Sunday night’s nearly live telecast of the 76th Annual Academy Awards confirmed that the real casualty of Janet Jackson’s revealing Super Bowl performance wasn’t Justin Timberlake and his wholesome boy band image, network television and its charge to serve the public interest, or even some standard of public decency and its protection of civil society. No, the victim claimed by the split-second female half-flash seen around the world was the First Amendment itself.

Just like Tommy Moe’s Lillehammer Olympic downhill run, the slide down the slippery slope toward censorship has been as treacherous as it has been quick, and this year’s Oscars were evidence of the dramatic chill that has set in over both expressive and artistic freedom in America.

First, there was the official censorship. Those in Washington made it abundantly clear that their eyes and ears would be directed Hollywood’s way, just waiting for an opportunity to demonstrate their vigilance post-Nipplegate in enforcing the concededly vague and constantly changing indecency standard. Oscar television feeds would be turned into the broadcast equivalents of deposition and courtroom transcripts, proving who said what, when, where, and how, so that no comment could go unchecked.

The American Broadcasting Company did the only thing it could do. This year’s Academy Awards were not broadcast live. Instead, they reached our living rooms after a five-second delay so that some network censor could ensure the viewing public would never see or hear any of the evening’s genuine surprises. This despite the fact that many of us would call those unexpected actions and reactions "news," and the majority of the telecast — at least on the East Coast — aired after the 10 o’clock line in the sand established by the Federal Communications Commission.

Even more apparent on the red carpet was a second kind of censorship not imposed by any legislative body, administrative agency, or corporate standards and review board. Quite simply, self-censorship was both the talk and the tale of this year’s Oscars, not the return of über-host Billy Crystal, the anointing of the Coppola family’s third generation, or even the coronation of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Most stars in and around the Kodak Theatre wondered aloud what could be said, while others deputized themselves the informal language police, pointing out their colleagues’ alleged transgressions in order to keep everyone in full compliance with the self-imposed G-rating for the night.

Take, for example, the pre-ceremony interview with Supporting Actress Award Winner Renee Zellweger. Sitting just a couple of seats away, Nicole Kidman interrupted the just-before-curtain interview to warn her Cold Mountain castmate: "I think you just swore." Zellweger responded incredulously: "Did I swear? I did not!" To which Kidman acknowledged everyone else’s overwhelming sense of conversational cautiousness, stating "I thought she said something. I’m hearing things."

Even the material of well-known edgy comics Robin Williams and Jack Black succumbed to the chilling sweep of the universally understood prohibitions. Both test-the-limits men immediately and apologetically retracted their minor slip-ups after each uttered only the most palatable of expletives. And, while Black seemed at least a little unsure of just how strict the self-imposed restrictions on colorful language were — asking his interviewer "Can I say that?" after describing a song from his movie School of Rock as "kick-ass," both he and Williams omitted their usual daring dialogue from this year’s Oscar night.

But while reasonable people can disagree about just how far broadcast television should go to ensure viewers "see no evil" and "hear no evil," no one should have been surprised by the chilling effect that was swept in by the Super Bowl’s over-the-top heat. It is, after all, an age-old lesson that the greatest threat to our fundamental freedoms comes from those who exercise them most irresponsibly. Thus, the slippery slope down Janet’s breast is but the latest setback in our constitutional history. How ironic it is that an artist’s expressive meltdown froze over the First Amendment for the rest of us.