It was a foil packet like Burger King ketchup or some kind of cold remedy. About a half-dozen were scattered in the street. They were not ketchup or cough drops.

        The label said “Planned Parenthood — Electronically Tested and Universally Trusted.” A condom.

        I wondered where it came from. I doubt that adults who have SUVs in their driveways are panhandling free birth control from Planned Parenthood.

        So I wondered if it came from a teen — handed out at a clinic or school, perhaps.

        And that made me wonder how they can get away with that line about “universally trusted.” Condoms are only safe most of the time as protection against pregnancy and AIDS, and they are no use at all to protect against other sexually transmitted diseases.

        I wondered what other nonsense they spread and what tragedies waiting to happen were wrapped in that blue foil.

        But back to our regularly scheduled programming.

They call it funny

        Just the night before, a new TV show on the fall schedule made its celebrated debut. It starred John Ritter, the actor who made his fame and fortune as the leering, winking, elbow-in-the-ribs star of Three's Company, about a lucky single guy who lived with two really cute single women. But nothing was going on there, no way — that was the funny part.

        TV has changed. Now something is always going on. Now the funny part is laughing at the squares that think something should not be going on.

        In his new show, Mr. Ritter plays the father of two teen-aged daughters who go to school in jeans so tight you could read the date on a dime in their back pockets — if you weren't so distracted by the thong underwear that sticks out of their pants like an advertisement scrawled in a phone booth.

What a joke

        Their dad's timid standards are a joke. Everyone knows a parent has no chance against teen-agers.

        Especially when the poor dad has a co-worker who brags about finding his teen-aged boy's condoms — so proud you'd think the kid had just earned straight-A's while winning the big game as an all-state quarterback who leads the band at halftime.

        And this is the family hour.

        Whenever I write about stuff like this, some readers call me a prude, among other names I cannot print. These same people often insist that porn is harmless, and that we have to get hip and overcome our stigmas against “lifestyles” that have been taboo for 2,000 years.

        The culture I see reflected on the TV screen is so modern and tolerant, we can't even see the link between child abductions and pornography. Every porn addict is not a child molester. But nearly every child molester is a porn addict.

        Doesn't that make porn at least as hazardous to public health as cigarettes? Where are the mothers against porn addicts?

        Nah. It's a lot more cool to mock those “uptight squares” at Citizens for Community Values when they battle to get hotels to remove hard-core porn. A local ACLU lawyer called them the “Taliban,” and nobody objected.

        So call me a prude, too. I'm so square I'm cubed. And I take it as a compliment.

        I don't know where the condoms came from, but I know where I found them. And I think some TV writers and their audience must get their ideas from the same place: the gutter.

        E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.

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