Crix Nix Hon's Buns

Last week, a Blaine moralist named Debbie Vaale sent City Pages an angry email. In it, she complained of being "highly offended by the sexual content in the latest Hardees/Carl's Jr. television commercials." Continued Vaale: "In my opinion, they violate local community standards."

The ad, an undeniably lowbrow takeoff of Sir Mix-a-Lot's classic "Baby Got Back"—"I like them really hot, I like them really flat, I like them lookin' like a pancake stack," exclaims a young man in a classroom, celebrating both his female teacher's backside and Carl's Jr.'s new flat bun patty melt—started airing nationwide last week.

The email also implored City Pages to stop airing the commercial. A strange demand, of course, given that we are a newspaper.

As it happens, Vaale's email was not unique. More than 100,000 identical emails were "written" by other angry, plagiarizing moralists who had received an "action alert" (read: cut-and-paste instructions) from the Mississippi-based American Family Association.

And although many, like Vaale, weren't quite sharp enough to follow the AFA's simple directions to send their missives only to TV stations, enough of them apparently found their mark: A day after the AFA unleashed their Stepford Warriors on the media, the fast food chain announced it was editing the teacher out of the commercial.