Some people are attacking one of my favorite ads from this year’s Super Bowl as “promoting sexual assault” because it depicts a teenager forcing himself onto the prom queen. Le sigh, people.

Audi’s ‘prom’ ad shows a seriously cute teenage boy getting ready to attend prom stag (no explanation as to why such a cutie had a problem getting a date, but whatever). His dad gives him the keys to his Audi, and presumably from the courage he gains by driving such a hot car, he parks right in the principal’s spot, walks into the dance, and plants one on the prom queen. The prom king does not look pleased, and the scene cuts to the boy driving away with a black eye and a giant grin. The tag line reads: Bravery. It’s what defines us.

Here's an IKEA ad you'll never see in the U.S. A couple are strolling down the aisles when suddenly the woman notices pillows are on sale. She get so excited she yells out, "SALE!" Only because she's actually transgender, she forgets herself, and "SALE!" comes out in a deep masculine voice. In the next scene you see her boyfriend running away from her while she's not looking because OMG, he didn't know she was transgender and eww that's so freaky, right?!? The title of the ad is "Forget to Deceive."

This ad ran in Thailand, where transgenders are more visible than here in the U.S. (They're called "ladyboys.") One group, the Thai Transgender Alliance, was not amused by IKEA's commercial and said it was "disrespectful."

Let's put aside the issue of gun control for a moment and talk about something else: Truth in advertising. See, the gun Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary last Friday, was a semiautomatic Bushmaster .223 rifle. Bushmaster's ad campaign for the past 2 years, "Consider Your Man Card Reissued," essentially equates manliness with owning a military-style semiautomatic weapon. A military-style semiautomatic which can fire "dozens of high-velocity rounds" in mere seconds. Bushmaster implies that ownership of their product makes a man so manly his "man card" will be reisussed. I'm not arguing whether or not a man has the right to own this weapon. I'm just wondering how owning this weapon makes a man MORE of a man.

Is masculinity defined by the capacity to kill? What manly pursuit would require a "real man" (not including those in the military, of course) to own this weapon?

Imagine that you were a parent of a troubled child in the early 1960's. You sent your child to a reformatory school, believing that this would do the trick -- and make your child an upstanding citizen. I know, it's hard to relate to something like that today, nobody does that anymore. But as parents we can all relate to the fear of never seeing our child again. We push those thoughts away every time one of those horrific child abduction stories pop into our newsfeeds. It's almost impossible to process the concept.

But that's what happened to over fifty sets of parents who had sent their children to Florida Industrial School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. They dropped off their sons only to never see them again.

Now this shocking mystery that has meant lack of closure for so many grieving and confused parents might find a resolution of sorts as a result of a recent gruesome discovery.

A mother who left her 2-year-old son alone to die in a hot car has been sentenced to 35 years in jail. Mollie Shouse had fallen into a drug-induced stupor and simply forgot her child was there. It's sick, twisted, and every bit a murder as if she had stabbed him to death herself. She deserved even more time. At first glance, this case seems like other tragic cases where a baby was left in the car because mom or dad was doing a different routine or was overstressed or was sleep-deprived. But this is different. This time the mother was on drugs, asleep, while her precious son slowly died in agony in the car.

There isn't punishment long enough in the world for this woman.

Ah, election season. It always brings out the best of the armchair political analyst, the every man and woman with something to contribute to the election time banter. But some witty folks in Hanson, Mass., a small town about 18 miles south of Boston, have generated some buzz during RNC week with a billboard that makes their sentiments about the president quite clear: “Somewhere in Kenya, a village is missing its idiot. Obama, One Big Ass Mistake America. Vote Mitt Romney for 2012!”

In two days, two different men tried to sexually assault the same woman in her home. Shockingly, police say the reason is because her husband put an ad on Craigslist seeking someone to rape her. 

The Idaho man admitted to posting the ad, pretending to be his wife asking for men to forcibly attack her because it was a fantasy of hers. The attacker was told to "force his way inside and rape the woman there and not stop no matter how much she resisted."

Campaign finance law is one of those subjects that sounds incredibly dull and boring, but in actuality is full of intrigue and potential corruption. Before the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) in the early 1970s, there were no stringent limits on how much an individual or corporation could donate to a candidate.

Guess what catalyst changed that? Watergate. See? I told you this was scandalous stuff.