More gossip about Gossip Girl

See also Chicago Tribune: Racy ads turn tables, words on show's critics

Controversial ads aren't even new to "Gossip Girl." Earlier this year, the ad campaign featured the text-messaging legend "OMFG." CW insisted, with a wink, that the letters stood for "Oh My Freaking Goodness."

What feels fresh about this new sally is that it turns critical opinion on its ear. Instead of taking a few phrases out of context to make a lukewarm (or negative) review sound like a rave, CW is embracing the dislike, and the more purple the prose the better.

One of the ads even quotes the most easily outraged people in America, the naifs at the conservative Parents Television Council, who called "Gossip Girl" "Mind-blowingly inappropriate."

Frankly, it is amusing to see someone finally stand up to the PTC, which would scrub television of anything that acknowledges base human behavior and which tries to bully advertisers into spurning great shows (recently " Dexter") that don't happen to have a "Father Knows Best" sensibility.

Critics, on the other hand, don't need any more comeuppance. As a breed, they're already endangered by the democratization of opinion online.

But let's not give CW satisfaction by getting outraged at this series of ads too. Instead, let's applaud the creativity. And let's trust that any real-world kid with half an upbringing understands that what goes on in this show, and in its advertisements, is a cartoon extreme, meant to entertain rather than instruct.