That said,  low-brow snark is like hollandaise sauce—downright toxic if not done well. And this week a group called the Yes Men have been spreading virtual e. coli all over the internet.

All week, news outlets from TPM and Mother Jones to MSNBC and CNN have been clucking over a stunt pulled this week by a group called the Yes Men in which the members of the group impersonated the US Chamber of Commerce and duped some media outlets into believing momentarily that the ultra-conservative Chamber had reversed its position on climate change. They hadn’t, of course, and the deception was eventually revealed when officials from the real Chamber shut down the fake Chamber’s news conference at the National Press Club.

And so those in the media who—rightly—would like to see the backward-thinking Chamber taken to task over their head-in-the-sand climate change policy virtually squealed with delight over the stunt, declaring victory for the little guys who had “punked” the big, bad Chamber.

The problem is, though, that the Yes Men didn’t “punk” anybody.  They didn’t reveal anything new about the Chamber’s policy or the motivations behind it (hint: follow the money). All they proved was that if you steal an organization’s letterhead, create fake phone lines for fake staffers and send out a sham press release, people tend to believe you, and when you do that, you tend to make yourself look like a grandstanding jackass and your victim like the only adult in the room. Way to go.

Some will argue that the real dupes in the Chamber fiasco were the media who were all too ready to pick up a false news story and run with it. This is a pretty shoddy argument for two reasons. First, the Yes Men themselves assert that they targeted the Chamber because of their reactionary policy on climate change. Also—and probably more relevant—is the fact that the Yes Men and their accomplices went to quite a lot of trouble to make their fake announcement seem real, even to a diligent reporter.

This isn’t the first time the Yes Men have pulled such a stunt. In 2006, a Yes Men member posed as a HUD official at the Gulf Coast Reconstruction and Hurricane Preparedness Summit, laying out grandiose plans for new housing in parts of southern Louisiana still devastated a year after Hurricane Katrina. The audience, desperate for a glimmer of hope, bought it. Of course, the whole thing was a sham and the housing never materialized. Silly homeless Katrina victims! Gotcha!

The Yes Men aren’t funny, and they aren’t clever. The only thing they’ve ever shown  is the American public’s willingness to believe, in spite of everything, that something good might happen, and their own smug satisfaction at taking that away. At best they’re annoyingly glib and at worst downright cruel. As a progressive, I find the lefty media’s childish delight over their antics embarrassing.

I’m not saying no one should cover the Yes Men’s antics. News is news, even when it’s stupid news, but I hope the next time the Yes Men pull a stunt, their cheerleaders in the media will respond with at least a moderately critical eye. This is real life, not Borat, and sometimes the “little guy” isn’t a hero or a dragon-slayer or anything more than jackass and a fraud.

These two facts alone made this week’s Meghan McCain tempest-in-a-DD-cup hit pretty close to home, and served as the final straw that compelled me to finally launch my hotly anticipated (by literally tens of people) new blog, in which I write a weekly column that is syndicated absolutely nowhere.

But anyway, on to Meghan McCain’s boobs.

For the uninitiated, on Wednesday night, Meghan McCain posted a photo on Twitter that was composed of probably 5 percent book cover, 5 percent face and 90 percent BIG GIANT BOOBS. Every person, gay, straight, male, female, thought exactly one thing when they first looked at the photo: Whoa hey BOOBS!

The media storm that’s ensued has mostly revolved around who said what about the photo, the boobs and the woman attached to them. Some, like noted troglodyte bottom-feeder Robert Stacy McCain of the American Spectator, reacted predictably, while others, like ABC News’ Jake Tapper, rushed to both defend Miss Meghan’s honor and profess their shock that people would—gasp!—say such things online.

To me, the latter group is much more troublesome. RS McCain has made a career of being a dickless shit, and at this point nobody has any business being surprised by it. But the Tapper crowd, who are collectively aghast that someone would make a crude sexual remark about a young woman on the internet, point to a more pervasive, and insidious, problem in the male-dominated media and elsewhere.

The sad fact is that any woman with a sizable online following who posts any photo of herself is going to receive degrading and abusive responses, and anyone who is surprised by it is astonishingly disconnected from the reality of how women are treated, in public and in private, online and off, every single day.

It’s worth noting, too, that the most of the slurs directed at McCain involve some variation on calling her a slut. Two points here: First, having large breasts in no way makes you a slut. Let’s be clear about that. Posting softcore porn of yourself on Twitter? You’re getting warmer. Also: How telling that all of the White Knights riding to McCain’s rescue treat the accusation that she has and enjoys non-monogamous sex to be the ultimate slur against a woman. Who’s slutshaming now?

Fact is, slutbaiting/slutshaming has always been an effective way of putting ambitious women back in their place. Just this week, journalistic beacon Townhall.com, panties in a twist because Stacey Ferguson might end up with a minority stake in an NFL franchise while conservative demigod Rush Limbaugh might not, derided the entertainer as a “trashy pop tramp” in a story that couldn’t have had less to do with either party’s relative sexual promiscuity. It’s easy: Don’t like a woman? Call her a whore and knock her down a few pegs. It’s all very Mad Men.

I hope, though, that like the slut/stud double standard, this paradigm is at least starting to change. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but if you want to get under my skin, call me a moron, a bad writer, a Republican, any number of things. But a slut? Meh. That’s your hangup, not mine.

I suspect Meghan McCain feels the same way. Love, hate, defend or deride her, she’s a savvy marketer who doesn’t want your protection and doesn’t need your pity. Using nothing more than a Twitter account and a pushup bra, she’s outed both the puritans and the perverts and now she’s laughing all the way to the bank.