By now, nearly everyone with a television or access to the Internet has either personally witnessed or caught wind of pop star Janet Jackson’s titillating Super Bowl halftime performance. Predictably, despite terrorism abroad, exploding budget deficits at home and, oh yes, a developing presidential contest, uproar ensued. Much at the behest of parents who regard the television as the sole moral and social educator of their children, the professional scolds at the Federal Communications Commission have decided to treat the case as if it was the greatest threat to civilization since Socrates was put to death for “corrupting the youth of Athens.”

As usual, the obvious truth, which has seemed to escape most pundits and demagogues, is how utterly impotent the FCC is to rectify the supposed “psychic damage” to America’s children. No amount of fines or lifetime bans from TV will expunge the brief memory of Jackson’s exposed breast from the collective mind of America’s youth. The idea of fining either pop star, both multimillionaires, seems laughable at best and, at worst, smacks of moral laziness in its advocates.

Suffice to say, the psychological damage is done and no amount of punishment the FCC is authorized to mete out — short of canceling the Super Bowl or putting the offending pop stars to death — will prevent more impromptu publicity stunts like this one from occurring in the future. Nevertheless, it won’t stop them from trying — or at least wasting time and taxpayer money in the process.

Rather than take a moral cop-out by employing the FCC to do one’s parenting and moral stewardship, viewers can make their dissatisfaction known in a way that hurts TV executives personally — boycott their networks if they refuse to provide swift corrective action on their own.

Naturally, many object to the idea of a boycott, and not just because it means giving up “Everybody Loves Raymond.” As with many other similar collective efforts, boycotts suffer from the problem of the unwashed masses being too lazy or unprincipled to actively make them effective. Thus, reply our concerned citizens, nothing will be accomplished — ergo the need for governmental intercession.

What such ready busybodies seem to forget however is that said laziness is a mandate — of apathy. If the viewing population doesn’t care enough about a bare breast to even change the channel, upon what democratic mandate can the scolds claim to hold authority?

The ability of dissatisfied television patrons to simply take their advertising money elsewhere is one of the finest features of the free market. This of course brings out an important irony: All of this outrage over said halftime escapade has resulted in people who normally pay lip service to laissez-faire capitalism (most notably FCC chairman Michael Powell) becoming the ultimate social engineers, suddenly claiming that the government must intervene into the entertainment market in order to regulate content for their own (or children’s own) good rather than allow the market to resolve things on its own.

Yet there has been no breakdown in the free market at all. One is still quite free to organize a boycott among one’s friends and neighbors of networks that refuse to discipline rogue actors like our half-naked pop star and provide more family-friendly fare. They are still free to pick up the remote and change the channel to something that caters to their more puritanical tastes. Or most shockingly, they can turn off the TV entirely and read a book, avoiding the whole problem of being bombarded with impure images to start.

The only moral crime to speak of is the attempt to subvert what is a functioning democratic process at work. Instead of relying on the voluntary cooperation of networks or concerned citizens, the moral meddlers have taken to forcing their agenda upon the rest of us. Instead of convincing the viewing public to express their outrage by tuning out, they’ve instead demanded the government do it for them. Instead of letting individuals make their own entertainment decisions, they’ve taken to appointing themselves moral guardians with ultimate domain over what one should and shouldn’t see.

Thus, who’s the real moral culprit here — our flasher duo or the self-appointed moral elite who would subvert every aspect of democratic markets if it meant “protecting the children?”