A ‘finger’ on our own pulse

    I didn’t see the errant middle finger thrown during this year’s Super Bowl halftime show.
    I was in the kitchen washing dishes as should any red-blooded American male during halftime of the year’s biggest sporting event.
    Needless to say, I was surprised come Monday morning by the outrage that sprung up. It forced me to scurry home to summon up my DVR’ed telecast of the game and relive singer M.I.A.’s vulgar outburst.
    It took me a while to find it. I needed to surf through not only the first half of the game but also the decidedly less-offensive commericals featuring scantily clad women and cat-killing, Doritos-bribing dogs to find the incident in question.
    As a matter of fact, I didn’t even need to draw on my DVR’ed Super Bowl to be offended; the Parents Television Council, which keeps an eye out for things that may offend me, saw it clear as day.
    They immediately assailed NBC for having betrayed the trust of the American people, lured to this allegedly “family-friend” telecast, only to find this kind of obscenity.
    Which isn’t exactly true because NBC only promised Madonna’s boob wouldn’t pop out. I’m pretty sure it didn’t, but you never know what could have been going on behind that petulant waving middle finger. But we’re probably destined to have Harry Connick Jr. or Tony Bennett as next year’s halftime show.
    When I did find the incident, I, like so many of you, was unquestionably offended. Have we lost our ability to agree that some behaviors are better left for the confines of an automotive vehicle?
    I don’t want to see anyone flipping me off during a musical concert anymore than I want to see a woman applying mascara in front of a bathroom mirror or a man reading a novel in the comfort of a living room recliner.
    Leave it in the car, people! A public setting is no place for that kind of indecency. When did we ever decide that displaying our middle finger was ever appropriate beyond having just been cut off in traffic with a reasonable amount of certainty that the offending driver likely won’t see you and that your children are looking the other way?
    I sure don’t need some trashy halftime show to teach me how to behave in front of my children.
   I’m doing just fine on my own.