Football and boobs

Two years ago, I was watching the Superbowl halftime show with my wife who, while not actively watching it, was still looking at it dispassionately since the tv remote was under my control. Janet Jackson and the N'Sync guy who got to defile Britney Spears' virginity, can't remember his name, were dancing and dry humping and lip syncing onstage to the accompaniment of some music I couldn't hear since I had the tv set to mute. After all who the fuck wants to listen to that pop crap?

Suddenly, both idiots stopped their dancing and dry humping and then just before the camera swerved away and focussed into the jumping, fake-enthusiasm displaying crowd in the stands, something happened onstage that made both me and my wife give each other startled looks. Had Janet Jackson's boob just fallen out of its semi-protective casing? Both of us put into words the question that had quivered unspoken on our lips because the sheer notion of her boob falling out on live television was so fucking ridiculous, it just couldn't be true. Heck, it must have been a hallucination, we thought.

And then, after the Superbowl, everyone went berserk. It had actually happened. Her boob HAD fallen out during the show. And America was shocked at the implications of what had happened. Women had BOOBS! And these boobs could succumb to gravity! Fuck, America said, when Sir Isaac Newton had put forth his theory, he had omitted to mention any of its potential applications with regard to human mammaries!

And after that episode, it was basically lights out for tv and radio. Howard Stern got fired, Terrell Owens got reprimanded and anything that ever happened on television henceforth, was sharply scrutinized for any possible connection to sex or the female body.

Everything, except football that is. And that is kind of ironic in a way, since the Superbowl itself was the reason behind all this rampant censorship. Anyone who watches football on tv knows that the sport is a game of violence and sex. Violence caused by the relentless pummelling of football players by other football players, and sex caused by the relentless pummelling of pom poms by cheerleaders shaking their bodies on the sideline like a hydrophobic dog trying to get rid of the water in its fur.

It is extremely strange how, even though cheerleaders are there purely for the purpose of eye candy and, as a part of their job description, have to basically bestow sexual favors on football fans by throwing each other up in the air in a way that allows the average fan to find himself in a position conducive to a visual inspection of their undergarments, officially, they occupy the same asexual status as the goalpost.

But for some reason, the football viewing public tacitly refrains from calling cheerleading for what it is. For them, it is a part of the game. And so, deep in the American South, when a group of Bible thumping Jesus loving people who wouldn't think twice before calling for the execution of Janet Jackson's nipple for its abominable excursion into society, will still gather in bars to watch football games and admire the luscious beauties cavorting on the field without feeling the flames of hell licking at their feet.

Funnier still, is the television football commentator's stance on the issue. The commentator is a strange being, full of pathos. He is torn between being appreciative of the human body in its natural form and wary of saying anything that could possibly jeopardize his career in broadcasting. And so, during the game when the cameras suddenly show a shot of the cheerleaders pom-pomming away madly like Pat Robertson after an especially successful television fundraising gig, the commentator, very self-consciously, abruptly changes the subject, straying far away from what he was originally talking about. "And after this sack, Carolina has no other choice than to punt the ball. And now here comes the punting team, but how about the weather in Nairobi, people", he giggles, as the screen switches to fluttering skirts and heaving boobs."Pretty hot there ain't it? Hasn't rained for a while too. Bad for the crops, this hot weather", he continues, gasping for breath as he tries to reconcile his asexual commentary with the busy stroking of his hand off-camera.

But why all this artificial sterilization of football, I ask. Fuck political correctness, football is sex and violence, just like the rest of life. And fuck football, this goes for the rest of television too. Why should we try to depict something on television that doesn't really exist in real life either, which is far more sexual and violent than our perception of it?

Chill, my brothers in the FCC. We are adults. Don't impose your prudishness on us. And put that damn commentator out of his misery.