the commune Focus: Teen Mind-Control

n efforts to control crime and young minds in the past decade, many cities have followed the move of small towns to institute curfews and keep young people off the street. As part of the commune's ongoing attempt to bring you closer to the world around you, the issues presented to the American public, and eventually get you to buy our sociological journals, the commune brings you the commune Focus: Teen Curfews and Other Forms of Mind-Control.

Most recently, the town council of Vernon, Connecticut, some kind of state in the country, decided not to appeal a federal court ruling upholding a ban on their longtime teen curfew. Teens everywhere celebrated by playing X-Box, using swear words, and having unprotected sex in between backyard wrestling matches. The town council vowed to do nothing until hearing which way the parental outrage swung.

The ban on the town curfew came after ACLU (ack-loo) lawyers challenged the law on the premise it was written in Spanish. That having failed, the ACLU then challenged on behalf of parents' rights to set their own children's curfews, and then challenged on the idea it violated the rights of children themselves, best two out of three, but the court bit on the second suit.

The ruling could dissuade other pompous town council people in Footloose-type situations from passing legislation taking away the rights of anybody under the age of 21. Other issues in controlling teen thought are in dangerous territory with the frown on teen curfews, including a legal drinking age of 21, school uniforms, and chemical castration (for boys only).

"It's very important teens learn restraint in social situations," said Child Psychology professor Fett Geraldo, an ancient prick far too old to have any fun anymore. "Children lack the same wizened social skills and experience to make decisions of importance for themselves like what to wear and what time to come in, whether to obey their parents or not. I know you're thinking people once said that about women and non-white people, but I assure such assessments are only mostly accurate. Anyone under the age of eighteen, or twenty-one, if we're talking alcohol, is clearly not mature enough to make decisions for himself. Or herself. Hell, look at all these teen websites for just-turned-eighteen girls, you can see what I mean."

This reporter did look at the websites, and was quite impressed by Dr. Geraldo's point. And the flexibility of one particular Ukrainian girl.

Teens, however, were demonstrably pissed off by the professor's opinion, and modern music.

"This is just another example of one group claiming they know what's best for another," said seventeen-year-old Betty Fullback. "But I know what's best for them—just shut up already. Adults always think young people can't make decisions about anything, and it's stupid. It's just like the sixties—I hear. We need to mobilize and rebel and stuff, to get our rights like the African-Americans did in the 1600s. I'm trying to get some people together at my house this weekend, so if you know anybody who's interested in fighting for their rights, just—as long as I have approval, you know. Let me check the list. I'm on student council, you know, I have some respect to maintain."

Consequently, this reporter found himself uninvited from the party after a lewd pass and a little commune name-dropping.

ollowing former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay's admission pre-war intelligence was practically "all wrong," officials in the Bush administration came forward with announcements everyone was, ostensibly, "shocked."

Staff members ranking as high as the vice president and "president" issued statements on how "shocked" (quote-unquote) everyone in government was about the lack of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Press secretary Scott McClellan said the president himself sort of "dismayed" and "curious" about the "failure" of prewar intelligence. When asked by reporters if the White House planned a probe into the intelligence problem, McClellan restrained a smile and promised someone would get on that "right away."

Conservative news agencies posed questions to McClellan on how the president viewed intelligence and homeland security in the wake of the discovery, while more liberal news agencies questioned the press secretary on the legitimacy of the Iraq war if intelligence has proven faulty. Meanwhile, in the back of the room, one man screamed at the top of the lungs that the president knew, of course he knew, goddammit, everyone in the administration had to have known and they rode into the fucking White House looking for the first excuse to head into Iraq with guns blazing just like daddy did, Jesus Christ, has everyone else on the fucking planet gone so deaf and blind they can't even see the president's a lousy fucking liar? But McClellan did not take questions at that time.

Statements from the White House were seen by many as damage control after Kay's Wednesday admission to a congressional committee early Iraq intelligence claiming Saddam Hussein was developing a program of weapons of mass destruction (or WMD, as the kids are saying) was incorrect. Kay described the "lapse" as a massive intelligence failure, and painted the president as much a victim of the fuck-up as the hundreds of Iraqis lying dead under rubble and blown up by landmines.

"Boy, did we screw the pooch on this one," laughed Kay, to an unforgiving congressional audience. "Yikes. Tough room. But seriously, folks, you know who we should give it up for? Mr. Bush. That's right, the president. I know it's not popular to say so, but I think he's doing a bang-up job and plainly he just wanted to do the right thing and had no idea how shitty this intelligence was. Really, we're talking Pig Latin intelligence or something. Waaaay off, no kidding. I think they were even in Iceland—hey! You gotta give me that one. C'mon. Show the love."

Friday Bush followed the administration's campaign for getting over this as quick as possible by releasing an official statement ripe with quotation marks.

"Obviously we would have done things 'differently' if the intelligence had been more accurate. Assuming that it was accurate—I still say, really, there's no way of telling if anybody's got weapons of mass destruction on them or not. You can hide them anywhere. I've got mustard gas, hidden in a tree house from when I was 12 years old, little gift from dad, nobody ever found it. You telling me Saddam can't hide something in all of Iraq? But I'm getting off message here. We're obviously facing a 'failure' of intelligence here. Everybody here in this administration wants 'peace,' no one more so than me. But if I had it all to do over again, knowing the 'threat' Saddam Hussein poses to the world, I would have done things very much the same. Our 'coalition' in Iraq is 'ready' to 'hand over' the 'country' in the 'next few months,' give or take two or three years."

