MIA was just saying Eli's #1: How The Halftime Show Proved Bored Parents Hate Freedom

So 2 days after the big game, there’s plenty I could talk about. About how I was rooting for the Giants fresh on the soul-crushing loss of my Ravens to pretty-boy Brady and the Northern/Mid-Atlantic Patriots. About how in response to claims that Brady was Jesus I professed, at least for the day, religious sameness with my Jewish brothers and sisters.  

We could talk about how Gronk has apparently still not recovered from the hurtin’ Bernie Pollard put on him during the Ravens game in spite of claims otherwise. How Brady, after a season that would be described only as inconsistent at best, has been riding on hype over ability for more than a few games. About how Eli’s made history going 10 for 10 in his first 10 throws and how the junior Manning won 8 games this season on 4^th qtr/OT drives, arguably the true measure of a great quarterback (leading a game-winning last minute drive), and perhaps, just maybe, he’s going to step out of the shadow of a certain brother who, as the post-game question went, “built the stadium” in which Eli won his second Super Bowl.

But I’ll let all the sports talking heads talk about that. You saw it. 

Instead, I’m gonna talk about the halftime show. 

This year’s halftime show was hands down the best produced and executed show in the last few years. No more aging rockers who make you cringe at the fact that, well, even rock stars lose it at some point (with the exception of Keith Richards, of course – by the way, was last year’s halftime show a glaring reminder to anybody else the lyrics that The Who famously sang in possibly their most famous song, MY GENERATION, are, and I quote, “I hope I die before I get old?”). 

No, this year was a nod to what’s happening now, to the electro-dance-hip-hop party scene blaring out of the hottest clubs and appearing in everybody’s favorite MTV shows.  And even more, it’s a nod to our female viewers who, with exceptions, mostly watch for the commercials (this year they were abysmal, by the way) and possibly an entertaining halftime show. It was also a celebration of the fact that the Super Bowl, with over 100,000,000 viewers, is literally the king of television. In a day and age when advertisers are refusing to pay standard prices for commercials that’ll just be DVR’ed or Tivo’ed over, there is one time frame in which they can be sure that, no matter what, everybody in America will be watching. As such, the halftime show was launched with a budget for special effects, extras, choreographers, mechanics and practice routines, as well as for talent, which must have been on par with China’s opening ceremony. Madonna (the original Lady Gaga and at the same time better than Gaga will ever be), LMFAO (the hottest pop group amongst the young party people of America and maybe even the world), Nicky Minaj (rap’s bubble-bootied “it” girl), MIA (the former rap/pop crossover “it” girl), and Cee-Lo Green (the Gnarls Barkley singer-cum-THE VOICE judge) ran through a live routine that had certainly been arranged by some DJ at the Governor’s ball in the middle of an epic Molly binge. Oh yeah, and a song off Madonna's new album was unleashed. The women in my group were all wowed. Even us men, who may not necessarily choose to listen to Madge, MIA, or Nicky Minaj, couldn’t help but admit that it was visually and sonically flawless, even exciting. The NFL is king. Let them celebrate. 

So today I was surprised to read about the Parents Television Council complaining about something. Was it the World Peace claim, surely that’s offensive – I mean, to think, was that a message against our military? Or was it the 53-year-old woman gyrating and gesticulating sexually in front of the whole English-speaking world – Jesus, doesn’t she realize she’s at the age when she should be joining AARP and going to church regularly? And remember when she was hitch-hiking naked in the 80’s? 

Nope, it wasn’t any of that. It was the fact that apparently at some point MIA snuck a middle finger into her performance. Did you catch that? Because I sure as fuck didn’t. In fact, according to Tivo the moment didn’t so much as make a blip (compared to the wardrobe malfunction, which is still the most-Tivo’ed moment of all time). It was on screen at most a second or two before NBC could blur it. But yet today it’s alert the presses, this is insulting. But let's all be real for a second - NBC and the NFL stumbling all over themselves to apologize is just pathetic.

