We interrupt our usual gusher of good cheer to bring you this rant.

As you know, in addition to being a national sugar high, tonight is also sacred to the nation's growing number of cognitively-impaired parents. Yes, once again it's National Tart Up Your Daughter Day! [Scroll down a bit--you'll know it when you see it.] Where parents can once again abdicate their responsibilities to a culture all too happy to commodify children and negligently send their flesh and blood off looking for all the world like a farm team for Flavor of Love.

This year, I direct my Socratic examination of the degenerating state of the Slutoween holiday wardrobe at a new audience. Not at like-minded parents praying daily for the Chapter 7 liquidation of MGA Entertainment. Nor at the corporate sellouts who market this--the people whom Chris Buckley immortalized as the employers of the American Nuremburg Defense: "I haff a mortgage."

Instead, this is for the parents who actually participate in NTUYDD.

Yes, delinquent asshats, I'm talking to you.

Come on over here and sit down. Ignore the Mossberg. Strictly ceremonial. Ditto the Louisville Slugger--a man has to have his enthusiasms, don't you know?

And no, those aren't "brass knuckles" on my right hand. Don't be silly. It's one of those magnet things that help with blood circulation. Works like a charm.

Are you sitting comfortably? Good.

What the hell is wrong with you?

No, really: what in the hell is the matter with you?

This is not "cute." This is not "funny."

This is warped.

This is wrong.

And you, more than anyone else, are responsible for it.

Because you won't get off your dead ass and be a parent--instead of a friend--to your children.

Because you think buying your kids what they want = "love."

Yeah, I know--I'm a hectoring moralist. One of those "social conservatives" the news is always warning people about. Probably even a "theocrat" (but my nuclear program is woefully behind schedule, worse luck).

Well, you see, I'm a judgmental jerk for a reason--I can't wall my family off from the world. There are only so many levees I can build against moral decay. We're all breathing the same polluted air--and I don't need you burning styrofoam next door. It affects us all, folks.

Let me put it more simply, right down to earth, in a language that everybody here can easily understand:

Cause. Effect.

Worried yet? You'd better start.