(Above: Ralph featuring Kellie, former kids' show Hi-5 queen).
Every so often, we get tired of weighty political issues - that wretched Rudd government, boat people, the totalitarian British, and so on - and turn with relief to what makes the world go round.
... at the risk of sounding like the Reverend Fred Nile, I’m a bit disappointed with her semi-clad efforts on the pages of Ralph.
The chief culprit is sex advertising - and the regulation of sex advertising.
Every so often, we get tired of weighty political issues - that wretched Rudd government, boat people, the totalitarian British, and so on - and turn with relief to what makes the world go round.
Sex.
As do thoughtful writers for the Daily Terror, such as David Penberthy, who makes clear where he's going with his header There's a grubby stench in the air.
Poor David is terribly upset that Kellie from Hi-5 - always a favorite at his place - has been naughty.
Poor David's six year old might ask him whether those saucy, indecent snaps in the rag are of Kellie from Hi-5. Which presupposes, I guess, that David is an avid reader of Ralph, and leaves it lying around the house, possibly even on the coffee table, as a keen sign of his intellectual aspirations. How else would his six year old get hold of it to ask him such traumatic and awkward questions?
Unless he takes her into the newsagents and points out the front cover to her as a warning to all young folk just where they might end up after they've worked in childrens' television for a commercial network.
But we keeed folks, we keeed. David is actually very keen to defend Kellie and stop her being crucified by family groups and feminists, all too keen to abuse her for abusing her position, with tens of thousands of little girls looking up to her as a role model. Of the air headed, bubble brained, mind deadening, all singing and dancing Hi-5 kind.
Once he's defended Kellie, poor David then begins to brood about the difficult life of a parent anxious to defend his brood from salacious content, and help them carve a smut-free path through the early stages of life.
Well who can argue in favor of those tiresome ads showing men playing the piano with their freshly invigorated penises, or watching old men go off to tinkle in the toilet, but it seems David is currently upset with the cut off points for M rated advertisements (which can run between noon and 3 pm weekdays, excluding school holidays and after 8.30 pm).
He's even more indignant that the regulatory body's website has two special sections on alcohol and junk food, but nothing abut sexual advertising, which says more about the effectiveness of the health lobby than any parent-led mass movement against Tooheys' sponsorship of State of Origin or the unmatchable evil of Happy Meals.
Kids can get through those ads without pestering you for a beer or a burger - awkward questions come from the ads they're not protected from.
Just then, as you'd expect from a blogger intent on making a point, I was harassed by a sweet young thing who announced she'd suddenly decided to become a cheerleader:
Sweet young thing: Mommie, mommie, I want to dance like those girls. Those NRL cheerleaders.
Me: I don't think that's such a good idea sweetie. You know, when you do that, men look at your body in a leering, filthy, perverted kind of way.
Sweet young thing: But mommie, mommie, what's wrong with that?
Me: Well it inflames their senses, and drives them to distraction, and then they want to do things to you. After the game. Sometimes even during the game. Sometimes in a pub. Sometimes with a broken beer glass. Sometimes with a bottle.
Sweet young thing: Like what?
Me: Never you mind, birds and bees is for next year. With a bit of luck you'll never get to date an NRL footballer and find out.
Sweet young thing: great, meantime I'm gunna be a cheerleader.
(She prances off into the distance waving invisible pom poms in the air, and I call after her).
Me: Wait, sweetie, where did you get this idea from?
Sweet young thing: well you know how you were showing me how to use the intertubes? And told me the Daily Telegraph was a very family friendly site with very caring and concerned columnists? So I went and clicked on this great gallery about the NRL's top cheerleaders. They looked so cute, I want to be just like them.
Dearie me, it seems David that it's not just sex advertising that emits a grubby stench, but the Daily Terror. Unless of course we get down and boogie with the notion that sex sells fish and chip wrappings as well as products, and pious lamentations about a 34 year old woman engaging in some "entry-level eroticism" is just more of the same.
And because we here at the Michael Duffy Files just love shots of pretty young things - it sends our click rate into the nanosphere - not only have we included shots of Ralph to help sell their mag to the lads, but we've included below 1. a shot of girls in training to become sexual objects; 2. West Tigers cheerleaders so cute they'll set every inner west lad's heart a pumping; and 3. a wonderful crotch display and reverse pike that should be in every cheerleader's skill set.
Thank you Daily Terror for yet again explaining the meaning of the word hypocrisy by putting it into action.
And remember, talk about sex in the home is all the fault of sex advertising, and government regulation, though as Tim Blair and Piers Akerman constantly remind us, we have way too much regulation and government. Anything or anyone else we can blame, apart from David Penberthy? Come on down Stephen Conroy, of course, it's the intertubes.
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