One of my most memorable moments in my movie going career came when the guy reached for the gal’and the screen went completely blank. Memphis, Tenn., had an official censor during my not-so-halcyon days as a high school girl there.
Let me hasten to add that I’m definitely not in favor of such quaint practices.
Still, I can’t help being vastly amused that ABC will broadcast the Grammies with a delaying device so that if any of the presenters decide to strip (a la the most recent member of the Jackson Five is too many family to engage our attention) or use unprintable words (a la Diane Keaton, who’s old enough to know better, at the Golden Globe awards), we’ll be spared these excesses. What it all means is that Hollywood today is a place where people can’t be trusted to behave themselves’and they have really dumb opinions, too.
Washington Post liberal columnist Marjorie Williams has an excellent column in which she seems to pooh pooh the notion that Janet Jackson’s breast could be a “corrupting sight” but talks about the general state of the kultcha: “One day my daughter is bopping to the tunes of Professional Virgin Britney Spears, whom she first heard in a Pokemon movie soundtrack; blink, and Britney is locking tongues with Madonna on TV. So forgive me if I am nothing but sourly amused at the outrage over Janet Jackson’s breast.”