Plain Vanilla, Please: No “Schweddy Balls” in Our Ice Cream!

And now for something a little lighter: ice cream.

Ben & Jerry: Out to offend?

Specifically, how a new flavor of ice cream is creating a bit of a firestorm among the sort of moms who would like to keep their (and, presumably, our) children’s worlds completely free of anything offensive (their definition of, I guess), immoral (ditto), scary (says who?) and … whatever. Fill in the blank. The world our children live in should be BPA-free plastic bubbles surrounded by rainbows and, I don’t know, Bible verses (the non-violent ones. Presumably).

Ben & Jerry, those godless liberal Vermonters (need I say more?) unveiled a new flavor recently, called Schweddy Balls. For those who missed the current controversy, it actually goes back to an old Saturday Night Live skit, featuring another godless liberal, this time from Hollywood: Alec Baldwin. The skit featured Baldwin as a guest on an NPR-like (liberals! Godless!) radio program called “The Delicious Dish,” hosted by Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer (let’s assume that, as New York-based sketch comics, they’re pretty godless, too). Playing a Christmas-sweater-wearing guy named Pete Schweddy, owner of a holiday bakery called “Season’s Eatings,” Baldwin talks about some favorite holiday cookies he makes, chief among them a certain type of rum ball. The punch line is, of course, that these are “Schweddy balls” and that “No one can resist my Schweddy balls.”

Is the skit offensive? Sure, probably, depending on who you are. But it was late-night comedy; if that’s not offensive at least to some people, no one would bother staying up late for it, and the world would be duller for it. Plus, it stands up over time! And it’s flat-out hilarious, if you are (a) over 21; (b) have even a modicum of irony drifitng around your consciousness; and (c) have ever listened to one of those public-radio shows that seem designed to treat insomniacs without drugs.

All these balls have gotten the knickers of One Million Moms, a project of the conservative American Family Association, in a twist. They already didn’t like a Ben & Jerry’s flavor called Hubby Hubby (a play on their popular Chubby Hubby), because, as they say, somehow buying a pint of Hubby Hubby “celebrates gay marriage.” (Someone needs to explain that one to me, for serious.) And now they feel, these self-righteous fear-mongerers, that an ice cream called Schweddy Balls has turned “…something as innocent as ice cream into something repulsive.” I’m sorry: Ice cream? Innocent? And repulsive how? Hey, moms: You don’t like the ice cream for any reason — it’s fattening, it’s too expensive, you don’t like Alec Baldwin or his balls? You don’t get the joke? Don’t buy it!

Kids are in dire straits all over this great country of ours. Twenty-one percent of them live in poverty, according to ChildStats.gov, to use just one example. Are we really going to try to drum up a cease-and-desist campaign over a limited-edition ice cream that won’t even be available in every grocery store in the country anyway? Is that really what we’re worried about?

And what, exactly, are these self-appointed morals-police moms concerned will happen? That hordes of 8-year-old ice cream lovers, on a trip to the grocery store or the local Ben & Jerry’s shop, will see the Balls ice cream and begin experimenting with “deviant” sexual practices? Or that there’s absolutely no level of indecency that’s permissible for children to even peripherally encounter? Or is it that merely by being exposed (sorry) to grown up stuff, they’ll grow up too fast? I’d argue that living in poverty grows a kid up faster, and for the wrong reasons, than being exposed to an ironic, double-entendre joke that they probably won’t get anyway!)

Seems obvious to me that these mothers’ concerns are almost comically misplaced.

Okay, so the ice cream probably isn’t even available in most stores, anyway. But even if it were, even if were being served by your kid’s school, to play Devil’s advocate, who cares? I can guarantee you that if my boys saw that flavor in the supermarket freezer, they wouldn’t be able to pronounce “Schweddy” anyway, and as far as they know, balls are for soccer. And even if they did ask, “Mom, what does that mean?” I could — being quick thinking and, you know, the adult in the situation — say something like, “oh, just a silly name for an ice cream.” Which on the face of it, is exactly what it is.

The world is filled with strange, scary, poorly-understood, vaguely or overtly violent or sexual stuff. Filled with it. So what do we do? Ban Ben & Jerry? And then what?

No, really: then what? Tell me what you think!