It wasn't the highly sexualized, near-naked videos.

It wasn't  French-kissing Madonna.

It wasn't her bizarre behavior.

But eventually, the media powers that be figured out a way to generate some serious parental outrage over Britney Spears.  I'm guessing that the idea is for the media coverage of parental outrage to fuel sales and push Britney back up closer toward the envied spot she held - pre-Kevin - of Queen of Pop.  

Parents are outraged to discover that the title and lyrics of the latest release from Spears' comeback effort, Circus, is just a thinly veiled      vulgarism.

Gee, I can't imagine why parents are so upset at this behavior.  Were there no inklings earlier on that perhaps Britney was not the best role model for their little darlin's?   At the risk of offending some folks, I can't understand why parents are priming their daughters for adolescence at age 5.  Call me old fashioned (and perhaps a variety of other things as well), but it seems rather strange to me that pre-schoolers are being fed a musical and fashion diet of teen-age or older material.  High School Musical may seem pretty squeaky clean next to Spears and other acts, but it's still a production centered around the lives of teen-agers.  Trust me, our kids are going to be teen-agers soon enough.  Why in the world would we start feeding them a steady diet of teen angst and teen crushes and teen hormones years before they acquire those things for themselves?

Parents need to consider that just because something is produced by Disney, or just because someone used to be a little more bubble-gummy, doesn't mean that they are suitable for young consumption.  I'm not sure why parents would be in such a hurry to usher their children into the minefield of adolescence, but at least wait until they've biologically reached it for themselves.  

We shouldn't be surprised at Britney or Vanessa or any of the other folks who are so heavily marketed across very broad age demographics.  We shouldn't be surprised at the behavior of these media products, which also means that we ought to know better than to feed them to our kids.