On Katy Perry's Date with Elmo

I heard a week's worth of outrage over Katy Perry's censored Sesame Street appearance before I finally got around to watching it.

I usually avoid stuff like this. No matter what I decide about a controversial issue, I'm going to be end up agitated with those whose opinions differ. Even if my decison is to be undecided, I get annoyed that those who've oversimplied the issue enough to have a firm opinion.

That's the curse of being an attorney. That's just the way we get trained to think. It's great for oral arguments, but terrible for one's social life. You end up thinking most everyone you know is an idiot, including yourself. Especially yourself. Because you have an acute realization of all the thing you do that don't make any sense. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

Anyway, I didn't care enough about the Sesame Street controversy to torture myself with the knowledge of which opinion about it was unreasonable. I've never really like Katy Perry, I don't watch Sesame Street and don't have kids who might, and the ultimate solution seemed like a fair compromise (the skit would not air on tv, but would remain on the internet for anyone interested to watch). So whether or not her dress was too short for a skit she did with Elmo was not among the most 5,000 important issues in my life. I managed to stay blissfully ignorant about the issue until I heard the skit involved a parody of the one Katy Perry song I actually like ("Hot N Cold"), and then curiosity finally got the best of me.

So I watched it yesterday. Two things from the video stick with me. First, and most importantly, I can't get that silly song out of my head.
(You're hot and you're cold,
you're yes and you're no,
you're in and you're out,
You're up and you're down...)

I've been humming it for two straight days. Pretty soon someone is going to kill me. And I wouldn't blame them, or even necessarily mind. At least if I'm dead I'll get that song out of my head.

The other thing: there's no definite standard by which to judge whether someone's dress is too risque for a given occasion. It's in the eye of the beholder, and this one seems somewhere near the borderline to me, though had a less controversial musician appeared in the exact same dress I kind of doubt anyone would have even noticed. Unless it was a Jonas brother.

But I keep coming back to these two questions:

(1)Is there a single child out there of Sesame Street-watching age who would have seen this video, which was filled with bright costumes, revolving colorful backdrops, a catchy song and a bright red puppet, and noticed that the woman in it should have been wearing a few inches of more fabric?;

(2) And do the objecting adults really think their five-year old child is as obsessed with cleavage as they are?;