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MTV has far exceeded its network contemporaries in raising the awareness of its viewers about pressing issues, advocating tolerance and fairness and constantly uprooting stereotypes and stale assumptions in creative ways.

COME ON, PEOPLE ARE DYING
EVERY DAY

While "Moralists" Prepare an Inquisition Over Nipplegate, We've Got Real Problems
Some of the furor over the Super Bowl halftime show is clearly genuine. But it’s been blown ridiculously out of proportion, particularly given what’s going on in the world.

Rock music and culture have always been edgy, and it’s exactly that quality that draws giant advertisers, who underwrite costly spectacles like the Super Bowl in hopes of reaching young people with disposable income. Their fully approved advertising included testicle-biting by dogs, women subject to horse flatulence and multiple pitches from erectile-dysfunction medicators. A real cornucopia of old-fashioned morality.

But the envelope-pushing energy of modern music has also been a magnet for government repression since rock and roll’s infancy. During the ‘60s, as the form matured and found its voice in anti-war protest, the powerful did everything possible to suppress that message.

Now, decades later, another embattled administration is found to have justified a controversial war with false information. Osama bin Laden is still at large. Unemployment still rages. Schools are scrambling to buy textbooks.

And what issue demands immediate action? Some suggestive dancing and an exposed nipple on TV.

Conservative uproar, given the racy content of the halftime show, is to be expected. But the ominous language of FCC head Michael Powell and others suggests that MTV is being prepped as a scapegoat.

Let’s be very clear: MTV, under the stewardship of execs like Judy McGrath, Tom Freston and Van Toffler, has far exceeded its network contemporaries in raising the awareness of its viewers about pressing issues, advocating tolerance and fairness and constantly uprooting stereotypes and stale assumptions in creative ways.

While the 24-hour news channels were trying to steal their "edgy" style by making their newsreaders younger and dumber and showing the same Pentagon-approved footage all day, MTV News gave incisive, thought-provoking overviews of Middle East conflict, ethnography and history—often from the perspective of the young.

While their cable brethren were reconfiguring reality contests for maximum humiliation, MTV continued its work with empowerment enterprises like Rock the Vote.

As their competition hypocritically ping-ponged between sniggering sex references and ham-fisted moralism, MTV inventively informed its audience about AIDS.

Oh, and they also managed to break new music artists every day, many of whom have been politically vocal.

Is the right wing seizing an opportunity to punish MTV for its political advocacy? That remains to be seen. But we can’t sit by and watch as they go after some of the industry’s best and most effective people.

It's time to get our priorities straight. People are dying and suffering all over the world. Can we really afford to have "nipplegate" at the top of our agenda?