Only in America: A Woman's Breast Goes to the Supreme Court

[OldSchoolGamer]

Is anyone else somewhere between amused, dumbfounded and outraged that, years after the fact, the U.S. government is still spending tax dollars on Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction?

Here we have a flu epidemic, a depression, a soaring deficit and an energy shortage waiting to kick in, and people in officialdom actually think an exposed tit is a real issue demanding millions of dollars and a federal response?  Has America lost its friggin' mind?

I would recommend Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation blog entry this week, because I think he's spot-on: this country has lost all touch with reality.  We're off on some sort of bizarre tangent as a society, simply unwilling to realize that the American Way has hit a brick wall.

[MercyfulFate]

I honestly think everyone on the Supreme Court should be removed. They recently voted in the favor of a school that strip searched a young girl, based on anonymous tips that she had "drugs" in her underwear.

Mind you these "drugs" were Ibuprofen, advil or Motrin...what? They backed the school, it enraged me.

[Zakharra]

 Well there are only two ways to remove a person from the Supreme Court besides retirement. I think Congress can remove them with a super majority vote, the other way is the person dying.

[MercyfulFate]

Well there are only two ways to remove a person from the Supreme Court besides retirement. I think Congress can remove them with a super majority vote, the other way is the person dying.

Unfortunately, yeah.

[consortium11]

Em, this is actually a pretty damn important case on censorship, freedom of speech and what can be allowed on air as well as indirectly what powers the FCC should be able to use.

[Rhapsody]

I honestly think everyone on the Supreme Court should be removed. They recently voted in the favor of a school that strip searched a young girl, based on anonymous tips that she had "drugs" in her underwear.

Can you link where you found the information that they ruled in favor of the school?  I just did a search and have been following it, and everything I can find states that a decision wasn't due to come out until sometime this summer.

Mind you these "drugs" were Ibuprofen, advil or Motrin...what? They backed the school, it enraged me.

Ibuprofen, prescription strength, which were prohibited on that particular campus.  And yes, they are drugs, since you need a doctor's scrip for them.

[Inkidu]

Well there are only two ways to remove a person from the Supreme Court besides retirement. I think Congress can remove them with a super majority vote, the other way is the person dying.

Nope. Death and inability to fill the capacity in a mental sense. If congress could vote out the supreme court then they'd do it all the time. Especially now. With a republican court and democratic congress. 

[Inkidu]

Em, this is actually a pretty damn important case on censorship, freedom of speech and what can be allowed on air as well as indirectly what powers the FCC should be able to use.

Yeah guys remember too the supreme court doesn't deal with crime per se it deals with what is and isn't constitutional. So unless the economy, a drought, and swine flu are in the constitution they're doing their job. The American public is more to blame for paying so much attention to it. Then again it is the Supreme Court.

[Stattick]

Ibuprofen, prescription strength, which were prohibited on that particular campus.  And yes, they are drugs, since you need a doctor's scrip for them.

Ibuprofen's an over the counter drug. I should know, I eat around 1500 of those little 200 mg pills a year.

[Rhapsody]

Ibuprofen's an over the counter drug. I should know, I eat around 1500 of those little 200 mg pills a year.

And 400mg ibuprofen is prescription-strength medication, which is exactly what this girl was accused of having.

[Zakharra]

Em, this is actually a pretty damn important case on censorship, freedom of speech and what can be allowed on air as well as indirectly what powers the FCC should be able to use.

*nods*

[Stattick]

And 400mg ibuprofen is prescription-strength medication, which is exactly what this girl was accused of having.

Oh. Yeah, that's perscription strength... sorry, didn't remember that detail of the case.


Still, the strip search shouldn't have happened like it did... perhaps with parental consent, with the parent present I could understand. Or done by the police... but I'd guess that the police would decline to strip search a girl her age for perscription strength ibuprophen. Now maybe the police would search if it was for some sort of serious contraband...

I just don't think that school officials should be strip searching anyone, except under the most unusual and dire of circumstances. Not without a search warrant issued by a judge, or under the types of normal rules that the police must follow when doing a strip search.

[Rhapsody]

Still, the strip search shouldn't have happened like it did... perhaps with parental consent, with the parent present I could understand. Or done by the police... but I'd guess that the police would decline to strip search a girl her age for perscription strength ibuprophen. Now maybe the police would search if it was for some sort of serious contraband...

I just don't think that school officials should be strip searching anyone, except under the most unusual and dire of circumstances. Not without a search warrant issued by a judge, or under the types of normal rules that the police must follow when doing a strip search.

I don't disagree with any particular point.  I can say, however, that it was an understandable reaction.  An inexcusable one, but an understandable one.   From what I understand, the school (which is a middle school) had fairly recently suffered the loss of one of its students in a drug-related death, and I guess they just panicked.  It was a kneejerk thing to do, especially since the girl had a clean record and no history of drug activity, but it's understandable.

