Revisiting Janet Jackson's Breast Feb. 2004

It was a wonderful day for the holy act of the Super Bowl.
Number 38, if you are keeping track, in the year of our lord 2004.
All was in readiness.
The teams were prepared to put on a show.
They were the human sacrifices for this holy event.
Who knew how many broken ribs, legs, and other limbs there would be by the end of the game.
That was not important.
The crowds were restless. They sat there, thousands of them, waiting for the game to begin. Some, before they arrived, were already intoxicated with various potent potables as well as intoxicated with the lust for the blood to come. Those, already at the game, had to be content only with the holy beer. Millions more sat at home or sat in bars watching the event on TV. Millions of dollars passed hands. Gamblers bet for the highest stakes.
This was, after all, "The World Series of Football Games: The Super Bowl". Only Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, and Yom Kippur were as important.
I enjoyed this day, not because it was football day, but because I could get a good seat in the movie theater or restaurant without having to stand in line. I hated the game in fact. I saw no reason to waste my time with it, especially now when we were at war, fighting a country that did not attack us on 11 September.
I made a point of avoiding the game, and relished telling people that I had better things to do. This has gone on year after year, but this year and this game would be different. Something happened that day that shook the foundations of western civilization, an historical event, never to be forgotten, an outrage, a blasphemy, a malignant tumor, thrust upon the holy sport, on this, that holy day.
For once I should have been tuned in because I missed it.
The game went on as it usually did, with the obligatory busting of heads over a ball you could not even bounce.
At half time, all the usual changed.
Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake were doing their song until that fateful moment when Ms Jackson had her wardrobe malfunction. Millions of people saw it but could not believe it, the most disgusting thing you could ever want to see....Ms Jackson's beautiful breasts, a black woman's no less, there for all to see.
Imagine the trauma the children must have felt. I could imagine parent after parent, covering their children's eyes so as not to see the outrage. For the rest of their innocent lives, their memories would be tainted by this horrible sight.
The media was no less outraged.
Ms Jackson and her beautiful breasts were front page headlines in tabloids all over this country. I almost felt as if the citizens were as traumatized by the breasts as they were by the destruction of the WTC. Page after page, accusation after accusation for days afterwards covered the pages of the tabloids like blood.
Only it wasn't blood, and no one got killed. I never heard of anyone being killed by a breast unless they were smothered by them. Yet the media's outrage was such that you'd think a capital crime took place.
Meanwhile, buried somewhere on page 8 (or whatever) that same day came the news that 59 people were killed by a car bomb in Iraq. I don't understand how this news ended up buried. To me, it was far more outrageous and offensive than the breasts. What was wrong with the people of this nation when something as beautiful as a breast can offend and the deaths of human beings in a fictional war does not?
Between you and me, I'll take the breast. Those who support war can have the bloodshed.