Bad taste

J's World, by Jeremiah Bartz

Last Monday night Nicollete Sheridan, star of ABC's Desperate Housewives, dropped towel as part of the introduction to Monday Night Football.

Since the moment Sheridan's towel hit the floor, any coverage, printed or spoken word, of the Monday Night Football telecast of the Dallas Cowboys' loss to the Philadelphia Eagles is not on the result of the game, but the skit at the beginning of the telecast.

The talk is not about Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens getting his hands on three Donovan McNabb touchdown passes, but Owens getting the grasp of a naked Nicollete.

In the opening skit, which always ends with someone asking the rhetorical question, 'Are you ready for some football,' Sheridan, wearing only the towel she probably swiped from her Hilton suite, walked a seductive fly pattern right toward the goofy Owens, ready to seduce the Eagles star. In an Opie Cunningham meets Eyeore kind of way, Owens let off an 'Oh gosh', sacrificing his reputation of a rebel in favor of the attitude of a shy third grader in love with his long-legged piano teacher, and tried to resist the blatant seduction of the 'B' movie star. But by the end of the skit, writers took a page from a Harlequin romance novel and the stereotypical thought that all decisions must be made by that little brain in the fifth appendage. A few minutes more and viewers would be treated to a brand of synthesizer music only heard during the credits of an adult movie.

Weekly, ABC opens the MNF telecast with a skit, normally inserting who's hot in pop culture that week or in this case blatantly selling one of their sub-par programs to the MNF audience. In a desperate attempt to sell Desperate Housewives to viewers, ABC has simply created a giant headache for themselves and attracted negative attention from critics and even their parent company -- Disney.

Was it appropriate? Was it funny? Was it even mildly humorous?

The answer to each question, is most likely, 'No.'

To me, I wasn't that amused, but I wasn't offended either. I have no plans to boycott the NFL or ABC and pretty much all my thought on this particular topic is devoted to this column. I am surprised though -- surprised ABC opted to trade Bocephus (Hank Williams, Jr.), a staple in the MNF broadcast, for Owens, who leads the league in ego, and Sheridan, who is among the ABC lineup's leaders in collagen and other injected plastics.

Is this a censorship issue?

For some maybe? For the moral hypocrisy maybe.

Censorship decisions should be made at the individual level -- turn the page, turn the station, change the channel, etc.

But beyond censorship, one has to look at what is appropriate for the given venue or audience. A political cartoon may be perfect for the Anchorage Press, but not for the Frontiersman; an Eminem track is fine for a hip-hop compilation but not for the Spongebob Squarepants Soundtrack; and a skit with Nicollete Sheridan dropping her towel may be great for Saturday Night Live, but not for Monday Night Football.

Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz opposes managing editor Frank Ameruri's idea of valley life editor Casey Ressler dropping a towel in a skit to promote the Frontiersman.