First of all, I am not going to get self righteous and pooh pooh people who were pissed off at the Miley Cyrus performance. It is perfectly reasonable to not be happy about it. It was a pretty embarrassing cringeworthy performance. If you are a bunch of adult friends watching it, yeah, you can have a laugh at it. But if you are with family, I understand the extreme discomfort factor because I felt it too. And I say this as someone who was not bothered by Lady Gaga or even Madonna (though Madonna started looking a tad desperate in some of her later controversy causing attempts). Still, it's MTV where the kind of shows on that channel have less redeeming value than the worst moments of any of the VMAs. Poor girl , Miley, does not realize that she just can't pull off shocking like Madonna or Lady Gaga. Read Camille LaPaglia's articlefor a better analysis of why Cyrus came off desperate and awkward instead of bold and shocking.
I get that it is the VMAs and lewd behavior is par for the course. I had family in the room when watching it and I was watching on a minor tape delay as I was watching Breaking Bad in real time. So when I got hint of what MIley Cyrus was about to do, I fast forwarded some of the scenes when she got into the Blurred Line part with the big foam finger. So none in the family got to see really how embarassing her performance really was though she could not escape scrutiny that she did not make the effort to even clean her tongue before the performance. On a side note, it would be nice for teen singers to try to get into college like we have seen from child actors like Jodie Foster, natalie Portman. Being a lewd bratty moron is not the only way to show you are grown up.
But here is where the real outrage ended up being - THE NEWS CHANNELS CONSTANTLY BOMBARDING US WITH THE WORST PARTS OF THE PERFORMANCE WITH STILL SHOTS AND REPETITIVE SHORT CLIPS under the guise of reporting how outrageous and offensive the performance was. So if some of their serious commentators were so concerned, why the hell are you doing a more effective job than MTV at making sure we can't ignore the clips even if wanted to. At least on MTV, Miley's performance gave us enough warning at the very start of her performance that something worse was to follow. You can't switch away fast enough when CNN all of sudden puts a promo clip of still shots while cutting to commercial about the upcoming discussion of the Miley performance. I had a family member ask how they missed that clip the prior night and I had a smile on my face and told them that I fast forwarded it because I figured they would catch it anyway the next day in their own privacy consuming it on huffington post or whatever blog that decides to recycle it. (TO be honest, after everyone left, I pretty much rewound it to see how cringeworthy it really was and had a laugh at Miley's expense).
Anyway, here I am channel surfing CNN, Good Morning America, Today show and I kept seeing parts of that performance that even I don't remember seeing because they kept focusing on the worst 3 seconds. I actually thought the original unrated video of Blurred Liines got a bad rap as I felt the women in the video, especially the main brunette model, were holding their own attitude wise in the video. I would rather have a kid see the original uncensored video where the main model is seen being playful and visually taunting the guys in the video and wearing her nudity naturally than see the news clips "analyzing' that performance. (I know others disagree and feel like it is misogynistic).
This is like the Janet jackson Superbowl controversy. I am pretty sure most of the audience didn't even care one bit when it actually happened because it happened in the era before HD was common and it was a quick long shot. But then blowhards like Bill O Reilly would be discussing how morally wrong it was and how bad it was while broadcasting blown up zoomed up slo-moed clips of the one seceond scene of Timberlake removing whatever contraption was covering Janet Jackson's breasts. And that you could not unsee or prepare yourself for and the constant focusing on those clips actually made it much worse than it really was. I would like to see these blowhards on news channels or FAUX news channels being called out on it.
Besides, my philosophy about crudeness in culture was not that it was harmful for a kid to be exposed to it once in a while. It is the constant bombardment of images that is more harmful. I would take a kid getting exposed to occasional R rated clips than constanly exposed to PG-13 low brow crap. If I have younger relatives over, and a Godfather or some other classic R rated movie is playing, it is OK once in a while to see some adult images to enjoy the art involved in such endeavors. Which is more offensive to me as an adult in charge of minors - a scene where Michael Coreleon's wife dropping her top for a brief moment or a news channel discussing constantly the worst 3 seconds of a Miley Cyrus dance and aiding the Kardashian family in their self promotion of their shallow and hollow family? What is more soul deadening is the constant "safe" skirting on the borderline lewdness that you see on a daily basis in news "discussion" on pop or sitcoms or fake reality shows with non celebs like the Kardashians or rich housewives that have a negative effect on culture.
We tend as a mainstream culture tend to focus too much on trivial crap like "oh did the F word sneak in?" like it is some mind numbingly corrupt event. Which kid hasnt even heard someone say fuck or shit once in a while from a family member or stranger? Worrying in minute detail about such once in a while individual exposure leads an adult to overlook persistent trends of seemingly less offensive material but with more intellectually damaging effect. So yes, parents, i understand the outrage instinct, but don't overspend it on such issues because you will need to save some of it for the things that matter more in your children's lives.