Idolator

It's been nearly three years since Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake had their tete-a-tit at the Super Bowl, and the damn thing keeps going on. From today's Wall Street Journal:

CBS Corp. Monday filed a formal appeal against a Federal Communications Commission ruling that it had broken the indecency standards by broadcasting the now infamous Super Bowl halftime show in 2004 where a shot of Janet Jackson's breast was briefly shown.

The network, on behalf of 20 affiliate stations, has rejected that it had done anything wrong by broadcasting "an unscripted, unauthorized, and unintended long-distance shot of Ms. Jackson's breast for nine-sixteenths of one second," according to the appeal.

Remind us to name our next E! special Janet Jackson: Unscripted, Unauthorized, and Unintended. Anyway, CBS is trying to avoid paying a $550,000 fine, and they're hoping that Bono can indirectly help: His 2003 utterance of the word "fuck" at the Golden Globes—we can't remember the context, but we think he said, "Why the fuck am I here at the Golden Globes?"—was also punished by the FCC, but the decision was later reversed; CBS is no doubt trying to to get the same treatment.

Jackson won't have to pay the fine herself, of course, which is probably a good thing: That half-million would cut heavily into her fourth-quarter rib-removal budget.

CBS Appeals Indecency Fine [WSJ; reg. required, though you can also find a Reuters story here]