he fallout from Tuesday night's corked bat incident involving Sammy Sosa has been fast and harsh. When the Cubs player was found to have taken a corked bat into the game, he was ejected from the game; Friday the Major League Baseball Commission handed down an eight-game suspension to the home-run hitter, who in 1998 was neck-in-neck with Mark McGwire to set a new home-run record. But the more unbearable fallout is continuing with no break in sight: Sports columnists and reporters and their never-ending assessment of the situation.

"What a shame," said Denver Post Sports Editor Thad Griswald. "This guy, he's a player. He's a good player, and before this there was no doubt he was a Hall of Famer. Now, even if he goes into the Hall of Fame, there's going to be an asterisk by his name. The next time he hits a homer… nobody may say anything, but everybody's going to wonder."

Statements very much to the same effect and with equally melodramatic tones have echoed throughout the week. Sosa's intention to cheat, or his innocence of the charge, have given the fading sport's many pundits an opportunity to talk with misguided passion about something other than salary caps and free agency.

ESPN 2 late-night commentator Art Biederbeck: "The sad thing is that at this point it doesn't matter if Sammy meant to cheat or not. He will always be remembered for this as much as his race with McGwire for the record—did he or didn't he? It will always accompany the name of Sammy Sosa. He may not even make the Hall of Fame now. And if he does, mark my words, folks, there will be an asterisk there."

Mortals everywhere who had been only vaguely following the sport of baseball as national interest in the sport wanes for more clock-oriented, fast-paced sports like football and basketball, now find themselves driven away from even catching box scores out of fear they'll catch another diatribe about Sosa and his mystery bat.

"It's criminal that everyone leaps to conclusions about Sammy Sosa's entire career on the basis of one bat," complained D.C.-area WRBI sportscaster Cory Alvin. "They checked 76 of his bats, all in perfect condition, but this one is going to haunt him. Out there, someone's always going to wonder if every homerun in his career was from an illegal bat. And that's the real tragedy of all this."

As the story snowballs, with Sosa planning to appeal his 8-game suspension next week, no end is in sight to the over-dramatization of the story. Sports shows on network and basic cable, as well as 24-hour sports channels, are expected to roll out sports authorities one after the other, including broadcasters, former Hall of Famers, and current players to deliver the same basic positions over and over again, rather than conclude Major League Baseball will make a decision and allow it to stand as the official position. The best hope for relief from the continual coverage of the story is the death of a Major League player, like Reggie Jackson or something, especially from a horrible disease or even murder.

"It's a real problem with sports commentators," said baseball fan and author Max J. Hartley. "Nothing new has been said about the sport in at least 20 years, maybe more, and a lot of these guys aren't well versed on other issues, so a lot of passion gets channeled into these seeming non-issues. But what they don't realize when they go on television all hangdog or write a real melancholy column with this Sosa bat story, it's going to stick in people's craw. They may make a good observation down the road, something really original about the state of baseball's popularity or the real free agency problem, but people will always think of this in the back of their minds, this pretentious posturing about an incident that was in all likelihood an accident, or at worst an attempt by a player past his prime to cheat a few runs. It will dog them for their careers. If they ever get a shot at the Sports Broadcasters Hall of Fame, even if they get in, there will be an asterisk by their names."

ush administration officials are calling the war on Iraq and "unqualified success" today after the announcement that US forces have found scores of embarrassing home videos shot by Saddam Hussein's son Uday, amidst the rubble of a once-fabulous liberated palace.

"We've said all along that the Husseins were in possession of these videotapes," stated press secretary Ari Fleischer, who's supposed to be retiring but won't go away. "There have been doubters and detractors who questioned our presence in Iraq, but on this day vindication is ours."

After a confused silence and brief mumbling from among the assembled press corps, a closeted reporter for another news organization asked the question this reporter would have asked eventually.

"So does this mean you're discontinuing the search for weapons of mass destruction?"

