---+++++Lies, Damn Lies, and Janet Jackson's Right Breast
Oh God, not this! You have either never heard of this topic, or you are sick to death of it by now. Either way, I'm not going to waste your time talking about Janet Jackson's Right Breast and how it came to be exposed during the super-duper bowl, or whatever.
No, that's a lie. I _am_ going to talk about that, but only as a way to talk about television in general.
First, I despise broadcast TV and I don't think much of most cable channels either. Mostly because of the steaming stream of sewage they call news and advertising flowing out of them; because of the lies they expose you to every hour of every day.
I practice what I preach, too. I haven't had cable or watched broadcast TV in something like three, maybe four, years. I do watch the tube, though. I'll go to a friend's house and catch a select show or two. I watch DVD movies. But mostly I read books and I write books. I’m not smug about it, no holier-than-thou attitude. It’s simply how I prefer to spend my time.
What do you do with _your_ spare time? What could you be doing if you didn't watch TV?
Anyway, back to the topic on hand.
Summary. During the Super Bowl, Janet Jackson lost part of her costume and had a breast, complete with silver sun-shaped nipple shield, exposed. People freaked out. CBS issued a bunch of apologies.
They are dancing. Near the end of the song, Justin clearly reaches across Janet's costume, he clearly grabs hold and removes an important part of it, and if you look at the piece in his hand, it is clear that there is just one piece involved, with red lacy trim attached to it. No accidents, no torn costume, no errors. Perfectly executed. These are professionals.
CBS is bombarded with complaints (duh). What is everyone's first impulse? Lie.
Janet says it was a stunt that just went too far.
Justin says it was a "wardrobe malfunction".
Both statements are clearly lies.
CBS says that they were totally surprised, what a horrible, unplanned thing to happen to them.
You know what I think? I think that CBS is lying to us, too.
Now that people are pressuring the involved parties, everyone is backpedaling. Saying that, umm, yeah, we did this on purpose, sorry.
Would they be backpedaling if the lies were not so obvious? I don't think so.
CBS went on to say that MTV would be sanctioned, that they would not be allowed to produce the next Superbowl show.
I bet they get VH1 to do it. Or maybe Comedy Central or Showtime. Maybe we will get country music and CMT will do it! Woo!
But this is like flipping you off with the left hand instead of the right hand. Because Viacom owns every single channel mentioned so far. Viacom's CBS is complaining about Viacom's MTV. So maybe Viacom's VH1 could do the next show.
See where I'm going with this?
Now, the whole Janet Jackson thing was easy. The evidence is right there in front of us, the pictures are pretty clear, the video most telling.
Even advertising has obvious lies. Beer commercials where they are actually selling women. Car commercials where they sell the fantasy of the great, rugged outdoors, or of racing along twisty roads. Yeah, you tell me how much driving along twisty mountain roads you do in your car, as you sit in traffic on the way to work in the morning.
Candy coated cereal, “a part of this complete breakfast”. Remove the cereal from the picture entirely and what do you get? A complete breakfast. Which part of the breakfast is the cereal? The dessert part. I had a friend once who called the stuff “sugar coated sugar flavored little bits of sugar”. A candy bar with some vitamins crumbled up into it. Don’t believe me? Read the labels.
But what about the lies we don't catch? How do you know that your news shows, for example, are telling the truth?
You don't.
There are different kinds of lies. An important one is the lie of omission, and this is the easiest. Where you focus on one part of a story but exclude other parts that change the story, make it more complex. It's easy to mislead this way. But there are also lies that are just lies, speaking untruth.
There is no way to tell if any one source is telling you the truth or telling you lies. If you are getting your information pre-digested, pre-packaged, and sent out in handy, entertaining little doses, you are at their mercy. They could feed you anything and you would be none the wiser.
Even if you look at several different sources of information, the sources that you like, that comfort you and sound right, you are probably getting a consensus lie. The lie that the conservative papers all tell together or the lie that the liberal papers all tell together. The lies that people believe because they have heard them so often and they now repeat on the web and in the forums.
Maybe, instead, you can try reading the news sources that you hate, that make you uncomfortable, that bug the hell out of you. Read the comforting stuff, too. But read both.
Are you interested in a topic, perhaps what a politician is doing, or has done? Read your usual news sources, sure. But if you really care you have to work for it. Almost everything in politics, and many things in business, are in the public domain. With digging you can get the source material. The actual vote, the actual bill, the actual financial records, the actual chain of ownership.
But you won't find that the original material is easy to find or easy to read. It isn't meant to be.
I don't have any answers yet. But I'm pretty clear on my complaints.
Hopefully, with more digging, I'll come up with something more constructive.
Posted by Edwin at February 6, 2004 04:34 PM