Sometimes column ideas come from strange places. My latest comes from a place I swore would never inspire me to spout off on the pages of the Daily, but it is unavoidable. I must face the truth. I have been moved by a talk show.

Fortunately, the show in question was not Carnie, Tempestt or Ricki. Not even Jerry Springer, Geraldo or Oprah. I do my best not to watch any of these shows, with the exception of Jerry Springer. I will watch him if he happens to be on for one reason and one reason only: He’s the only talk show host I have seen who acknowledges that his show is, indeed, crap.

Fools like Carnie and Ricki, who make their living by dredging up the dregs of society and giving them a national forum in which to tell us their pathetic life story, attempt to pass on their shows as valid social commentary, when it is actually dung.

Jerry, on the other hand, knows his show is a joke. Any man who repeatedly brings back a singing drag queen dressed as a man (which is somehow quite unsettling) to tell all of Jerry’s guests, in show-tune style, that they have taco dip for brains, realizes and acknowledges that the talk show field is for morons and those unqualified to ask, “Would you like fries with that?”

These are the type of people, both the hosts and the guests, who read Garfield with a highlighter and a dictionary, in case Jon happens to use a polysyllabic word. These people make Joey Buttafuoco look like a master’s candidate.

All segues aside, the show in question was Mark Wahlberg’s, who seems less stupid than his colleagues. At least, on-camera, anyway. His name, however, confused me, as I kept waiting for his brother to pop out on the stage with the other New Kids as they sang a rousing medley of all those funky NKOTB tunes we so loved. (“Oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh … the right stuff.”)

Anyway, the show in question was about overweight people and how their spouses verbally abused them. Most of the guests were women, while their mates were men who must have been thrown by being in a room of a hundred people and not one of them named “Goober.”

During the course of the “debate,” it became apparent that the mates who criticized the physical appearance of their significant others were suffering from some form of debilitating hypocrisy. They kept contradicting their earlier statements so often, I kept waiting for one of the guests to mutter, “Musta been the beer talkin’.”

To get to the point of this rather large introduction, the whole time I was watching some guy named Randy say things like, “She’s just too durn fat!,” I kept thinking about the controversial new advertisements that depicted women’s breasts.

These ads have recently caused quite a stir, as depicting bare breasts seems to be a social taboo. Opponents of the ads say they are risque, and just a little too extreme.

I found this interesting, considering the ads depicted women’s breasts performing the function women’s breasts are apparently supposed to do: breast-feed children.

It’s pretty interesting that you can wrap a breast in a Wonderbra and prance it around a department store without anyone blinking. Except maybe Randy, who would probably be inspired to hoot, “Ya got a license for those things, lady?!”

You can cover a breast in a silk night dress and slap it in the Sears advertisement insert, and it’ll get about as much attention as a Chevy Chase movie.

You can take a young woman’s breasts and cover ’em in strawberry sauce and whipped cream and have her pose spread-eagle on a fire truck for Playboy magazine and it’s called appreciative art. (Not that I know they do those things, I’m just guessing. I only read the articles. Really!)

But take a part of the human body and depict it doing what it was meant to do and you have a controversy.

I find this quite hypocritical. Not that I even support the content of these ads, but why is this being focused on and not other aspects of women and issues relating to their sexuality (I’m not even sure breast-feeding falls into that category.)?

Because sexuality and things that can be even remotely connected to sexuality are somehow uncomfortable to people.

Women can’t be overweight because then they lose their sexual attractiveness, so the unspoken theory goes. Breasts can’t be shown in public because “what would people think?”

It’s as if when women utilize their bodies in a way that does not allow some men (not all) to view them as simple sexual objects who have some other purpose than to provide a cheap (or not so cheap, have you seen the price of a Playboy lately?) thrill, it’s considered offensive, and maybe … a little threatening?

Makes you wonder.