"The obscene gesture in the performance was completely inappropriate, very disappointing and we apologize to our fans," said Brian McCarthy, NFL spokesman.

"The NFL hired the talent and produced the halftime show. Our system was late to obscure the inappropriate gesture and we apologize to our viewers," said NBC spokesman Christopher McCloskey.

"Most families would agree that the middle finger aimed directly at them is not appropriate, especially during the most-watched television event of the year," said Tim Winter, the president of the Parents Television council. Am I alone in thinking this is the biggest bunch of bullshit I’ve ever seen?

First off, Tim, a simple gesture means nothing taken out of context. Remember president Nixon’s “Victory” hand signals? When he flips his hands over, that means “Fuck You” in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In Shakespeare’s time biting your thumb was an aggrieved insult. In many countries, giving the “OK” hand gesture (y’know, thumb and forefinger in a circle) is practically a challenge to a duel to the death. So if your son or daughter associate the middle finger with the term “fuck you”, it’s because you’ve allowed them to associate that particular American gesture with that statement. Asshole, it’s YOUR FAULT  that your kids see this motion and take it to mean "fuck you". Even more, if your kids know what it means, banning it from TV isn’t gonna do a damn thing. That’s hypocrisy, bordering on hysteria. I mean come on, it’s a hand signal. For a word that most of us hear every day. It’s a part of life. And even more, it’s a word which only has the power we assign to it. It doesn’t have a history of racial hatred or oppression. It isn’t even a slang or degrading term for a “private part”. It’s a simple four-letter expletive with homonyms in almost every language (the French slang for school is “fac”; to say something is hot in Italian is “fa caldo” which is pronounced like “fuck Aldo”). And she didn’t even SAY IT but simply flashed a hand gesture, that was hardly noticeable, which is given importance by men like Tim Winter, an ex-NBC exec who, depressed that he’s out of the TV game and discontent with his boring life of family commitments, speech-giving, and writing blowhard articles, needs to found councils and make public complaints to feel like his life has meaning anymore.

He’s like the stereotypical housewife who hires caretakers for her children and cleaners to keep her house spotless and, due to a lack of feeling of purpose (I mean seriously, what DO you do?) she forms an organization aimed at limiting other people's rights so they can attribute their children’s good behavior to themselves changing society (versus the actual reason, Consuela’s love, attention, and occasional chides when the child says a bad word or pushes somebody down on the playground). People who are discontent/unfulfilled with their own lives and have too much time, money, and/or influence on their hands more often than not are dangers to the freedom of others, especially people who don't toe the line. And from an entertainment side, this is like Ed Sullivan trying to tell Jim Morrison not to say “higher” during his performance or NBC trying to tell Howard Stern not to talk so candidly about sexual deviance. It’s why Europeans laugh at us and why every year American celebrities and politicians and priests and pastors are brought down by the public exposure of the sexual perversions which have festered inside them their whole rotten lives due to our society’s puritanical prudishness and desire to ignore the harsh reality of life.

I remember a comic a few years ago in which a sexy Alien girl says “I come from a backward planet where we worship sex and demonize violence.” Because seriously, how did it become okay to have people getting beaten, shot, and yelled at in movies, TV shows, commercials, and especially the evening news but somebody shows a breast or flashes a confrontational hand symbol for the word “fuck” and these sick parents rush to claim that’s what’s destroying society?

You know what's destroying society? A political system with a bipartisan fissure the size of the Grand Canyon, an economic system dictated by the very robber barons who benefit most from it, a generation growing up without any time to just sit, think, and contemplate life in silence, and a world which, as it grows smaller, is just rife for one more epic cultural war, taking it back to the Crusades of yore.

