I'M puzzled about Americans and sex. Population statistics suggest sex happens in the US. Yet the merest bit of titillation can leave the country in crisis. The singer Janet Jackson accidentally exposes one breast during the Super Bowl half-time show and a nation is dismayed.

Sometimes it's a boon to be British. If Janet Jackson had inadvertently popped out over here, the general reaction would have been along the lines of: oh no, one of the Jacksons is making a twit of themselves again. And that, thanks to British reserve and a national diet of Page Three girls and old Carry On films, would pretty much have been that.

In the States, however, Jackson's exposure has led to soul beating, widespread prudery and some swift editing of mainstream TV programmes.

The hit American cop series NYPD Blue is in danger of being "desexed", with one episode facing cuts so that the more reactionary states will not be offended. This is a shame because there is nothing reactionary people the world over like more than to be offended. Being righteously outraged is what gets some God-fearing people out of bed each morning.

Fortunately, there is no danger of anyone being upset by NYPD Blue in this country. Channel 4 buries this venerable programme so far past the watershed that it will soon be showing up at breakfast time.

In this climate of silliness, MTV withdrew some of its more raunchy rock videos, including the latest piece of nonsense from Britney Spears, a woman whose alleged sexiness remains a mystery to me. I'm sure Britney can cope without my lustful devotion. Balding fortysomething newspaper columnist doesn't fancy tummy-bearing show-off pop superstar isn't much of a headline.

Other TV shows have suffered cuts too in America since Janet Jackson unwittingly popped one out, with ER and Without A Trace having glimpses of flesh excised.

Now this is what puzzles me about the moral panic rippling across America. Here is a country where the slightest bit of flesh can cause outrage; a country where, incidentally, a mother-of-three from Texas is facing a possible prison sentence for organising an Ann Summers-style sex party.

Yet the US also pumps out the vilest pornography all the time, thanks to the Internet. The office computer on which I write, in common with many others up and down the land, is daily inundated with graphic sexual images that arrive unbidden from America.

I know it is sometimes the columnist's habit to write with half-amused disdain, to sprinkle a nice topping of irony on the subject of the day. But these images truly do offend me. Some of the pictures I receive on this computer are just too basic for words, showing in detail the sort of sexual act you don't want filling your computer screen first thing in the morning.

These too-intimate pictures are being sent out to the world from America, the land of the righteous sexual panic.

As well as posting graphic junk mail around the world, Americans seem to lap up the stuff themselves.

Janet Jackson's exposed breast has apparently generated a huge amount of Internet traffic, as men watch the moment again and again.

This high point of culture has even been topping the Internet sex tapes featuring the antics of the hotel heiress Paris Hilton, which has multiplied in millions, top-shelf titillation spread by computer.

All this suggests a confused picture. Public flesh is frowned on, yet furtive sex smuggled under cover of the Internet flourishes. This doesn't seem to be a healthy state of affairs - especially when glamorised violence is still put out by Hollywood without causing a similar moral panic.

Politically speaking, America is often described as a 50/50 country, more or less evenly split between the two main parties. Perhaps it is that way sexually too, divided between the morally outraged and the eagerly corrupted.

American television at its best is a super export, with the heart-stopping sweep of ER, the mannered farce of Frasier, the amiable spark of Friends, the magnificent muttering of The Sopranos. But one export we could do without is a moral panic caused by something as innocent as a mistakenly flashed breast.

Over here we have a few words perfect for such a scenario: put it away dear.

Updated: 10:53 Thursday, February 19, 2004