Timberlake's Dick In a Box

Posted by Don Hazen at 1:51 PM on September 9, 2007.

Ho Ho Ho, Hipster music super sexy star and aspiring actor Justin Timberlake really showed his cojones when he performed the "Dick in the Box" routine on Saturday Night Live last December. Timberlake and SNL" cast member Andy Samberg offered up their "members" as a gift, wrapping them, and eager to presenting to a "loved one" as a holiday present.

This is newsworthy now because the performance was awarded a Creative Arts Emmy Awards. It became an Internet sensation garnering millions of views on YouTube and NBC's Web site, which posted an un-bleeped version. The Creative Arts Emmys, which recognize technical and other achievements for the 2006-07 season, will air Sept. 15 on E!, the night before the Primetime Emmy Awards on Fox.

And not to be out done by the macho guys was the female take: the extremely popular and much watched Box in a Box. B in a B. is perhaps derivative, but fun as hell nevertheless as a satire on a satire poking fun at Timberlake and Samberg. The Box in a Box video stars a sexy Penn student Melissa Lamb as Bunny, and a voice over by Leah Kauffman and takes up where the dick left off, with the woman prancing around with a box affixed to... you guessed it ..... her vaginal area and including lyrics like: "Bush is ruining our country But my bush has never lied, Taco Bell might make you sick But my taco's certified ." Keith Olbermann on MSNBC made quite a fuss over Box in a Box

Funny though, the Huffington Post must be aiming for a family audience, because as they were reporting the fact that Dick in a Box won an Emmy award, they were seemingly unable to call a dick a dick, but rather beat around the bush by referring to the video as "racy and off color" referring to it as (blank) in a box and "a certain part of the male anatomy".. This seems rather tame, and hardly like the wild web we've come to expect. After all, NBC ran Dick in a Box unbleeped. But it turns out Huff Po has half an excuse. They used an Associated Press article instead of writing about it themselves. naughty naughty.

But you would think in this day and age, even the AP could risk using the word dick. Afterall, we can watch David Duchovny as the aptly named Hank Moody on Showtime's "Californication" talking about the clitoris with his bed mate, And when the woman's husband shows up, Duchovny makes fun of his lack of knowledge of the female anatomy by showing with a little hand gesture, that the clitoris is at the top of the vagina, not at the bottom, all as the cuckolded dude swings a baseball bat at Duchovny's Posche getaway car. We also watch several attractive naked women screwing with Duchovny including a 16 year old (ok she doesn't look it, and how could he know?) who punches him in the face in order to help her with her orgasm while she humps him from above. So it seems mentioning the word dick, is pretty tame these days.

Tagged as: media, censorship, comedy, saturday night live, sandberg, timberlake

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.