I suppose it’s nice for New York Giants running back Brandon Jacobs to apologize for telling Gisele Bunchen, the model who is married to New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady, that rather than expressing her upset about the Patriots’ Super Bowl loss that “She just needs to continue to stay cute and shut up.” But I’d rather he apologize to Gisele than to Brady:

“Given the fact that it’s a colleague of mine’s wife, I do apologize for saying that, because I shouldn’t have said that,” Jacobs said of Tom Brady’s spouse in an interview on “The Doug Gottlieb Show.” “It’s his wife and I should respect that just as much as anyone else.”…However, while Jacobs apologized for telling Bundchen to hush up, he refused to express any remorse about calling her cute, saying that Brady should “take that as a compliment.” “If he finds something wrong with that, then that’s his problem.”

Which means he really doesn’t get what he did, and why it was wrong. Jacobs’ comments were obnoxious not because he was impugning Tom Brady’s wife. They were obnoxious because they implied that the role of a woman was to be attractive, rather than to have opinions. The question is not whether Tom Brady has a problem with his wife being reduced to her looks. It’s whether Gisele does.

And I’ve honestly been dismayed by the idea that Gisele is obligated by contract or custom not to speak ill of her husband’s teammates or the team’s performance. Tom Brady is her husband, not her keeper. She is an independent woman who makes an income that does not leave her dependent on the Patriots. Whether she speaks publicly about his work is a matter for their marriage, not our judgement.

It’s an attitude that treats women who are married to athletes as if they’re like another set of women who are often treated as if they’re helpmeets first, and individuals second: political wives. No matter how accomplished Gisele or Hillary Clinton are in their own fields, as long as their husbands are or were preeminent figures in their fields, what Tom or Bill were up to was understood to be the priority—no matter what role those men feel comfortable having their wives take on. God forbid Gisele have opinions about football. God forbid Hillary have something to add on health care. I understand that it makes strategic sense, given the persistent and virulent sexism directed at women in politics, particularly those cast as if they’re malevolent powers behind the throne, for political wives to take on anodyne issues that are removed from the substance of the political mainstream. But that norm isn’t something we should be proud of.

What would I do without Super Bowl ads to explain my own gender to me? Truly, I would be lost. Super Bowl 2012 actually seemed less egregiously sexist than previous years, even given the inevitable GoDaddy ad, so predictably gross that I don’t even include it here. But taken together, the ads form a pretty striking portrait of how American industry views American ladies. Let’s take a look, shall we?

1. Women don’t invent things (people of color don’t either), but they will sell you electronics:

2. When we’re superheroes, we get the cute little guns that can fit in a purse:

3. Seriously. Combat never stops us from looking hot:

4. That said, go up against a dude, and we’re super-defenseless:

5. You can make everything better by turning it into an unclothed woman who acts, quite literally, as an object for your use:

6. We live to seduce you so you will purchase motor vehicles:

7. Buy us flowers, and we will give you unreciprocated oral:

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For two Super Bowls in a row, Chrysler’s been the company to watch, first dropping gorgeous art-deco spot about the revitalization of Detroit starring Eminem and a gospel choir, and this year, rolling out Clint Eastwood for an ad that sounded as much like an Obama campaign message as a pitch for cars:

The team behind both ads is Wieden + Kennedy, based out of Portland, Oregon. And they have a strong track record of creating inspiring advertising with communal messaging that even if it’s not specifically progressive, feels resonant with progressive values. They’re the team behind the Go Forth campaign for Levi’s that used Walt Whitman’s poem to argue “we must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger”:

And they did Coca-Cola’s “Hard Times” commercial, a recession-friendly spot that first stripped C. Montgomery Burns of his fortune and then brought him back into the Springfield community as a productive citizen who shared the rest of the town’s values (they also did this year’s Coke Polar Bear spots where fans of rival teams bond over Coke products):

Even their Velveeta ads employ a call to a return to traditional family values, leavening the stretch with a liberal dose of humor:

In other words, Wieden + Kennedy have a strong track record developing exactly the kind of messaging that the Obama administration will be looking for this fall. Even if the Eastwood spot wasn’t designed to give the incumbent a boost, the Obama re-elect campaign might consider looking West for ad help this fall.

Predictably, but ludicrously, NBC has already apologized for M.I.A.’s bleeped use of the word “shit” in a verse during last night’s Super Bowl halftime show and for her flipping the bird in a gesture so fleeting it barely registered during the sound and the fury and the chariot bearers and the church choirs. I profoundly wish they hadn’t. The incident was so fleeting that to argue it impacted innocent children doesn’t just strain credulity but snaps it. And groveling to the forces who are massing to make hay of a minor slip gives unfortunate credibility to decency mavens everywhere, who are complaining that it violates Madonna’s promise to have a clean show (a promise she essentially kept in her own performance) and to argue that it’s clearly a legitimate controversy because lots of people have written about it in a scramble for post-Super Bowl page views.

I’ve always thought M.I.A. could be sort of irritating in her striving to be controversial, but I also assume that combination of pop-culture it-girl factor and rebelliousness is precisely why she ended up on the bill with Nicki and Madonna. Flipping off a fairly distant camera in a busy shot during a performance with a lot of pelvis bumping seems entirely consistent with that image. NBC got what they paid for, a well-executed performance with a frisson of danger, and I’m not sure why they should be sorry for that.

