Salon’s King Kauffman of Salon perfectly nails the hypocritical outrage at Fox over the Randy Moss mooning incident:

Joe Buck nearly shat his pants after the incident, calling Moss’ act “disgusting” repeatedly, and ruing the fact that “we had that on our air live,” as if the very airwaves at Fox had been sullied by Moss’ gesture. Even though, as King Kaufman notes, Buck later downgraded his description of Moss’ action to “classless,” the Fox Sports crew back at the studio joined him in condemning the unspeakable act.

It seems to me that Joe Buck’s reaction plays into the cultural climate of the post Janet-Jackson-boob incident and our nation’s newfound “moral values.” I mean, it was a “classless” gesture, but it’s pretty hypocritical for Fox commentators to pontificate about how disgusting it is for a guy to pretend to take off his pants when half of the shows on the network are premised upon people taking off their pants.

But what set Buck in a rage, I think, was not only the baseness of the gesture and the lack of sportsmanship it displayed, but also the desecration of holy Lambeau Field (get that goalpost a power washer!) and America’s patron saint of football, Brett Favre. And in that sense, I have to say, part of me wonders about the racial undertones of this conflict, with the stoic and reserved white athletes and commentators on one side, and the flashy, loudmouthed black athletes on the other. I thought that James Brown’s reaction was partly based upon a calculation of the racial dynamics of the incident.

POSTSCRIPT: As time passes, more things come to light. Apparently, mooning is not so uncommon at Lambeau Field, as Indianapolis coach Tony Dungy reports:

Meanwhile, the people at Fox Sports are shocked, shocked by Randy Moss, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t plaster pictures of his “digusting” act all over their home page.

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