Friday, February 6, 2004

Halftime show degrading to everyone involved

By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

Like millions of Americans, I hurried home on Sunday evening to catch the Super Bowl on television. I don’t watch sports nearly as much as I once did, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for the “mother of all bowl games.” I even remember who won Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II. The Green Bay Packers, under Coach Vince Lombardi, won both times, defeating Kansas City 35-10 in 1967 and crushing Oakland 33-14 the following year.

As a good Southern lad, I always pull for a Southern team, if I have a choice. Failing that, I pull against any Northern team unless they play teams from California. If two California teams play in the Super Bowl, I’d just as soon watch golf on television, which is only slightly better than the weather channel. I do like Green Bay, even if they aren’t Southern.

This year, the Carolina Panthers (Southern team) would meet the New England Patriots (Yankee team) in what would prove to be one of the most exciting bowl games of all time. After a tremendously played game, the Patriots kicked a field goal with four seconds left to defeat the Carolina Panthers 32-29. Wow! What a game! Not that you’d know what kind of game it was by the discussion on television and in coffee shops this past week. No, the topic of conversation was the halftime show.

Now, I should state up front that I am no fan of rap music, if “music” be the proper term to use for “rap.” In fact, I believe that rap is to music what vomit is to French cuisine. Lest I be accused of being a racist, I detest heavy metal music almost as much as rap and, for that matter, don’t really care for classical music, although that IS real music.

The Super Bowl halftime show looked to me like MTV on super-mega doses of steroids. Only well into the halftime show did I realize that MTV really did put together the halftime presentation. It was loud, raucous, crude, and enormously irritating to watch. America’s families, who traditionally watch the Super Bowl together, were treated to:

· Janet Jackson grabbing her breasts.

· Sean P. Diddy repeatedly fondling his crotch.

· Striptease cheerleaders whose clothing barely covered their bodies.

· Gyrating transvestites.

· Kid Rock wearing an American flag as he screamed his lungs out and rocked his pelvis back and forth.

· Simulated lesbian sex.

· Janet Jackson and Jason Timberlake groping each other.

Then, just when you think TV can’t sink any lower, it does. During the halftime program for the Super Bowl, CBS showed singer Justin Timberlake tearing off singer Janet Jackson’s top, exposing her breast. The two singers were performing “Rock Your Body,” a risqué duet to end the halftime show. The final lyric of the song goes, “Going to have you naked by the end of this song.” And he did. At first, everyone tried to pretend it was all a big accident. Finally, most admitted that “things had just gone too far.”

As one person said in my hearing this week, “Where was Al Sharpton? Where was Jesse Jackson? Doesn’t it bother anyone that the musical number depicted a white guy assaulting and degrading a black female?”

But, then, this halftime show effectively degraded everyone connected to it, including the football players and the fans. A pastor friend was watching the halftime show with his daughter when Jackson’s breast was exposed. He and his daughter were both shocked and appalled.

“Oh, well, what’s a person to do?” Yesterday, I called the cable company and asked that MTV be blocked from my service. I don’t watch MTV but I can, at least, register my disgust. If I had teens at home, I would get rid of any and all Jackson and Timberlake recordings and refuse permission to ever purchase others. I would ban rap and heavy metal from the premises. Later today I intend to call the FCC at 1-888-225-5322 and complain. The chairman of the FCC saw the halftime show, too and he is NOT amused.

If people want to watch half-naked, no-talent thugs and slutty dancers spewing raunch and filth, they can turn to the cable channels. It’s a free country after all. But to expose this putrid offal to millions of children, who just wanted to see a football game, ought to be criminal.

[David Epps is rector of Christ the King Charismatic Episcopal Church, which meets at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Sundays on Highway 34 between Peachtree City and Newnan. He may be contacted at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com or at www.CTKCEC.org.]

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