And by the way, Winter’s the same asshole who’s been leading a crusade against violence in video games. Per his bio on the PTC website:

“He is also passionate about the harmful affects of violent and sexually charged video games on today’s children. Harnessing the energies of the organization’s more than 1.2 million members, Mr. Winter works to ensure that retailers do not sell graphic adult-oriented video games to children without the parent’s consent.” (http://www.parentstv.org/ptc/aboutus/winterbio.asp ) 

This is directly copied and pasted from his site. Yes, homeboy doesn’t understand the difference between the noun “effects” and the verb “affects”. Definitely somebody who should be dictating what are children are exposed to.

You know, I used to play GRAND THEFT AUTO a bunch. I hated going on missions, I just liked driving recklessly and killing people; occasionally I’d enter a cheat code, kill enough people to summon the Police chopper and blow it out of the sky with a bazooka. I once bought a hooker, then beat her to death and took my money back.

I have never in my life considered stealing a car, shooting a cop, or even hiring a prostitute, much less killing one. I have never struck a woman and the idea appalls me. 

A friend of mine is a gamer. He probably spends more of his waking free-time killing people, slaying aliens, slicing enemies, and driving dangerously than he spends doing any other single activity. Yet he would be the last person I’d see committing a violent crime.

Know who I do see committing a violent crime? The kid whose parents tried to shield him from the real world, who tried to create a false illusion about life, who tried to control every image, word, and action to which their son was exposed all throughout his youth. Because when he gets free and sees the world the real way it is, when he’s flicked off by some angry driver or joins the military and finds himself at a whorehouse with his shipmates or realizes how much time his parents spent rallying futilely against society when they should have just spent it with him explaining what’s right and wrong, he’s going to be angry and he’s going to be confused. He’s going to feel his burgeoning explosive humanity with all its inherent ugliness which he’d been taught his whole life is sinful and to be avoided, ignored, protested. And that kid’s gonna go fucking nuts. 

In the end, it’s time to stop bowing to these fucks. To put an end to the softening of our country by whack-job parents trying to avoid the increasingly tough outside world. It’s time for people like the NFL to say “fuck you” to people like Winter. Because I believe his censorship, his disdain for the harsh realities of life, and the fact that, quite simply, he’s just a bored opportunist looking for some way to cash in on a career he could no longer hack (he was in charge of emerging technologies at some point – another reason why the dinosaurs will lose to the fast-moving young, small companies) makes him dangerous to freedom. And even more, by getting his panties all in a bunch over an arbitrary gesture flashed for about 2 seconds during a light-and-flash-filled halftime show (that was admittedly better than any awards show live performance of the last decade), not only is he training his child to be over-sensitive and petty (the usual warning signs of eventual psychological disorders), he’s  also assigning more importance and power to the very gestures and words he’s trying to censor. 

This is a man with misdirected ambition. There's a lesson here, just ambition isn't enough. You need to look at what you're REALLY ambitious to accomplish. In this man's case, he's trying to pretend the ugly world doesn't exist alongside the beautiful world, which it does. His time could be spent doing so many more worthwhile things - instead of finding ways to keep all kids from seeing a middle finger on TV, maybe he should spend his time finding ways to make sure all kids have food and medical care? Maybe he should do something positive that actually benefits people in a real way instead of proffering censorship which will, at best, simply avoid the inevitable. Like the mother who pretends to be okay with homosexuality but when her daughter sees two women kiss says it's just because they're being silly. Or the father who tells his son that we didn't slaughter Indians and dehumanize black people in founding this country but rather just started this grand experiment solely with the purpose of making everybody happy and free (when in reality it was literally so a group of religious nuts could practice their painfully prohibitive religion with more freedom to punish people who don't play by their rules). 

Stop the hysteria. America may have been founded on censorship, prudishness, and disdain disguised as respectability but it became great on freedom of expression and celebration of diversity and audaciousness. 

And everybody out there, if you ever see Tim Winter’s son with liquor on his breath and a duffel bag, run the other way. Because he’s just found out about the word "fuck" and played his friend’s copy of LA NOIRE and he’s gonna be gunning for the next person who flashes him the middle finger.

- Ryan