mtv chastened?

Via my friend Peter Gornell comes this note from the culture wars:

Under intense scrutiny following Janet Jackson's breast-baring performance during last week's Super Bowl, MTV has quietly plucked a number of its edgiest music videos out of its daytime rotation.

The Viacom Inc.-owned cable network, which produced the Super Bowl halftime extravaganza, notified several major record companies last week that at least eight of their videos would now be played only during overnight programming, generally between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., sources said.

MTV shifted most of the videos — including recent clips from such acts as Britney Spears, Maroon 5 and Blink 182 — because of their sexual content. But the list also included a politically charged clip from the rock band Incubus; the video for the song “Megalomaniac” depicts an Adolf Hitler character with angel's wings flying over a crowd, and later shows a nameless politician ordering police to halt a protest.

Ah, yes: the “Megalomaniac” clip. The main politician in the video may indeed be “nameless,” but GWB still manages to make a cameo. (Guess they just couldn't help it.)

Hate to sound like a premature curmudgeon, but the Incubus video was one of the most puerile bits of pop culture I've seen in a while. Let's see: cheap animation, check; Ostensibly Bold Yet Somehow Amorphous Political Statement, check; and Hitler™ (double check).

The sad thing is that the wankers actually think they're being deep.

Anyways. The big question is: has MTV actually seen the light?

Well, no. Their newfound circumspection won't last six 3 months.

I once saw an airing of the MTV Video Music Awards, a spectacle that a rather non-conservative female friend described as R-rated. The low point was a performance by the Red Hot Chili Peppers—or more precisely, the performance by the fans/dancers onstage with the Chili Peppers, one of whom (male, incidentally) treated the audience to an exaggerated simulation of oral sex on Flea.

The year was 1992.

So no matter how much CBS and Viacom pretend to be shocked—shocked!—that the Super Bowl performance went a little bawdy, just remember: MTV was there a decade and more ago.