Spiting the Booboisie.

PICTURE two panicked pop stars, stressing out in their dressing room. Both are nervous, jittery; they need something, anything, to get them through their next act. In a frenzy, they stumble on a fix that just might give them the charge they need.

Cocaine? Nope: boobie.

That's right. According to various news accounts, Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson were desperate to provide a "reveal" at the end of their now-infamous Super Bowl halftime duet, produced by MTV. Timberlake's song "Rock Your Body" included the lyric "I'll have you naked by the end of this song," and both Jackson (age 37) and Timberlake (23) felt it was imperative to stay true to their art. The original plan was for Jackson to wear a long skirt that Timberlake could then yank off for an exciting denouement. But the skirt proved too cumbersome to dance in (one wonders how Ginger Rogers ever managed).

So, the duo decided that Timberlake should just rip off her leather corset, revealing--according to their story--her red bra. Unfortunately, while they were supposedly able to jerry-rig a breakaway leather bodice in a matter of minutes in their dressing room, their sewing skills were not equal to their leatherworking and the bra could not be fortified enough to withstand the brunt of Timberlake's bodice-ripping strength. This now infamous "wardrobe malfunction" (Timberlake's words) caused some 100 million Americans to see that Janet Jackson wears what appears to be a pewter nipple thingamajig that, needless to say, was not too cumbersome to dance in.

Now the FCC is investigating. MTV and CBS are apologizing to the public like shamed Japanese executives while still yelling at each other. The NFL says it will never work with MTV ever again and AOL wants the money it spent cosponsoring the thing refunded because the nudity prevents them from streaming the routine over the web (and who says we can't fight Internet porn?). There was talk that Janet and Justin would be banned from the Grammy Awards. A banner crop of recrimination and outrage in all the right directions! Not bad, when you think that ABC considered country singer Toby Keith to be too controversial (read: patriotic) for a Fourth of July celebration.

But there's one aspect that hasn't gotten enough attention. And that is Justin and Janet's addiction. They were desperate to "show" something to viewers for a reason. MTV ushered in the age of crotch-grabbing two decades ago. At this point, what was once risque is now kitsch. The fact that these sad cases are still hooked on such antics is a sign of how played-out the MTV culture has become. Shocking the bourgeois and tradition-bound is a longstanding tactic for artists lacking real talent, which explains Madonna's half-life nicely. But this time around the response from much of America doesn't seem to be Comstockery so much as contempt. Even those who think critics and parents are overreacting seem incapable of saying the boob-flap wasn't pathetic. This hardly constitutes a victory in the culture war, but it's something.