As I turned on SportsCenter a few weeks ago, I was shocked and appalled at what I saw. It was a piece on the Monday Night Football promo that involved Terrell Owens and Nicollete Sheridan. I truly wanted to vomit.

Allow me to share why exactly this turned my stomach the way it did. The promo that was in question had Philadelphia Eagles star receiver Terrell Owens paired up with Nicollete Sheridan, star of ABC’s Desperate House Wives, for a scene in which Sheridan persuades Owens to skip out of the game by dropping her towel. Oh boy, look out, little Johnny just saw a pair of bare… shoulders. Now what’s sexier than the back of a pair of shoulders? Exactly. I mean, come on, I’ve seen more sex appeal in the lingerie section of a Sears catalog.

I watch SportsCenter because it’s an escape from the everyday crap that is on TV. But here it is, Politically Correct America, sticking its ugly face into my sanctuary. Ever since millions of people were shocked and driven to temporary vision of a tasseled right nipple, all forms of public media apparently need to be sanitized.

Everywhere you look today, you can’t go five minutes without hearing or seeing something that people think is ruining America’s children. They must have missed the part where they themselves tell their kids the difference between right and wrong. For too long, I’ve listened to television being blamed for what’s wrong with the youth of America. You know what’s wrong with America’s youth? America’s parents.

Don’t blame TV for “corrupting” your kids because you’ve become dependent upon it as a babysitter. Kids see soldiers dying on the news, and drugs and violence at school. But a boob sends our society into an uproar. This is getting ridiculous.

Whatever happened to talking to kids? You know, sitting them down and explaining that there are some things that you see that aren’t right? No, we have to call our congressmen and let them know that a nipple offends us.

Well, you know what, it doesn’t offend me. What I find offensive is the people making these calls. Don’t tell me what’s right for me. That is a decision I will make on my own. When I have children, I will pass on to them what my parents have ingrained in me: the difference between right and wrong. Not through an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, but by talking to them.

If people actually called their congressman to complain about real problems, then they’d have to address real problems like homelessness and kids going hungry in the streets. But because the six-figure families of America don’t have time to watch their kids, Congress cares about the effect of a nipple when they should care more about the people who were too busy being hungry to care.

Jay Upton is a Mass Media columnist.