I’m not a prude.

Sure, I live in the Midwest – out in farmland, actually – and I’m the father to four great kids. I’m going camping this weekend and will hopefully get back to town early enough on Sunday morning to make it to church.

But I’m not a prude. Really.

Still, I think it’s probably a good thing the House of Representatives has decided to up the penalties for those broadcasters who go the route of “shock and awe” (meant in the crudest sense possible) when they try to score in the ratings race. Thanks to Janet Jackson’s appearance as a “special breast star” at the Super Bowl, 500,000+ calls from angry constituents were registered at the House and Senate office buildings, putting a serious crimp into lunches and vacation plans for the Spring recess.

The fact is, 500,000+ pissed off people really count for something with Washington politico’s. After all, that many people could actually throw an election one way or the other. Just ask Al Gore.

But of course, most of the media and lawmakers miss what’s simmering underneath all of this. It’s the blatant disregard for common sense that many of us find so damn offensive. Do we care if we caught a glimpse of Janet’s left boob on our tube? Not me. I didn’t even see it. Halftime at the Super Bowl is my cue to take a leak, make a sandwich and find out who won the Lingerie Bowl. Okay, maybe the first two …

It seems to me that what upsets most people is how a three-hour long spectacle celebrating a sport where 300 pound men run at 20+ mph into each other could be interrupted by twenty minutes of bad lip synching, torrid arrangements of classic rock tunes from our collective childhoods and an outrageous aerobic display of bumping and grinding that belongs on a stage with a brass pole and not CBS.

After all, why can’t the Super Bowl be more like the rest of TV? You know, a murder an hour; cutting up dead bodies during prime time; brainless high school girls and clueless fathers; impossibly thin ingenues and bulky studs capable of rolling their cars a dozen times and walking away.

No, the thing that is most indecent about television (and much of the rest of media) today is the unspoken contempt for the audience. We are marketing “targets” and are often given as much respect as a bale of hay wearing a series of concentric, red rings.

I think it’s okay that the government has upped the cost of censorship on media. To tell the truth, it’s paid to well to flaunt the rules for the last ten years or so. And, more importantly, I don’t think you can get the media to change unless there is a corresponding effect in the pocketbook. But if we really want to stem indecency over the air, through the cable, in print or online, the stakes have to be raised somewhere other than Washington, DC.

We’ve got to start being as savvy about our media consumption as we are about anything else we by. Discriminating, discerning media consumers are good for the economy and even better for the integrity of the marketing discipline. It should be our job as marketers to encourage critical media and message evaluation by the public at-large.

Why do I think I’m going to be one of a very small number in taking that position?

More later.

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