But while the game is usually wonderful, the half-time show is becoming increasingly depraved. It would be nice if we football fans could watch the NFL championship game as a celebration of the human competitive spirit, rather than a display of the latest pop tart's cleavage. If seems incredible to me that the NFL would have allowed itself to be used to launch the next decadent music act, but that's what the Super Bowl half time shows seem to have become. To be honest, I can't even remember which pop harlot ran around half naked on stage last year. They all seem to blend into one boring blur.
But this year was by far the most degenerate of all. Justin Timberlake, a man distinguished neither for his dance nor his music, decided to open Janet Jackson's blouse and expose her breast. I'm not making this up. As soon as I saw it, I knew it had been planned, even though Janet gave this "shocked" look of surprise. Timberlake, who is locked in a permanent game of one-upsmanship with his former girlfriend, the vulgar Britney Spears, was looking to upstage the Britney-Madonna kiss. That's what happens in a popular culture that has deteriorated to being almost entirely about empty sensationalism.
Madonna and Britney's desperate attention-getting act, performed on a music awards show in sync with the perverted state of today's music, seemed to blend right in. But Justin and Janet's crude and offensive act was done during the Super Bowl half-time show, when all my kids were watching. My children looked confused and bewildered. What the heck was that? What is nudity doing on the Super Bowl? What is such disgusting behavior doing during a football game? How could the NFL allow the degradation of its flagship event? Is there really no level to which the modern culture won't stoop?
Do the kids of America need to see Janet's breast? Is there any way for me as a father to protect my five daughters from images of women inviting their own sexual exploitation just in order to appear in tomorrow's tabloids?
