KEY POINTS:
We interrupt this programme to bring you hard-core pornography. Unlikely as it sounds, that's what Prime TV did at 2.58pm last Sunday.
The programme so rudely interrupted in order to give viewers a sample of Desperate Black Wives 2 wasn't some tired Hollywood soap full of serial adulterers with bullet-proof hair and teeth that glow in the dark, or a reality show loosely based on Lord of the Flies, it was Grassroots Rugby (perhaps henceforth known as Rootus Interruptus).
Short of inserting a putrid blast of porn in the Queen's Christmas message or a state funeral, it's hard to imagine a programming glitch that would constitute as grave an affront to our national pride.
This isn't the overpaid show ponies of professional rugby with their cartoon hero physiques and sponsored cars and brushes with the law. This is the heartland at play as it has been for 100 years, honest sons of toil unwinding at the end of the working week by kicking the crap out of the blokes from down the road. This is the very essence of what it means to be a Kiwi male.
And what of the show's audience? How dedicated do you have to be to watch the All Blacks on Saturday night, then back up on Sunday afternoon by tuning into delayed coverage of a bunch of Neville Nobodies playing thud and blunder? You have to be, if you'll excuse the term, hard core.
While the fair-weather fan might think slipping some porn in during an injury break is a novel way of spicing up club rugby, a Port Waikato man spoke for all the grassrooters out there when he declared that pornography wasn't something he wanted to see when he sat down to watch Grassroots Rugby. Amen to that, brother.
What of the wider consequences, the human toll, of this horrendous snafu? (Prime says it was caused by a distribution fault, whatever that is, and steps have been taken to ensure it doesn't happen again. If there are certain recognised steps a television network can take to ensure naked men and women with unfeasibly large appendages don't suddenly appear in the middle of a rugby show, shouldn't they have been taken beforehand?)
TV3 covered the event at some length on its 6pm news, claiming it had been "flooded" with calls from distressed viewers. Without wishing to make light of the victims' distress, careful reflection on the thrust of their complaints inclines me to believe we should keep this sordid episode in perspective.
An Auckland woman said the porn left little to the imagination. Talk about hitting the nail on the head: leaving nothing to the imagination is the whole point of hard-core pornography; it's what differentiates it from soft-core and, increasingly, mainstream entertainment.
Leaving nothing to the imagination is also the reason why hard-core porn is ultimately a turn-off. As the smut merchant Jackie Treehorn tells the Dude in The Big Lebowski: "People forget that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone."
A Whangarei 12-year-old reportedly ran around the room with her hands over her eyes exclaiming "eeeew" and "gross". I've no idea why this was considered news since it's a perfectly normal, indeed desirable, reaction on the part of a 12-year-old.
More seriously a father told the network his 8-year-old son's innocence had been ruined. I'm not quite sure how you can make an on-the-spot assessment of a child's innocence but in my experience 8-year-olds are reasonably resilient little beings and fairly selective about what they choose to dwell on.
On my first visit to Auckland Zoo I was standing in front of the lions' cage gazing in awe upon a pair of these majestic creatures when they decided to copulate. I'd like to think I wasn't scarred for life.
In some parts of the world children are regularly witnessing scenes far more distressing and potentially damaging to their innocence than a glimpse of pornography.
I'd like to know what percentage of Prime's audience watched the full three minutes and 50 seconds of porn, as opposed to changing channels or turning off their TVs, and how many rang a media outlet to vent their disgust.
I'd particularly like to know how many did both.
