Official 2004 Super Bowl Thread

[GrayMouser]

While not being offended personally (I never watch half-time shows for a start) I agree that it was a deceptive act of intrusion, and should not have been shown.
OTOH some of the reaction has just been rank hypocrisy, such as this from US Rep. Tom Osborne:

Dear Colleague:
On Sunday, 100 million viewers in the United States and around the world were shocked to see the NFL halftime show for Super Bowl XXXVIII. Viewers watched as the star of the show, performer Janet Jackson, had her costume ripped away to reveal her bare breast. Her on-camera sexual gyrations and exposure were broadcast by CBS via 200 free, over-the-air television stations around the country.

<snip>
But that is not enough. Members of Congress cannot abdicate their responsibility as elected officials. That is why we have created the bipartisan Sex and Violence in the Media Caucus. The Caucus was formed to bring awareness to the issue of sexual and violent content in the media. If you do not believe that sexual and violent content are halftime entertainment, please join the Congressional Sex and Violence in the Media Caucus.

http://www.wonkette.com/archives/sup...ter_012689.php

Tom Osborne is a former coach of The Nebraska Sooner's top-ranked college football team, where he had a somewhat more relaxed take on sex, violence and gridiron.

April 24,1996 - Attention Bob Kraft: Christian Peter might be a little late for training camp this summer. With any luck, he'll be in jail.
The University of Nebraska defensive tackle just drafted by the New England Patriots is due in court for sentencing May 21.
The senior co-captain for the two-time defending national champion Cornhuskers faces three months in jail and a $500 fine for grabbing a woman around the throat while hassling her and other women in a bar after a football banquet last month.
This is nothing unusual for Peter, 23, a 290-pound, 6-foot-3 very Big Man on Campus.
It has only been three months since his probation expired for sexually assaulting Natalie Kuijvenhoven, a former Miss Nebraska whose crotch he grabbed repeatedly in a packed bar while spewing obscenities and telling her how much he knew she loved it.
That was in 1993, the same year Melissa DeMuth filed a police complaint that Peter invited her to his room and then pinned her down and ejaculated on her face in front of his friends. DeMuth remains convinced authorities never prosecuted the nose guard because he was a college football star.
It was Peter's star status that a 21-year-old Colorado woman says intimidated her from filing criminal rape charges in 1991. Last summer, frustrated by university inaction on her complaint and bolstered by therapy, she filed a federal sex discrimination suit against Peter and the school.
Peter denies the rape charges, but they are supported by a dorm mate to whom the plaintiff confided at the time. Her dorm mate wasn't surprised. She says Peter tried to expose himself to her after getting drunk at a campus party.
"She came forward because she realizes he is never going to change and more women are going to be hurt unless this guy is held accountable for his actions," Larry Trattler, a Denver attorney for the alleged rape victim, said yesterday.
Trattler's civil complaint against Peter and the university runs to 15 pages. It takes almost that long to enumerate Peter's arrest record beyond the sexual assaults: disturbing the peace, trespassing, urinating in public, refusing to comply with the order of a policeman, threatening to kill a parking attendant, possessing alcoholic beverages while under the age of 21.

<snip>
[Peter and Lawrence Phillips, see below] are both thugs who graduated from a college football program distinguished by its tolerance of violence off the field, particularly violence against women. (In addition to Phillips and Peter, four other Huskers have been charged with everything from attempted murder to assault in recent years.)
Nebraska coach Tom Osborne's idea of discipline? After Peter pleaded no contest to sexual assault, Osborne suspended him from practice for a week and from one irrelevant spring game.

http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1997/co...y/works/4.html

10. Lawrence Phillips
In September of his senior year, the Nebraska star was suspended from the team after accusations that he brutally assaulted an ex-girlfriend; he pleaded no contest, and returned to the Cornhuskers a month later. (Coach Tom Osborne: "It's not as though Lawrence is an angry young man all the time and a threat to society. But there are occasions every four to five months where he becomes a little explosive.")

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/list/secondchances.html

That's right, Congressman Osborne, let's keep sex and violence out of the half-time show and back in the locker-room where it belongs.

[Nurvingiel]

I think you've hit on a much more important issue there. Violence shouldn't be tolerated, but it still is. It's not just football - look at Mike Tyson.