And NBC shouldn’t take seriously the idea that artists shouldn’t be allowed fleeting obscenities, or that obsessive monitoring outweighs creative and mildly risky programming. The publication of articles about the fact that M.I.A. did something entirely in character is not the same thing as demonstrating that harm came from her performance. In the absence of any remotely compelling evidence to the contrary, I seriously doubt that millions of American families are going to have to have tough conversations over their orange juice this morning about what that thing that lady did on stage means and why we don’t do it in polite company.

If they do, part of that conversation should include the fact that sometimes people gets excited or overwhelmed and act out, and that self-control is an important thing, whether you’re Meryl Streep getting overcome during the Golden Globes and letting an obscenity slip or M.I.A. on a Super Bowl stage getting caught up in the excitement. Humanity is a rough, obscene thing, and this is one of the gentlest possible ways of dealing with it—certainly much more gentle than the New Yorker story about the sexual assault and murder of toddler James Bulger by two ten-year-olds, which I read not knowing what I was getting into when I myself was ten, and which left me gravely shaken for months. By the time children are old enough to understand obscenity and indecency in all their forms, they’re also nigh-impossible to protect entirely. The issue is not preventing them from seeing anything, but giving parents the tools to discuss whatever their children might encounter in a meaningful and supportive way.

And frankly, if parents are going to take on the futile quest of establishing a zero-tolerance policy against anything that might potentially get obscene, it makes no sense that they’d allow their children to watch the halftime show in the first place. Justin Timberlake’s exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast (something for which she was unfairly pilloried) was, to at least half of that duo, a shocking and unexpected accident. Prince may not have gotten naked, but his guitar-and-groin silhouette made a sexual statement on a vastly larger and clearer scale than M.I.A.’s finger against a busy background. Bruce Springsteen, who may be extremely sexy but is hardly a legendarily lewd performer, crotch-slammed a camera. The Super Bowl halftime show has a well-established reputation for being a place where people like to get a little controversial and even if they don’t plan it, do so by accident. And the game itself is a violent spectacle in which men are sometimes injured in a way that’s uncomfortable to watch and to discuss, even for adults.

If I were worried about my kids, promises or no, I’d keep them away, particularly in a year that featured performers famous for taboo-defying performances that suggest oral sex; a singer with a blow-up doll persona; and singer famous for being a a global-citizen authority-bucker who has been criticized for her praise of the Tamil Tigers, all of whom were announced in advance and all of whom are exceedingly Googleable. Kids who are young enough to be damaged by their first exposure to a fleeting obscenity or gesture probably shouldn’t be up late enough on a school night, and if kids are staying up because they’re already passionate Madonna, Nicki Minaj or M.I.A. fans, nothing in that performance was something they wouldn’t have absorbed from the music.

Whether it’s Prohibition, SOPA, or efforts to crack down on Janet Jackson’s nipples, policies that try to get to zero on things that most of adult society is either not horribly offended by or rather invested in having access to are doomed to failure. In particular, in a world with wildly differing standards, you’re never going to get society to protect you or your children from everything you find harmful—that’s work you have to do on your own, even if it means opting out. Whether you’re really willing to do that is a good test of how far your commitment extends.

First, let me note that taunting your blogmistress when she’s in emotional extremis is both ungentlemanly and unladylike and a quick ticket to outer darkness. But, congratulations to the Giants, who just played a superior game of football tonight, and consistently outplayed us this season. And to Chris Ashley, who wins our pool, and gets to make me write about the piece of culture of his choice.

Off the field of play, which was tense and exciting, and I think missed being a truly great game because of some sloppiness on each side, this seemed like a rather slack event to me. There was no standout ad (though I thought Budweiser’s shoutout to rescue dogs was cute). GoDaddy has reached (or, really, reached several years ago) the same point as Lady Gaga where doing something demure would be more shocking than any way they could find to comment on the female performance. I do, however, appreciate anything that lets me see Det. John Munch dance:

and Clint Eastwood’s Obama ad. But overall, I thought it was a lackluster year.

Madonna’s performance was, I thought, both a display of professional showmanship and a reasonably canny nod to the straight dude demographic once it shifted from chariot bearers to cheerleaders. And how great is it to get to see a woman do the greatest hits show that white dude rockers are regularly entitled to without comment on their age or creakiness? Nary a crotch-slam into the camera for the Queen of Pop:

I also think of all the judges from The Voice NBC could have brought out for the show, Cee Lo Green was the best and most gratifying choice. He’s a great fit for the gospel riff, and it’s so much fun to get him to see him dust off and re-sequin his “Closet Freak” robes:

Sometimes, the right people get to make the big money and stand under the bright lights.

This feminist football fan will be hoping for a Patriots win, not least to honor the memory of Myra Kraft, who vetoed the team’s draft of a serial abuser of women, made her husband promise that buying a football team wouldn’t mean they’d cut down on their charitable work (they increased it, giving to causes that included closing the gap on health disparities and women’s health), and awesomely, proposed to Bob herself—on their first date.

That said, I remain anxious about Rob Gronkowski, and about history repeating. What are your predictions? Whoever’s closest on final score and throwing yards for the winning Super Bowl quarterback gets to make me write a post on a question or work of their choice.