If you want a glimpse into how pop culture has changed the mainstream media, look no further than the hubbub surrounding Miley Cyrus and her photos in Vanity Fair, a spread including a photo in which she appears to be topless.

This story made the national television news, and I don't mean merely a spot on Headline News or in the entertainment report. ABC and NBC picked it up, and I do believe NBC News had it in the first 15 minutes of its Monday nightly news.

Right or wrong?

On this issue, I say absolutely producers were right to include the story because at this point Cyrus isn't merely a 15-year-old child, she's a $1B entity. She's an entertainment commodity, and furthermore, her actions speak a lot about the state of pop culture as it plays a role in being a teenager.

I'm not sure that national news shows Monday allowed for time to develop those topics past what 1:00 would allow; however, my guess is that there's a ton of parents thinking to themselves ... Crap.

On the other hand, I'm a natural-born cynic. I think Hannah Montana will be pregnant by 18, max, if not sooner. I think the world will celebrate her motherdom, and she'll continue to explode with money. She might get involved with drugs and turn into what Britney Spears has become -- a running joke.

What has to be a serious problem for average-Joe moms and dads though is in dealing with the parallels between a pop culture icon and their own kids. Back in my day, parents weren't left to watch whatever we kids watched on television.

The remote control (or the television penis, as I call it) belonged to my dad.

Therefore, on a Friday night, I watched Washington Week In Review and Wall Street Week, waiting just long enough for Dad to get throat-deep into his first snore before I stole the remote to watch The Dukes of Hazzard.

However, in our day, there wasn't the breadth of tweenage and teenage programming that there is now. And that programming is really excellent for kids that age. I'm not sure that it would have been my thing if I had grown up in this era, but kidows in their early teens have a veritable pop culture market all to themselves.

It's their world, and parents merely live in it. And that, I think, is the center of the issue. Parents aren't being parents anymore, choosing instead to be indirectly ruled by their children instead of the way it should be -- the other way around.

On the other hand, was the VF spread that bad? That risque? That creepy?

I wouldn't know because I have no urge to see it. What I did see of the topless photo, with Miley all covered up in a sheet, made me think the magazine was producing a spread for the purpose of attracting pedophiles.

And I saw the creepy photo of Miley and her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, which was technically clean but a tad creepy. According to Whoopi Goldberg, who is familiar with the work of photographer Annie Leibovitz and spoke about this on The View today, family and representatives got to review every single frame shot.

Everybody in the Miley Cyrus camp was in the know.

It could make one all the more cynical because, my friends, this was no accident. It was a business decision, and it was a brilliant marketing move, once again focusing the attention on a billionaire princess whose actual cultural contribution to the world is minimal at best long term.

However, while I'm a tad jaded at times, I know this business from a pop culture perspective. There can be mistakes, but there are few accidents.

On the flip side though, I definitely empathize for anybody who's got a teenage daughter, not so much for the magazine spread but for what almost certainly comes next in the life and times of Miley Cyrus.