"Weapons of ma- Son, you've been watching too many comic book movies. We've set up a nice little playroom for liberals out there in the hall, with a ball pit and everything, so why don't you just take your little fantasies out there and let the grown-ups talk. Our actions in Iraq have always been about finding these videotapes and proving to the world that the Husseins are real class-A jerks. Now, I can understand how there might have been some confusion, as WMD is Iraqi for VCR," said Fleischer, pausing to see if anyone bought that.

The tapes in question offer a meticulously detailed look into the life of a dictator's son, documenting nearly everything Uday did between purchasing the camera and skipping town for an undisclosed location with his arms full of gold bars and porno magazines as the US forces advanced on Baghdad. While it is questionable if acquiring the tapes justified the deaths of thousands, few can argue the supremely embarrassing nature of the tapes themselves, a prime example of what happens when you give an absolute moron absolute power.

Several of the tapes cover Hussein's last few birthday parties, which were all tainted by bloodshed and Uday shooting down piñatas and piñata-hanging servants with an assault rifle. The most tender moments from these celebrations show Uday strapping his servants into giant human-hamster wheels and rolling them off a cliff, in homage to the 1982 Richard Pryor hit The Toy.

Too many tapes document Uday's triumphant recovery from one of Saddam's yearly attempts on his life, which left him paralyzed in one leg and forced to pee sitting down. And don't you know we feel that pain, sister. Most find the endless hours of physical therapy sessions backed by the Gloria Gaylor tune "I Will Survive" painful and debilitating to watch, but Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times argued that they were "inspiring and raw. One of the ten best home videos of the year." Which is more proof than we really needed that a couple years ago somebody replaced Roger Ebert with Rex Reed in a really-fat suit.

Other videotapes from the collection are not so highly-acclaimed, including the hilarious "I'm Too Sexy" tape, which has been making the rounds on the Internet this week. The infamous tape features Uday Hussein miming the 1991 Right Said Fred hit while stripping seductively in front of the camera, revealing more body hair than a water bison and what Larry King has called his "24-pack abs." Girl, you mean but you the truth!

Most of the publicity has been focused on the tapes of Uday's infamous palace sex orgies, which turned out to be more disappointing than the sequel to The Wizard of Oz. If you call Uday swapping spit with a couple of drunken and entirely homely Iraqi girls hot, let me tell you you've been watching too much CNN, sugar.

Most disturbing of all the discoveries were Uday's collection of pre-recorded videocassettes, which included a terrifying selection of really lame American films. Among the horrors revealed were Green Card, Bounce, Only the Lonely and the complete Sandra Bullock catalog. Let's just hope man-child here had access to a local Blockbuster or some kind of Iraqi Netflix or something, because damn!

Hussein had been known to torture Iraqi athletes who performed poorly in the Olympics, which is the only possible explanation for his ownership of three copies of the golden retriever sports flick Air Bud. Beyond the fact that he was working on boning up his resume of mad despot quirks, of course.

Apparently the Husseins didn't have time to pack up or destroy the incriminating tapes before fleeing the country, choosing unwisely to focus instead on plundering Iraq's gold and riches. Boys, all that loot may buy you happiness, but you can never buy back your dignity honey. Believe me I've tried.

A nation awoke last Monday already colossally beyond-tired of hearing about Janet Jackson's titties, yet knowing intuitively they'd have to endure at least a month of teeth-gnashing from the three people in the world who were offended by sort-of seeing a woman's breast on TV. While most of the nation wouldn't have cared if Janet had smoked Justin Timberlake's icky boy-band pole onstage during the halftime show, many have written in with the same question: What's the big deal? Hasn't this shit happened before?

The answer, obviously, is that of course it's happened before you moron. So why is it such a big deal this time around? In part because of Janet's reputation, and in part because of the shock that something interesting actually happened at a football game. The CBS switchboards were flooded with calls within moments of the incident, with irate viewers complaining either that they only got to see one lousy tit or that they were in the can and missed the whole damned thing.

