Super Bowl Alert

We'd better go over security for Sunday's big game. Emergency Management magazine tells us "more than 70 government agencies have struck alliances" in order to make a safe Super Bowl Sunday. Tens of thousands of people will be carrying guns in Miami. Of course, tens of thousands of people always carry guns in Miami, but on Super Sunday, that number will skyrocket due to the sudden insertion of an army of cops and baggage handlers.

We've got the Miami-Dade Police Department, Miami-Dade Office of Emergency Management, the federal Department of Homeland Security, Boward County Sheriffs Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, Billy Joel, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, FBI, Coast Guard, Air Force, the Alhambra High School marching band, National Guard, the Latvian embassy honor guard, and 3000 day workers hired by the NFL to run magnetometers and make coffee.

This is a Level 1 National Security Event, which means there will be the usual supply of combat aircraft, helicopters, submarines, tactical weapons teams, SWAT teams, mobile bomb labs, robots, no-fly zones, harbor closings, and bomb-sniffing dogs.

Zach Mann, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection mouthpiece, sums up this interagency effort with metaphor: "We used to be distant cousins working somewhat closely together. Now we're really like brothers and sisters, working hand in hand, to make sure that there is a secure environment for the event."

If you have loved ones in Miami, tell them to get out while they can.

The sentence "Government agencies are working well together" reminds me of Katrina or the anthrax attacks in Florida after 9/11, or 9/11 for that matter. Government suits call a press conference. Seven men, two women climb onto a stage. Dead faces. Dead eyes. The first dead face introduces the other dead faces and then starts in on how well they're working together. People are dying, a great city is under water, and the number one talking point on every suit's list is how well they're working together.

I have three objections. 1. It's a lie. 2. No one cares. 3.That's what they're supposed to do.

I mention this because, while Zach is droning on about brother and sisterhood with the Bureau of Weights and Measures, the most notorious Super Bowl criminal of all time remains at large. I am referring to Janet Jackson; specifically, to Janet Jackson's right breast.

I'm sure the horror of Super Bowl XXXVIII has not been forgotten. Picture it now. Can you visualize that awful day in Houston, now three years gone? Can you bring back the festive halftime show? One hundred million Americans looking on as Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson sing "Rock Your Body." They move and rub against each other. Then, Justin voices the tender lyric, "gonna have you naked by the end of this song," and understandably, unable to control himself for one more instant, paws at Janet's top, loosening the garment, thereby exposing Janet Jackson's right breast. Only by luck and old-world craftsmanship did Janet's nipple shield remain in place, thus sparing Americans the ultimate shame of confronting a right breast and a right nipple at the same time.

I needn't remind you that this is the breast that brought America to her knees, that launched congressional investigations, civil law suits, a rack of new laws...a walk-in closet of new regulations. This is the breast that caused Congress to work five days within the space of one week. This is the breast that put live TV on a five-second delay (Oscars, Grammys, NBC sports, Monday Night Football), caused CBS to put a ten-second delay on the NCAA Final Four basketball games, and caused ESPN to put a five-second delay on the Little League World Series.

Now, the clock ticks down to the start of Super Bowl XLI and Janet Jackson's right breast, hungry now, prowls Miami. Government agencies are working well together. No one is safe.

Prior to Super Bowl XXXVIII, Janet Jackson had reached the periphery of my consciousness, maybe, two or three times. I knew she was part of the crazy-as-batshit Michael Jackson family. I knew there was a LaToya Jackson in there, but most of the time I thought that person was Janet or Janet was her.

Turns out, Ms. Janet Jackson, 40, has won a Grammy and an Emmy. She's been nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award, has received 33 Billboard Music Awards, and, according to Forbes Magazine, is the seventh richest woman in show business. She has an estate estimated at $150 million.

Don't you get it, Agent Zach? Money makes her more dangerous! Where is Janet's breast today? Is it casing the salsa clubs and tanning salons of South Beach? Is it planning another attack, this time without a nipple guard? Has it linked with other breasts, all of them scheming, planning god knows what? You will be held accountable.