A nation awoke last Monday already colossally beyond-tired of hearing about Janet Jackson's titties, yet knowing intuitively they'd have to endure at least a month of teeth-gnashing from the three people in the world who were offended by sort-of seeing a woman's breast on TV. While most of the nation wouldn't have cared if Janet had smoked Justin Timberlake's icky boy-band pole onstage during the halftime show, many have written in with the same question: What's the big deal? Hasn't this shit happened before?

The answer, obviously, is that of course it's happened before you moron. So why is it such a big deal this time around? In part because of Janet's reputation, and in part because of the shock that something interesting actually happened at a football game. The CBS switchboards were flooded with calls within moments of the incident, with irate viewers complaining either that they only got to see one lousy tit or that they were in the can and missed the whole damned thing.

Much of the hoopla originates from Janet being known as the "most-normal" Jackson, which is sort of like being voted the most fun-loving Nazi at a German summer camp. If MTV'd had their first choice, and Britney Spears hadn't been tied up in a previous engagement stripping for Thai schoolchildren, nobody would have been fazed at all by this halftime anatomy lesson. Britney could have whipped a rubber chicken out of her cooch onstage without anyone batting an eyelid. But since America was half expecting Janet to rip off her fleshy body suit and finally reveal that Michael is the only Jackson, and he just dresses up as his "siblings" like Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, the unexpectedly realistic boobage on display was highly unsettling for most everyone who thought they had this whole "family" thing figured out.

Far less controversy farted out of the grapevine when hip-hop star and former pornstress Lil' Kim let most of it hang out of the mammary-flashing dress she wore to the Grammys in 2000, even though her outfit left less to the imagination than a Lubriderm commercial. But Kim's worn goods weren't anything new to anyone who'd ever turned on MTV or accidentally wandered into a porno store, while viewers had only seen Jackson mostly naked in videos, magazine photos and on album covers.

Fittingly, Lil' Kim's tried-and-true promotional technique of screwing a lot of guys in movies before she embarked on a hip-hop career harkens back to classical impresario Ludwig Van Beethoven, who dropped his shorts in a crowded restaurant to promote the struggling composer's fourth symphony "Symphony 4: More Lovin' from Beethoven" after his first three Symphonies ("Introducing...," "Gotta Feeling in My Heart," and "Rubbin' It,") did poorly in Nielsen polls of what people were humming back in those days.

An event strangely similar to the Jackson Superbowl fracas took place in 1988, when Tonight Show host Johnny Carson wore shorts instead of his trademark suit one night on the show as a joke, only to find the joke was on him when he sat down at his desk after the monologue and the studio and TV audiences caught a flash of his dapper white gonads. This unfortunate event received almost no media attention at the time, and the sighting was quickly and vividly disavowed by all present. Needless to say, not many schoolchildren were bragging that they saw Johnny Carson's nuts pop out when they returned to school the following Monday. Sales of bicycle shorts plummeted and a kind of embarrassed silence fell over the nation.

Viewers with a good memory for this kind of thing were reminded of Today Show host Dave Garroway from the 1950's, who chronically forgot to zip up his fly and as a result frequently had his baggage get loose during musical sketches on the show. 1950's viewers pretended they hadn't seen anything for years, until Garroway was fired after a memorable interview with Jayne Mansfield in 1956.

The same Jayne Mansfield created a fervor all her own at the Oscars a year later, when the actress's irrepressible bosoms got loose and hurt a small child while she was on stage presenting an award. America was so offended that Oscar ratings soared until 1974, when Robert Opal streaked naked across the stage during an acceptance speech and shocked a nation that had never seen a man naked before. Oscar ratings have never recovered.

Perhaps the grandmammary of all accidental TV nudity was The Faye Emerson Show in 1950, when the host's famous plunging neckline finally caught up with her and allowed her breasts to escape custody, giving the audience a view of female anatomy so shocking it caused the 1950's.

Over the next 50 years, various bits of accidental T&A found their way onto the small screen, from The Price is Right contestant in the 70's who had her unmentionables deblouse while she was coming on down (writing an early epitaph for the fad of snaps instead of buttons as clothing fasteners), to the 1976 episode of Charlie's Angels when star Farrah Fawcett finally threw her fans a nipple-shaped bone during an undercover prison sequence.

By the 1980's, real intentional nudity was finding its way to television screens, sapping the accidental kind of its ability to titillate. Bra commercials began using live lingerie models instead of hilarious mannequins or retarded women wearing bras on the outside of their clothes, and in 1989 Lonesome Dove viewers saw far more cowboy cock than they had ever bargained for. By the time America was treated to the sight of Dennis Franz's bare hairy ass on NYPD Blue in 1993, (prompting Jay Leno to remark "I only have a 20-inch TV, so I couldn't see it all") the nation had really seen too much and was calling for the networks to put some goddamn pants on these people.

Where does that leave us now? Can television nudity ever really be accidental and exciting again? We can only hope. Because despite ever-present nudity on cable and the Internet, network television retains its unique ability to shock and titillate people who've never heard of cable or the Internet.

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