bread and circuses

Soldiers and civilians are dying in Iraq...the Bush Administration is in a state of flux as the Cabinet gets shuffled...and there are many other important things to be concerned about in and about this country of ours. But what has a lot of prudish people all hot and bothered the past couple of days is a silly skit that introduced Monday Night Football this week.

It would seem that people who spend a lot of time decrying the declining state of "values" in America...allegedly a deciding factor in this month's President election if the post-voting polls are to be believed...have something else to jump on the soapbox about again (this includes, of course, the puritanical head of the FCC, Michael Powell.)

The 90-second skit...featuring Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver (and unabashed controversy magnet) Terrell Owens and "Desperate Housewives" co-star Nicolette Sheridan...was decidedly risque (and perhaps ill-advised in that it ran very early in the evening in large parts of the country...it was on at 6 PM here in California, for example) but it was also kind of clever (and, yes, playfully sexy...hopefully we won't ever get to the point where something that is playful and sexy will not be immediately regarded as being something "bad") and certainly not the end of civilization as we know it (we survived Janet Jackson's nipple and Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s slip of the tongue and we'll survive this.)

The fire of this whole thing is probably stoked up by the fact that it featured Owens, who is either supremely arrogant or just very self-confident depending on your point of view, and...though most of the naysayers would vehemently deny that this is a factor...because the skit ended with a (seemingly) naked blonde woman eagerly jumping into the waiting arms of a large black man (something which, even as I watched it, I figured wasn't going to play well in certain quarters.)

ABC and the NFL are stumbling over themselves apologizing and self-righteous finger pointers are lining up to be counted on the side of the "angels" (with investigations, hearings, and many more mea culpas to follow in the days, weeks, and months to follow.)

Good thing there aren't any other important things to concern us this week.