Shortly before the bells tolled twelve and my birthday/Finding Dad Dead In A Chair Day came to an end, I received not one but THREE comments on a two-year-old post. I love it when this happens—it has been happening a lot lately—because it gives me a chance to read with new eyes and accumulated wisdom past ethical verdicts to see if they measure up to my current standards. Sometimes I think I was bit too certain of myself, and sometimes I even detect some serious omissions in my analysis, but not with this post, a vivisection of a ridiculous, race-bating defense of Janet Jackson infamous breast-baring at the 2004 Super Bowl. A pop culture blather-artist named Emmanuel Hapsis, had revisited the incident , and in the increasingly unhinged manner of the woke which we have witnesses since. declared that the episode exemplified America’s “patriarchy,” “racism” and “sexism.” “Janet’s first crime was being a woman and the second that she was a black woman,” Emmanuel wrote.
Well, few show business scams have been as easily figured out as this one, and the question is whether those who refuse to believe what is absurdly obvious—Sure, it was just a series of amazing coincidences that Justin Timberlake, during a choreographed duet with Jackson and while singing “Better have you naked by the end of this song,” somehow and completely accidentally ripped a neatly cut portion of Jackson’s bustier to reveal her naked breast, except that her nipple was covered by an elaborate pasty—almost as if she knew it was going to be exposed. Timberlake lied, then later admitted that the stunt was planned, though he didn’t have to, because everyone knew it was planned who had an IQ above freezing and wasn’t in line to buy shares of “Prisoners of Love”. Jackson kept to her story that it was all a big surprise. I wrote, and would write again,
“Jackson also got a career boost from the fiasco, which is exactly why she agreed to the stunt, and if she paid something for the contract breech, she could afford it. As for the public criticism of her unannounced peep show, race and sexism had nothing, zero, nada to do with it. When you have to reach this far back and distort reality this absurdly to make the case about how racist and sexist America can be, you really need to find another cause, because you’re lousy at this one.
There are real examples of racism and sexism out there. Using fake ones like this to caterwaul about it just makes it easier to deny them.
Not only does America not owe Janet Jackson a “huge” apology, America owes her none at all. Emmanuel Hapsis, however does owe America a huge apology, for trying to further divide it, and for trying to make the public more ignorant than it already is.”
When the post first ran, somebody sicced a college class on me or something, and I received numerous, almost identical rebuttals, most of which were too incoherent or idiotic to pass moderation. I also banned one persistent troll who kept writing the same comment that essentially asked how anyone could be so mad as to not believe Jackson’s contrived story? (I am a veteran stage director and choreographer, and I can tell a staged bit when I see one, not than any yahoo couldn’t recognize this one.)
So along comes someone named Troy who gifted me with one of those comments that is so fascinatingly devoid of logic, coherence or ethics grounding, and so wonderfully besotted with woke buzzwords and mirages, that I just had to post it as a Comment of the Day. First, it shows you the kind of junk that doesn’t usually get posted here. Second, it is instersectionality wackiness on brilliant display—yes, holding Janet Jackson to account for flashing a family audience to get cheap publicity for her upcoming album is linked to slavery, lynching, police brutality, and white privilege. The screed also begins with and is built around a false analogy, as are so many screeds these days. You see, Madonna is white, Madonna is a singer, and Madonna has exposed various parts of her body in a carnal fashion, so for a black performer to be criticized for similar self-exposure is a double standard, or so Troy believes.
Super Bowl half-time spectacular live in prime time with the largest TV audience of the year including children, you moron.
I wonder: how many people are out there who “think” like this? How did they get that way? Who can stand being around them? Are they multiplying? How can that be stopped? How do you reason with someone this addled? What is the critical mass of people like this that renders the nation too stupid to function at all?
Excellent, if troubling, questions all. Thanks, Troy!
Here is Troy’s Comment of the Day on Nipplegate Ethics: No, We Don’t Owe Janet Jackson Any Apology At All:
Madonna’s white ass has been showing her boobs, coochie and anything else that is of a sexual nature all through the late 80’s up until today…and though she got criticized for her antics, even pissing off the Catholic Church with her attention seeking ways, as soon as a black woman gets’ exposed by a this privileged white boy, then the whole white world screams OMG, OMG, hang her, nail her to the cross…blame her, blame her…this whole fiasco is reminiscent of how whites back in slavery times would lynch blacks for solely being black and then again in modern times how white people can cuss a police officer out, spit in their face, fight them and get taken to prison to cool off with only a slap on the wrist…but a black person get’s pulled over and by a white officer for having expired license plates or a busted tail light and they never make it to jail, they are taken straight to the morgue, because like what White Boy Privileged Justin did to Janet, it becomes a black issue and she was the only one who got blamed, black balled and even her apology was not enough for the privileged whites, she had to PAY and pay dearly. So for all those white privileged reading this article, and saying she does not deserve an apology, I GET IT, you all want her HANGED…It’s what you all believe to be punishment to the full extent for this black woman, who has NEVER, EVER been in any trouble, caused any drama and had been low-key, and private all of her life until that one millisecond to be torn to shreds by the white privileged…well for those of us who are WOKE, we see What Madonna has made a career of doing, Janet should get the death penalty. So white privileged of you all.