Much of the hoopla originates from Janet being known as the "most-normal" Jackson, which is sort of like being voted the most fun-loving Nazi at a German summer camp. If MTV'd had their first choice, and Britney Spears hadn't been tied up in a previous engagement stripping for Thai schoolchildren, nobody would have been fazed at all by this halftime anatomy lesson. Britney could have whipped a rubber chicken out of her cooch onstage without anyone batting an eyelid. But since America was half expecting Janet to rip off her fleshy body suit and finally reveal that Michael is the only Jackson, and he just dresses up as his "siblings" like Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, the unexpectedly realistic boobage on display was highly unsettling for most everyone who thought they had this whole "family" thing figured out.

Far less controversy farted out of the grapevine when hip-hop star and former pornstress Lil' Kim let most of it hang out of the mammary-flashing dress she wore to the Grammys in 2000, even though her outfit left less to the imagination than a Lubriderm commercial. But Kim's worn goods weren't anything new to anyone who'd ever turned on MTV or accidentally wandered into a porno store, while viewers had only seen Jackson mostly naked in videos, magazine photos and on album covers.

Fittingly, Lil' Kim's tried-and-true promotional technique of screwing a lot of guys in movies before she embarked on a hip-hop career harkens back to classical impresario Ludwig Van Beethoven, who dropped his shorts in a crowded restaurant to promote the struggling composer's fourth symphony "Symphony 4: More Lovin' from Beethoven" after his first three Symphonies ("Introducing...," "Gotta Feeling in My Heart," and "Rubbin' It,") did poorly in Nielsen polls of what people were humming back in those days.

An event strangely similar to the Jackson Superbowl fracas took place in 1988, when Tonight Show host Johnny Carson wore shorts instead of his trademark suit one night on the show as a joke, only to find the joke was on him when he sat down at his desk after the monologue and the studio and TV audiences caught a flash of his dapper white gonads. This unfortunate event received almost no media attention at the time, and the sighting was quickly and vividly disavowed by all present. Needless to say, not many schoolchildren were bragging that they saw Johnny Carson's nuts pop out when they returned to school the following Monday. Sales of bicycle shorts plummeted and a kind of embarrassed silence fell over the nation.

Viewers with a good memory for this kind of thing were reminded of Today Show host Dave Garroway from the 1950's, who chronically forgot to zip up his fly and as a result frequently had his baggage get loose during musical sketches on the show. 1950's viewers pretended they hadn't seen anything for years, until Garroway was fired after a memorable interview with Jayne Mansfield in 1956.

The same Jayne Mansfield created a fervor all her own at the Oscars a year later, when the actress's irrepressible bosoms got loose and hurt a small child while she was on stage presenting an award. America was so offended that Oscar ratings soared until 1974, when Robert Opal streaked naked across the stage during an acceptance speech and shocked a nation that had never seen a man naked before. Oscar ratings have never recovered.

Perhaps the grandmammary of all accidental TV nudity was The Faye Emerson Show in 1950, when the host's famous plunging neckline finally caught up with her and allowed her breasts to escape custody, giving the audience a view of female anatomy so shocking it caused the 1950's.

Over the next 50 years, various bits of accidental T&A found their way onto the small screen, from The Price is Right contestant in the 70's who had her unmentionables deblouse while she was coming on down (writing an early epitaph for the fad of snaps instead of buttons as clothing fasteners), to the 1976 episode of Charlie's Angels when star Farrah Fawcett finally threw her fans a nipple-shaped bone during an undercover prison sequence.

By the 1980's, real intentional nudity was finding its way to television screens, sapping the accidental kind of its ability to titillate. Bra commercials began using live lingerie models instead of hilarious mannequins or retarded women wearing bras on the outside of their clothes, and in 1989 Lonesome Dove viewers saw far more cowboy cock than they had ever bargained for. By the time America was treated to the sight of Dennis Franz's bare hairy ass on NYPD Blue in 1993, (prompting Jay Leno to remark "I only have a 20-inch TV, so I couldn't see it all") the nation had really seen too much and was calling for the networks to put some goddamn pants on these people.

Where does that leave us now? Can television nudity ever really be accidental and exciting again? We can only hope. Because despite ever-present nudity on cable and the Internet, network television retains its unique ability to shock and titillate people who've never heard of cable or the Internet.

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