The fact that it's understandable doesn't excuse the fact that it was a violation though.

[ShrowdedPoet]

America hasn't just hit a brick wall. . .may I just say "another one down and another one down and another bites the dust" (I remember playing that in the stands at football games)?

As for the strip search, I don't even find it understandable, I find it outrageous.

[Zeitgeist]

It occurred to me after seeing the footage again playing on the television, that perhaps the more disturbing imagery isn't the baring of a breast, but perhaps the mildly violent act of a man tearing at a woman's clothes.

I understand that's not what the court is looking at, but something that occurred to me nevertheless.

[Scott]

I agree whole heartedly, when Congress wastes valuable time with as many bad things going on with the country to debate for weeks if Sammy Sosa lied about using steroids or not... I think it was just a governmental ploy to draw attention away from the truly important issues.

[MercyfulFate]

Can you link where you found the information that they ruled in favor of the school?  I just did a search and have been following it, and everything I can find states that a decision wasn't due to come out until sometime this summer.

Ibuprofen, prescription strength, which were prohibited on that particular campus.  And yes, they are drugs, since you need a doctor's scrip for them.

Doesn't really matter, 400mg is 2 advil, or 2 Motrin....

Not to mention an anonymous tip, with no proof at all.

[Stattick]

As for the strip search, I don't even find it understandable, I find it outrageous.

Utterly agrees. I don't have children... but if I did, and that was done to one of my children in school, I would be very hard pressed not get physically violent over someone violating my child like that.



As to the stupidity regarding Janet Jackson's nipple... I don't even know where to start on that. For God's sake, it's just a fucking nipple, get over it. I think I was 8 the first time I saw a bared breast on TV... which would have been around 1980. This was on a PBS station, which showed a number of programs from the BBC. So, it was probably on Masterpiece Theatre or something like that. It's not uncommon on British TV, and in Europe in general...

I was not much older when I saw a show that was about breast surgery on PBS. That... was kind of disturbing to me at 12 yrs old, watching as a woman's breast was cut open with a scalpal, and then later stitched back up. Nevertheless, with the prevelence of breasts that can still be seen today on PBS stations, basic cable stations, soft core porn on pay cable stations, pay per view hard core porn on cable, the non-stop flow of half dressed Hollywood celebrities with their breasts and nipples showing (or crotch for that matter), the unending flow of half dressed women at fashion shows (ever watched the Paris fashion shows on E! - more boobs then you shake a stick at), topless and/or nude beaches, museums filled with nude statuary/paintings, churchs filled with the same (Sistine Chapel anyone?), and the internet (the internet's for porn afterall), who gives a fuck if Janet Jackson's nipple got aired on TV? The FCC needs to wake the fuck up, and realize that nudity - always been here, always will be, the boob's out of the bag, now shut up, and worry about something that might actually be relevent.

Or shall we continue to believe that it's ok for men to walk around with thier nipples showing, but for it to be illegal for women to do the same? Sexist much?

[ShrowdedPoet]

Allow me to take a line from Eurotrip, America is a land filled with prudes. . .or something to that extent.  We villanize sex in everyway possible while with the same mouth selling anything and everything with it.  Barbie is an idol of sex to little girls.  Beer is sold with sex.  Deodorant, shampoo, food. . .etc. . .all sold with sex.  But god no!  Never let there be a nipple showed on national TV if it's not first approved.

[HairyHeretic]

What you need is the equivalent of the NRA but for breasts. You have the right to bare arms, go for the right to bare breasts as well. Buy a few politicians, get them to go topless on the job, kick the whole thing into the mainstream. :)

[ShrowdedPoet]

There is already a starting of this sort of.  It's a breast feeding campaign.  Never underestimate the power of angry mothers.

[HairyHeretic]

Add in a few celebrities fondling topless models in public, and that whole "You can have these when you pry them from my cold dead hands". Far more media attention than any number of angry mothers :)

[ShrowdedPoet]

*laughs*  I should say so! 

[Rhapsody]

Doesn't really matter, 400mg is 2 advil, or 2 Motrin....

It does matter.  Prescription meds is prescription meds, no matter how easily you can get to the dose with over the counter meds.

Not to mention an anonymous tip, with no proof at all.

It wasn't an anonymous tip.  It came from another student who had been caught with a pill or two and the accused student's planner in her hand.  The girl said that the student who'd loaned her the planner also gave her the drugs.

[Rhapsody]

Or shall we continue to believe that it's ok for men to walk around with thier nipples showing, but for it to be illegal for women to do the same? Sexist much?

Legal in Canada, and has been for more than a decade.  "A high court decision from December 1996 makes it clear that women and men doing so with no "sexual or commerical" intent are not indecent."