A Hack Flashes Back

Tiny Mickey Kaus momentarily diverts his thoughts from Howie Kurtz's balls -- you think I'm kidding? I'm not -- to weigh in with this timely comment:

The big problem with last year's Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake halftime show was not that people saw Jackson's breast. It wasn't what Jackson did that was offensive. It was what Timberlake did. Here was a massively popular, relatively hip singer whose message was that it was a hip, transgressive thing for men to rip clothes off women when they feel like it (which is quite often). I watched the game with a group of non-evangelical, non-moralistic dads who were uniformly horrified. The problem for them wasn't sex--their kids see flesh all the time in videos--but a form of sexism, not prudery but piggishness.

I might be inclined to take this seriously, but for Kaus's enthusiastic endorsement of the Predator in the California governor's race. Kaus didn't claim that allegations against Schwarzenegger were false or unproven, he claimed that they didn't matter. It sounds like Kaus is more offended by consensual, choreographed interaction than real, nonconsensual assault.