Remember the Nicolette Sheridan "Lambeau Leap" on Monday Night Football last week? You mean you didn't watch it either? In any event, for the first time in a long time Frank Rich actually has something coherent and valuable to say about a First Amendment issue. (For those of you who don't know, Rich is the longtime theatre critic at the NYT, who with depressing frequency gets flawed opinion columns masquerading as stories on other issues printed in the main part of the paper as the theatre continues to decline.)
In any event, the irony here is rather astounding. It's indecent to see a woman's lower back without any cloth over it as she leaps into the arms of a man of another race when broadcast before 8pm. (I infer that "talk radio" hosts are too busy thinking up lies during the daytime broadcasts of soaps to notice what goes on there.) However, it's not indecent to "mike up" foul-mouthed defensive linemen and send that language over the airwaves, so that even turning one's head away doesn't protect one's virgin ears. Neither is it indecent to show real, no-kidding injuries as they happen, such as the notorious leg fracture of one Joe Theismann a few years back. Nor is it indecent to show beheadings on the evening news, which last time I checked is usually before 8pm. Nor…
I suspect that if the player had not been of a different race, nobody would have picked this up at all. It could have been, say, Angela Bassett and Michael Vick; it could have been Nicolette Sheridan and, say, Brian Urlacher. But mix the races, note the reaction, and wonder whether the KKK has really been very thoroughly suppressed. And then wonder if Tiger Woods, with his famous "Cablanasian" ancestry, could hug his own Caucasion wife on TV, especially if she was wearing a backless dinner dress. And if they kiss… oh my…
Yes, Mr Limb4ugh, I am calling you a racist. In my opinion, your response to this silliness supports that opinion. I don't even have to go into your drug and marital problems.