Ethics Alarms 
“Riiiight” – Dr. Evil Voice
You’ve been making a fair few typos lately (did you actually read the first sentence of your birthday post?), but I think this one is going too far, writing a “b” by mistake for a “t”. (I will let the other typo there pass.)
Your cited commenter wrote:-
That’s nonsense. They were valuable then.
In less politically correct times, the British TV show “Yes, Prime Minister” made a joke along those lines.
I remember that joke!!!
Re that first sentence:
1. No, I obviously never read it at all.
2. It depresses me when nobody flags a mess like that until the next day. It’s like having spinach between your front teeth. At least someone did—you—albeit in a different post.Thanks.
3. I was having a stroke. Now that I’ve read that, the drooling and the paralysis on my left side makes sense. I was wondering about that.
2. I used to let you know immediately when I saw things like that. I quit that when you responded once by saying something like – is that all you do? Since it was pretty much all I did on this site (when we weren’t talking about guns anyway), I quit doing it.
Well, that’s on me. I appreciate knowing about typos, but there are some commenters who only show up to show me up. I don’t think of you as one, and I’m sorry.
My southern baptist upbringing ingrained the manners to not embarrass my host. Plus I do the same thing, so it is a Golden Rule issue.
Besides, many of the typos are funny!
No one thinks the less of such a prolific blogger who misses a typo here and there.
It would make Janet’s denial more believable if she accused Justin of workplace related sexual harrasment.
But maybe she’s afraid of negative consequences for her career in the entertainment industry — Justin being a top performer and, even more important, a privileged white boy versus this poor black lady.
Alas, once she realizes that Black Nipples Matter she too can join the #MeToo movement.
In 2004, I’d say Janet was the bigger star.
I’d agree. He was only two years and one solo album out of Nsnyc at that time. Incidentally, that album won a Grammy in 2004. Jackson had a least four Grammy wins and a lot of nominations by then, including two that year but after the Super Bowl stunt didn’t attend. Depending on the version you see she was either banned or decided on her own (with the publicists help) to not attend.
Q) I wonder: how many people are out there who “think” like this?
People who think like this, are people — the ‘mass’ — that have been created to serve in the American consumer-culture. When business interests, principally through their insinuation into government as a result of war-enterprises sometime about 100 years ago, subverted proper Constitutional values and government, there the problem began. Such a perverted governing structure does not want, and has no use for, an intelligent and thoughtful (a critical) intelligentsia nor an intelligent, activist population. It desires a docile population of the sort that Walter Lippmann described in Public Opinion and in many of his works. Mass Culture, mass culture productions, advertising and public relations, slowly and determinedly undermine the very mental capabilities of people and render them inept and impotent in any significant way. These were and are choices made by controlling elites and we now live in the consequences of those choices.
Q) How did they get that way?
See above. Though it is a complex and demanding topic (question) it must be answered. Also, the question needs to be modified: How did we get that way is really how it should be phrased. This implies complicity. Just in these last few days numerous intelligent commentators have indicated how they sacrifice critical posture for the allure of lies. We encountered the enemy and he is us. Therefor, everything hinges on the individual and the choices he and she makes right now in order to confront and reverse these astoundingly destructive sectors that have perverted culture and government and continue to do so. It is a spiritual task to correct it.
Q) Who can stand being around them?
They validate themselves and, as they face one another, they bolster each other.
Q) Are they multiplying? How can that be stopped?
They are definitely multiplying. And *we* are also multiplying. It is crucial to avoid the *projection* onto a *them* and to turn the issue and question into a personal project of renewal. One does not correct *them*, one corrects oneself. But this also involves a range of realizations which, as I say, come to the fore when one realizes one’s *complicity*.
Q) How do you reason with someone this addled?
Unending repetition. Willingness to hold to a proper and honest position in the face of their emoted outbursts and attempts to subvert one’s honest attempts to see and state the truth. It is sort of a Jiu jitsu: they naturally attack one who tries to be honest, but the effort to confront their dishonesty impels and propels one that much further into truth-telling.
Q) What is the critical mass of people like this that renders the nation too stupid to function at all?
Now you are hooking my cynical side! Effectively, at least it seems so, the game is sort of lost. I think one has only to refer to an individual who has been in personal (say spiritual) crisis and ‘hits bottom’. That individual (now I refer to the Nation) is out of control and headed to disaster. But out of the *invoked disaster* there arises the opportunity to realize, see, grow and change.
In the meantime, go to the window, stick out your head, and scream: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
[I really think I deserve not one but two cookies for this wonderful post . . .]
😉
Cookies? Perhaps.
Pudding? Not so much…
for those of us who are WOKE, there was this joke going around (5th Grade? 6th?) about Rip Van Winkle whining so much about the world he awoke in that they got together and put him back to sleep.
Thanks for another “Yes, Prime Minister” tag, P.M. Lawrence and Jack’s acknowledgement. Lo Sonnambulo came up with one a week or so ago. So many discerning fans, who’da known! There were very few one-liners in those shows (the preceding show, “Yes, Minister,” included); they flowed as extended dialog through each episode in perfect context. Those contexts, in general, still abide in politics, in every democratic republic in the world, open for the wryest and wittiest of humor.