WHILE performing at the half-time show of Sunday's Super Bowl, Justin Timberlake tore away part of Janet Jackson's leather body suit, exposing one of her bare breasts on national television during the most-watched event of the year. And, despite the assurances of Timberlake that the whole situation was merely a "wardrobe malfunction," the facts seem to suggest otherwise. Not only was Jackson's breast festively decorated with what Internet journalist Matt Drudge has termed a "metal solar nipple medallion," it also flopped out at the exact moment that Timberlake sang, "I'm gonna have you naked by the end of this song." Within a few short hours, Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell expressed his outrage at the incident and promised to investigate thoroughly. In all likelihood, the debacle will end up costing CBS hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for airing the alleged indecency during prime time.
Like most activities that fill the days of Washington bureaucrats, the FCC's coming investigation and fining of CBS will be as ridiculously unnecessary as it will be unjust. Unjust, because the government has precisely no business punishing a private organization for the content of its television programming. And unnecessary, because the television market is perfectly capable of regulating itself with respect to the broadcast of offensive images.
Concerning the First Amendment -- which clearly states that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" -- it remains unclear as to what part of "no" Congress fails to understand. Government is not instituted among men to form committees that decide which images are offensive and then summarily ban all such images from public display. No central authority can absolutely decide what constitutes an objective standard of offensiveness, since such standards vary greatly with subjective individual viewpoints. Further, if government is authorized to ban images based on its own discretionary proclamation of offensiveness, then there simply can be no principled foothold for free expression to find as it slips down the slope of arbitrary censorship.
But I can already hear somebody whining about the children. Doesn't the government owe it to parents to keep the Super Bowl free from indecency and safe for the family? Simply put, no. Under our legal system, parents have an absolute right to determine their children's television habits. If they don't want their kids watching a particular program, it's their responsibility -- and not the responsibility of Congress -- to do the parenting. After all, it's not as if children have been endowed by their creator with an inalienable right to breast-free TV.
But the oddest thing about this situation is that the FCC seems to think that without its heroic efforts at censorship, television sets across the country would be bulging with cleavage around the clock. In fact, networks like CBS have every incentive to keep clean their high-profile events like the Super Bowl. This is because networks make money from advertisers, and advertisers pay more when their commercials reach the broadest audience possible. Super Bowl commercials sell at a rate of roughly $4 million per minute precisely because the event is watched by nearly every family in America. If that market is jeopardized by offended viewers, then so are the paychecks of everyone who makes money off the game. Just look at the reactions of NFL officials who depend upon advertising dollars to keep their enterprise afloat.
NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue issued the following statement: "The show was offensive, inappropriate and embarrassing to us and our fans. We will change our policy, our people and our processes for managing the halftime entertainment in the future in order to deal far more effectively with the quality of this aspect of the Super Bowl." Now there's a man who likes his money.
Similarly, NFL Executive Vice President Joe Browne said the following: "We were extremely disappointed by elements of the MTV-produced Halftime show. They were totally inconsistent with assurances our office was given about the show. It's unlikely that MTV will produce another Super Bowl halftime."
As these sentiments demonstrate, the public outrage at truly offensive material being broadcast on network television is a more than sufficient mechanism of regulating program content. Without centralized government censorship, the coordinated decisions of private consumers work through advertisers to guide corporate networks in the maintenance of community standards of decency. Of course, all this makes the FCC bureaucrats completely superfluous in this situation, but don't expect that to bother them -- they've got their own paychecks to worry about.
(Anthony Dick's column usually appears Monday in the Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at adick@cavalierdaily.com)
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