Now, Hamilton said, "everyone is talking about it. It's a stunt. Because sex sells, because we're pushing the envelope. Everybody, every TV show is pushing the envelope, and the problem is that we're desensitizing America."

Citizens for Families is focused on creating communities that are "appropriate for children," Hamilton said. It is engaged in promoting magazine cover shields in stores and removing advertising and other materials that violate decency laws.

"Everything that goes into the mind of a child influences the way that child thinks and acts," Hamilton said. "A picture teaches. Can you see the teaching that went on during halftime on Sunday? Not only did it take the innocence from children, it taught them to think it was funny."

There is a time, place and format appropriate for "edgier" advertising and promotions, said John Youngren, account services director at Love Communications. The problem with the Janet Jackson incident, according to Youngren, was that it failed in all of those criteria.

"It was wholly inappropriate for the context in which they were performing," Youngren said. Pointing to comparisons made between the Jackson incident and the now-infamous kiss between pop stars Britney Spears and Madonna at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, Youngren said the difference there was the audience's level of expectation.

"The difference is that the MTV audience has, I would argue, come to expect a much edgier show, whereas the Super Bowl is something that everyone watches. Children watch it," Youngren said. "No matter what they were trying to do (at the Super Bowl show), they did it wrong."

Bob Garfield, who reviews commercials as Advertising Age's ad critic, blamed this year's more vulgar Super Bowl spots on declining cultural standards, a common sentiment among those who follow the industry.

"Along with many other people, I'm disgusted to see how vulgarity has become considered good form," Garfield told the Los Angeles Daily News.

"It's not just the Super Bowl; it's the culture," he said.

No surprise

But University of Southern California professor Todd Boyd told the Daily News that society shouldn't be so surprised, particularly about Super Bowl content — an event, according to Boyd, designed to celebrate the "two-fisted masculinity" of men.

"Consider the source: We're talking about the Super Bowl; we're not talking about Easter Sunday Mass," said Boyd, who focuses on pop culture as a professor of critical studies at USC.

"That element is there — the sophomoric nature of some of the commercials, the sexual objectification of women's bodies, this sort of bacchanalian sense of celebration. That's all part of the way people participate in celebration of football," he said.