It's the breast that's launched a thousand fits.

Who needs WMD when we've got Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, on a stage at the Super Bowl, with the whole country watching, flashing the establishment? Naughty pop stars though they are, they couldn't possibly have imagined the can o' worms they were cranking open.

Jackson has already admitted planning the boob-baring boo-boo herself, thereby absolving CBS and halftime show producer MTV of something akin to treason. The FCC wasted little time choking on its collective Cheetos, vowing this week to get to the bottom of this and inspiring FCC chairman Michael Powell to label the moment a "classless, crass and deplorable stunt. Our nation's children, parents and citizens deserve better."

To which I reply: They do?

Did Jackson sell nuclear secrets to China while I wasn't paying attention? Is our national security suddenly fully compromised? Did our terrorism alert level just go to red?

Or was this simply a case of a couple of rambunctious entertainers picking the wrong moment to perpetrate a PR stunt -- that is, when a new puritanism is coming swiftly into vogue at the highest levels of government?

Let's not waste a lot of time overanalyzing whether this little improvisational diversion may have done emotional harm to any kids who were watching. It was there and gone in a mere few fleeting seconds.

If anything is going to damage the moral fiber of America's youth, it's the indignation and fallout in the moment's wake, the high-voltage, far-out-of-proportion reaction of grown men and women.

This naturally isn't about the children. It never is. It's about re-election-minded public officials who won't rest until they work the indecency-outrage angle as much as possible to show that they're not really in bed with Big Media.

Of course, the FCC is already in obscenity crackdown mode. This simply gives the censorheads more fodder. Meanwhile, it's apparently just fine during the game for Bud Light to run a spot that appears to endorse a monkey's being intimate with a woman and another ad (plugging Budweiser) that shows a woman ranting and raving shrewlike at her husband.

The message would seem to be this: It's permissible to demean women, and even to look at them as sexual playthings. God knows football telecasts are chock-full of phallic imagery. But just let one female make the sexuality itself overt and there's hell to pay. Because that's different, you see. That's pornography.

It's been forgotten that part of the risk you run with live television is that things you don't plan sometimes occur. Someone may even want to act up at your expense. That unpredictable nature of the live broadcast was once considered part of its allure. But in this increasingly uptight era, there can apparently be no surprises without consequences.

Was it inappropriate? Sure. But let me get this straight: You hire Janet Jackson and then you're shocked -- shocked! -- when she doesn't behave like a Girl Scout? It's a given that when you get into business with a Jackson, you're occasionally going to encounter a breast case scenario. That's just the way it is.

Given the whole star-spangled, mom/apple pie tenor of the event, it was shortsighted to plan a halftime bash around Nelly, Kid Rock, P. Diddy and Jackson to begin with. That's not exactly swift demographic planning for an annual event that is TV's big blowout of the year and as American as apple pie. So in large measure, CBS and MTV have only themselves to blame.

This doesn't make Michael Powell any less a strident prude, however. And when an administration insists on allowing the rampant politicization of broadcasting, this is the result. You wind up stoking national outrage over the brief flashing of a flap of skin, making you look like the real boob.

That's the naked truth.