An Open (and Still Unanswered) Letter to the FCC

Good Day: 

This correspondence is in regards to the level of scrutiny placed on the performances of those who participated in the Super Bowl Half Time Show on Sunday Feb 1, 2004.
I was one of the millions who watched the Half Time Show and I was utterly disgusted with the amount of negative publicity surrounding the performances, namely the performance by entertainer Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. The investigation by the FCC in regards to their performance is a complete misuse of tax payer's money. I took the time to review the FCC's website for information regarding the regulations and mandates for material displayed on broadcast television and found the information to be misleading.

The prohibition, Title 18 United States Code, Section 1464 (18 U.S.C. § 1464) states: "To be obscene, material must meet a three-prong test: (1) an average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (2) the material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law; and (3) the material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value".
(1) As an average person of which this prohibition is to be based, I did not find any of the performances from the Half Time Show to contain material which would be considered prurient or of an unwholesome sexual interest.
(2) The performances by all of the scheduled participants, namely Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, can not possibly be considered obscene under this mandate because the performances were of an artistic nature in which it was to coincide with the songs created and/or performed by the featured artists. Therefore, none of the performances lacked artistic value.