Jailbait double standards

UPDATED & BUMPED: Because Michelle Malkin weighs in:

Are parents without scruples more likely to sacrifice their daughters to the wolves of the entertainment industry? Or does show business sap all the common sense out of mothers and fathers who should know better? Either way, they are guilty of child abandonment.

I spotted this story Sunday on the celebrity gossip aggregator We Smirch (sister site of political aggregator Memeorandum) and blogged about it, because I knew it would be a big deal. A 15-year-old starlet topless in Vanity Fair? The photographer defending it as "artistic"? That's a big deal. Oh, and now there's video:



By releasing the video, Vanity Fair apparently intends to emphasize that Miley's father was on the set during the photo shoot -- which only raises more questions.

As the father of 15-year-old twin sons, let me add something: If you've got a 15-year-old, check their MySpace pages, and their friends' MySpace pages. Chances are you'll find something at least as shocking as this Vanity Fair photo -- in the digital age, you don't have to be Annie Leibovitz to take semi-porn photos.

* SUNDAY'S ORIGINAL POST *

Fifteen-year-old Disney "Hannah Montana" franchise starlet Miley Cyrus poses in her panties, shows her bra, and now poses topless in Vanity Fair -- and yet no legal action is threatened?

Meanwhile, in Texas, the mere suspicion that teenagers are getting married causes a SWAT raid and state officials take 416 children away from their parents.

Maybe if the polygamous cult would make some Disney movies, they could get away with it. Otherwise, Texas officials might fear those fundamentalist kids are being deprived of an underwear-flashing, topless-posing normal adolescence like Miley's.

(Please note that the topless photo of Miley Cyrus is by Annie Leibovitz, who explains that it's "artistic" and therefore presumably not illegal child pornography, something else that might merit a Texas SWAT raid.)