I won’t usually formulate an opinion on something without actually having a basis for it. The only difference in this case was that I had heard it described so much and I thought, knowing network television, I could predict what it would look like, and to me there was a bigger issue at play. A friend of mine works in production on a PBS round-table chatfest that is working on a piece about the "coarsening" of American entertainment through the years, from Lawrence Welk and Leave It to Beaver to Fear Factor and Howard Stern on E! I think "coarsening" is an unfortunate label when talking about options that people can choose to watch or not. What troubles me much more isn’t the variety of programming we now have but rather the heightened sensitivity about everything in this country. Tittygate at last year’s Super Bowl started all of this because everyone involved made such a huge deal out of it. But in that case, at least there was some actual nudity, so damaging to the youth of our country in the middle of three hours of guys trying to hit each other as hard as possible to knock them off their feet.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a really big football fan. However there is a hypocrisy (and always has been) between the way our society treats sex and violence. But you know what shocked the hell out of me? When I finally, yesterday afternoon, sat down at my computer and webbed my way over to iFilm to watch the actual sketch in its entirety, I was shocked. I was appalled. I was speechless.

THIS IS WHAT HAS EVERYBODY SO PISSED OFF????

Are you fucking kidding me? This is nothing! In fact, chances are you’ll see more breast and legs when the network cuts to the team’s cheerleaders on the sideline during the game than in this bit. Have all the people complaining actually seen this thing? If so, are they fucking insane. Let’s not even get into Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy’s comments regarding what he calls racism in the ad; I think my head would explode if I tried to deal with that.

Go ahead, watch the damn thing yourself if you haven’t seen it. If you have, watch it again. I have to give some credit to the ABC guys who made it: the sketch may have been chuckle-funny at best, but damn did they succeed in making people think they saw something they didn’t. They must have studied the famous Janet Leigh shower scene in Psycho or something, because just as you never see a knife actually stabbing Leigh no matter how much you think you do, you never see any part of Sheridan’s body below the shoulders or above the knee. Even the towel drop is edited so as to see as little as possible. There’s no ass or cleavage or anything; about 1/2 a second of naked back. They don’t even kiss. There’s more provocative material on episodes of 7th Heaven, often considered the most family-friendly show on television. But apparently, everyone thinks they’ve seen her naked. I’ll bet you even T.O. didn’t actually see her naked, what with all the various things actors use to mask individual body parts.

OK, so it’s a negative message? That a football player is going to get it on with some hot woman and skip the game? Hell, that almost seems believable when talking about Owens. (As a lifelong and diehard Niner fan, I’ve had my issues with T.O., his selfishness and his arrogance. Shockingly, though, he’s now apologizing for everything.) I’ll tell you the one racial element that could be involved here: is there a chance (and I’m only floating a theory) that what’s pissing everyone off is a black player with a white woman? Dungy seems to think it reinforces a poor stereotype of black athletes. I think it’s more likely there are people in America who wouldn’t have had the same issues had the scene been with Brett Favre.

What has happened here is that a bunch of people who want everyone to think and feel like they do finally feel secure that enough other people believe in the exact same things that they’re trying to instill their morality on everyone, and they’re doing it by attacking some mythical group called the "northeastern elite" by saying we’re infringing on their rights and calling them stupid. I’m sorry: there is no such thing as saying that homosexuals should not have the secular right to get married without saying that you think negatively about homosexuality. Whether you consider that negative thinking to be "hatred" or simply "disapproval" doesn’t even matter. You are considering yourself superior to someone else and you are trying to tell them how they may or may not live. No gay person is trying to get married in your church, and your church doesn’t have to authorize their marriage; that’s a religious issue. But we’re really talking about a word here, at least for those people who believe in "civil unions," so why don’t we change marriage to a religious institution and change the secular/societal one to "civil unions" for everyone. But I digress, and I’ve already ranted on this issue.

It’s the same territory though. It is people trying to legislate morality, and I’m not saying that anybody else’s morality is bad or wrong, even if I disagree with it, but shouldn’t we all take a breath and seriously think about the things that outrage us before we get so outraged? If that sketch was so wrong and inappropriate, why are there ads for erectile disfunction drugs? Where was the outrage over the two models arguing over Miller Lite in a fountain, not to mention every other beer commercial. (Yes, those commercials often receive complaints, but certainly the NFL, team ownership, and the networks don’t think they’re so bad since those ads and TV overall is where the money is.) Why when we have stories every year of high schoolers paralyzed on the football field from an errant hit do we not have a problem with the ferocity of the action on the field? Why if you stick a pom-pom in a bunch of women’s hands and load them up with lipstick and smiles are they now a "dance team"? Why is talk on the sidelines about going to battle and destroying their opponent (as long as there are no curse words, of course … don’t forget that words are evil!) is fine, but playful seductive banter will turn our children into sexual predators? I’m not trying to say there’s anything necessarily wrong with any of this; but how is it different? Especially if the whole debate is primarily over "context."

I mean, is this for real? I must admit, there’s been a certain element of living in a Bizarro world ever since the election. It just seems impossible that we’re really in for four more years. Everything seems surreal. But this takes the cake. I’ve heard people comment on how this was worse than the Janet Jackson thing because an actual player was involved and it was obviously sanctioned by one of the teams (the Eagles). And I say, SO?!?!

You know what people? If you want your kids to grow up and be mentally and emotionally healthy, to have your sons grow up without the urge of dominating or raping women, you’ll show this dumb little sketch to them over and over and show how the two adults in it are laughing. You’ll show how different they look as people and how nice it is that they’re not fighting. Maybe you’ll explain to them that they’re going to go off and do a little "necking," which is what adults do when they are affectionate to each other. The rest of the context is fucking meaningless. And your kids will be just fine. They won’t suddenly turn to watching porn and reading nudie magazines. They won’t start smoking and drinking (unless of course you, their parents, already do in which case your kids probably already are), and they won’t instantly find themselves propelled into a life of drugs and debauchery. Chances are, the more you hide the world from them and tell them that everything is bad, they’ll go to explore all that stuff on their own, and then they’ll be in real trouble.

Most importantly, though, just stop the fucking outrage. It’s giving me an ulcer, and none of you have the right to affect my personal (and anatomical) life in such away. Worry about your own family instead of the rest of America’s and we’ll all be better off. The only real problem with that sketch is that Desperate Housewives is much more creative, imaginative and interesting, so ABC’s new Sunday night hit was done a disservice by the insinuation that it’s in any way trash.

Now maybe we can worry about something important – like who gets fired tonight.