A Half-Second of Nipple Is Not Indecency

Posted July 21, 2008, 8:32 p.m.

The Associated Press reports (via WTOPNews.com) that a federal appeals court has tossed the half-million dollar fine levied by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against CBS for the brief (9/16ths of a second) display of Janet Jackson’s right nipple on national television in 2004. The court ruled that a brief exposure unintentionally broadcast does not amount to actionable indecency.

I’ve said it a few times before, but I’ll say it again: Janet Jackson’s nipple didn’t hurt anybody. It might be news to the censorship brigades at the FCC and elsewhere, but most people—even children!—have nipples, know what they look like, and aren’t particularly bothered by them.

Having said that, CBS and the NFL should have used discretion when green-lighting a halftime show that was pretty raunchy (and vacuous, even by halftime standards) to be broadcast to potentially millions of children. I concede that point without debate. But poor discretion and an unintentional 9/16ths-of-a-second display of a nipple on national television is not an actionable offense for the FCC to issue fines over. Adults can choose to not watch, nor let their children watch, CBS programming from now on if it’s really that big an issue.

Better yet, talk to your children. Teach them. Don’t focus so much on ‘protecting’ them from reality, try teaching them how to handle reality. That’s how they grow up to be well-adjusted adults, unlike those who went crying to mommy-government-FCC when they saw a nipple on TV for a fraction of a second.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

The compacts which are to embrace thirteen distinct States in a common bond of amity and union, must as necessarily be a compromise of as many dissimilar interests and inclinations. How can perfection spring from such materials?

Encased in their provincialism and supported by Western intellectuals, Third World leaders blamed the West for the failures of their own cultures. Instead of asking themselves ‘What did we do wrong? How can we put it right?’ they asked ‘Who did that to us?’

The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.

Imagination is a good servant, but a bad master.

No man chooses evil, because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

The purpose of the First Amendment’s religion clause was not to protect the state (or the people) from religion, but to protect religion from the state. . . .

Once you’ve dissected a joke, you’re about where you are when you’ve dissected a frog. It’s dead.

The passions are not evil but they are stupid. They need a teacher.

[My father] gave me a piece of advice that I have always remembered, namely, that, if I was not going to earn money, I must even things up by not spending it.

It is false and absurd to say that we should remain in error after we have discovered it.

Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

We don’t want to go back to tomorrow, we want to move forward.

If anybody ever says you’re ‘smart as a whip,’ remember this: whips are inanimate objects that do not possess any intelligence whatsoever.

One man may prefer a routine job with much time off for basking in the sun to a more exacting job paying a higher salary; another man may prefer the opposite. If both were paid equally in money, their incomes in a more fundamental sense would be unequal.

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

Defending the West is made more difficult by the fact that so many Europeans harbor an extreme anti-Americanism. Many do not accept that the United States is a part of the same Western civilization, and that it stands or falls together with Europe in the face of a new totalitarian threat.

Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.

If you go flying back through time and you see somebody else flying forward into the future, it’s probably best to avoid eye contact.

Conscience has rights because it has duties.