It's interesting to see what goes on with the Janet Jackson Super Bowl 'cover-her-up-quick'.

Ms Jackson releases a statement today saying that "decision to have a costume reveal at the end of my halftime show performance was made after final rehearsals. MTV was completely unaware of it".

So how is it that MTV released a press release before the weekend promising that Janet Jackson will bring 'shocking moments' at half time and also said "one of the top questions along with 'Who's going to win?' is 'What will Janet Jackson be doing at the halftime show?'"

So MTV must have made the decision to go ahead with it. The reason I bother to comment is that I can just imagine a pathetic marketing department at MTV searching for answers for what went wrong - wondering why Madonna could get away with it on an awards show. Well maybe the answer is (a) we all know and expect Madonna to shock in the name of publicity and (b) MTV awards are so tacky this sort of behavior just enhances the show. Now, try the same stunt with a troubled aging diva and the nations favorite family event and what do you expect......

Well, I hope this is the last entry anyone posts to Blogcritics about this. Enough, unless something actually newsworthy comes along. At this point, people are just exploiting the story to get hits. This is the kind of thing that makes bloggers look cheap. The rest of the media has moved on. We should to.

Give it a rest Diva. You've got your own little post to milk this titty. Your cheap righteousness bores. If you don't find a post interesting, feel free not to read it.

I honestly thought the traffic at my personal site was going to be the end of me. If it didn't die down I was going to have to buy more bandwidth this month. I wasn't trying to exploit, I just happened to write something before it happened. I agree with Diva to the extent that I really don't find the whole topic that compelling. When something happens in front of this many people, they really take ownership of it I guess.

You're up to five or six exploit the boob entries, aren't you, Barger? (Not to mention gratuitious uses of the words 'cock' and 'titty' on other fishing expeditions.)

I've applied news values to the story. Two entries. One about the FCC inquiry. The other about Jackson's apology. No racy language or revealing pictures. Hardly grounds for criticism, old boy.

I don't mean you, Craig. That was a lucky accident. You say 'boring' . . . and then. . . .

Some people are posting three days after the event, just to get in on the windfall. Meanwhile, real news like the investigation of why there were lies about WMD in Iraq and the latest election news is getting little attention here. If we are going to claim to be 'superior' bloggers, more of us need to earn the appellation.

I'm not sure all the creative angles have been milked out of this one yet, but it certainly is nearing the zenith.

I thought it would be cool to make a photoshop challenge out of Janet Jackson's breast at my blog. Afterwards, I saw at least one other site doing it so my 'idea' certainly wasn't original, but I thought it might be something fun and at the same time allow webmasters to work on their photoshop skills.

Since they did say that it was 'accidental' then people should be able to photoshop alternate cover-up to her boob.

I was going to write a longer entry about it and share my findings here but it's probably not going to happen due to time considerations not because the story has been whored to epic proportions. For those who would like to photoshop something and send it in, I'll of course give your blog full credit and a link in the thread to your blog.

I like those photoshop challenge things because I think they allow for a productive honing of skills and creativity.

I believe that "the market" will speak on this issue. There were nearly 260,000 visitors to Blogcritics on Monday, and just under 100,000 on Tuesday. I'm not sure where we're going to hit today - Eric is better at those sorts of predictions. Clearly interesting is waning but not sated.

Of course, this isn't a news site, but "a sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, and technology," and Janet's escapade qualifies on several counts. Music was playing, it was on television, it certainly has become a cultural event, and the sunburst nipple shield probably qualifies as technology, too. If someone writes a book... <grin>

I'd say all bets are off for now, but it looks like we may come in around 100K again today, which is pretty shocking on several levels. I thought we'd be a lot closer to "normal" by now, but who is to say what "normal" is at this point?