Obvious but effective

So Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Powell is shocked, enraged, nearly apoplectic over the exposure of a female breast during the broadcast of the Super Bowl, is he?

Sure he is.

That’s the same Michael Powell who recently rolled unchecked over Congress to give still greater control over what the American public sees and hears to a tiny bunch of media conglomerates, right? The Michael Powell who labored unstintingly on behalf of multi-billionaire contributors to the Bush Administration whose companies produce most of the “filth” Powell professes to abhor?

Yes, of course. It’s simply another shot in the Bush Administration’s ongoing campaign of distraction and disinformation. Get us all fired up over use of the “F word” on television and we won’t notice how the information we receive is increasingly controlled by the rightist propaganda machine. Couldn’t be more obvious, yet a whole lot of ill-educated people will buy into it, many with encouragement from the preachers of the extreme Christian right.

Oh, about that exposed breast: It apparently was the result of a stupid and tasteless bit of showmanship. There were other pieces of the Super Bowl show that were, in fact, even more tasteless, and so were some of the commercials. So someone needs to tell the woman to shape up, but there's no legitimate point in making such hooha. Many women have breasts --two of them, in fact. That’s been true for several generations now. Exposure happens now and then at beaches, in shops, at parties and even in the office. If Powell and his ilk try very, very hard, perhaps they can rise above the emotional level of the typical 13-year-old when it comes to dealing with human anatomy.