Scarborough, Fair

Last week, failed talk-show host and family man Joe Scarborough had some rather bizarre thoughts about this month's Vanity Fair. He says it's full of "salacious," "provocative" and "sexualized" photos of "underaged celebrity girls" "with their chests jutted forward."

June 6 � The soon-to-be-released edition of �Vanity Fair� magazine is full of underaged celebrity girls dolled up in makeup, posed provocatively. And if you want to know why these salacious pictures are sending our young girls the wrong message, here�s the �Real Deal.�

NOW, THIS month�s �Vanity Fair� says it�s celebrating Hollywood teen stars, from singers like Mandy Moore to TV phenoms like the Olsen twins. They�ve put nine beautiful teen girls on their magazine�s cover and even more inside. Almost all of these girls are underage. Some are even as young as 15. But they�re all dolled up in a way that might even make Lolita blush.

�Vanity Fair� has put these girls in skintight halter tops, bikini tops, micro-miniskirts, Catholic School girl uniforms, and Daisy Duke shorts. They�ve placed them in come-hither poses, with their chests jutted forward and their skirts blowing up in the wind. It�s a pedophile�s dream come true and it�s just the latest instance of the cultural elite�s sexualization of children.

Simmer down there, Joe.

In fact, there's nothing sexual about any of the photos, and very little that's accurate in Scarborough's description. (There are also photos of teen boys, which I guess Joe didn't notice.) The accompanying article is a look at the marketing of teen celebrities by corporate media heavyweights, which mocks the concept without bashing the kids themselves. It takes a special kind of mind to find anything salacious in the photographs or the article.

Scarborough's absurd pedophile comment reminds me with a Q&A interview of a member of a pedophile organization done by Spy magazine years ago. They asked the guy what his favorite television show was, and he said Home Improvement. Now that's creepy.