When I first saw the new Burger King commercial for its 99-cent kiddie meal, I was horrifed that my 9-year-old son was sitting alongside me.

My little boy, the one who can’t get to sleep without a stuffed animal and a light on in his room, watches intently as gyrating women dance around the Burger King with what appear to be boxes stuffed into the back of their tight shorts. All the while, the Burger King — you know, the guy wearing a creepy, big plastic head — raps about his predilection for square butts to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.”

“I like square butts and I cannot lie,” the Burger King raps. It’s a nod to the all-right-angles shape of SpongeBob Squarepants, who appears for a brief second in the ad; toys from the wildly popular Nickelodeon cartoon of the same name are included in the kiddie meal.

For those who haven’t heard Sir Mix-A-Lot’s ode to large-bottomed women, it appears that robust derrieres make the rapper “so horny” (among other things). It is beyond baffling that Burger King would approve an ad for a kids meal that uses a rap about a guy wanting to get some sexy time with big-butted girls.

In the ad, the Burger King even takes it upon himself to measure the width of one of the women’s square butts, checking to see if it is geometrically correct with a triangle. Only the best square butts for the Burger King, you know!

The commercial ends with Sir Mix-A-Lot himself, flanked by two women, uttering the immortal words:  “Booty is booty.”

What company peddling to children wouldn’t want to close a 30-second spot with poetry like that?

So there I was on the couch with my son, and my first impulse was to gasp loudly; the second was to cover his eyes. Luckily, I did neither. There’s that theory that kids will one day seek out that which their parents forbid — or are creeped out about. A flash of my child rapping a sex song surrounded by gyrating, square-butted women was too much for me. Instead, I stayed calm and asked my son what he thought.

“Mah-ah-ah-ah-ahm,” he said, looking at me as if I were wearing a tin-foil hat. “It’s inappropriate.” (Really and truly, my 9-year-old son used the word “inappropriate.”) “It’s way adult, don’t you think?”

I could have jumped for joy.

Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time teaching my son to be wary of advertising, especially ads aimed at kids. Most of what’s marketed to youngsters is unhealthy or unnecessary, so advertisers work extra hard to make them “want” the product, I explain to my son.

“They even make things look like they’re good for you when they’re not,” I tell him over and over again. “Ads for cigarettes used to make it look like smoking was healthy and fun. Now, since we know how bad cigarettes are for you, ads for them aren’t allowed on television.”

My kid gets that.

You’ve got to feel sorry for youngsters. The junk food industry has a huge stake in training them for a lifetime of poor food choices, a strategy that appears to be paying off. Just witness the current childhood obesity crisis, and the recent recommendation that kids be given cholesterol-lowering drugs. The solution to all this is less junk food, not more.

Yet food companies spend over $10 billion a year to market their stuff to kids, mostly for products that aren’t nutritious, according to a 2005 report commissioned by the Institute of Medicine (www.iom.edu), an influential group of experts chartered by the U.S. Congress to provide health-policy advice.

One of the recommendations the IOM made in the 2005 study, which focused on childhood obesity, is that cartoon characters like SpongeBob and Scooby Doo be used to advertise only healthy food.

I am sure no one at Burger King heard of that recommendation because the junk food company is using the wildly popular children’s cartoon character to peddle its BK Kiddie Meal. Way more egregious is that Burger King has crossed a stunningly scary line by throwing at kids highly sexual images of women, gyrating for the Burger King, in order to move some product.

Rap has long been criticized as misogynistic, as well as for frequently using themes of violence and sex.

Now junk-food giant Burger King takes a clearly sexual rap song and pairs it with clearly sexual images to get our kids wanting its 99-cent meals. This is lunacy, not marketing, or is it? Burger King is getting a lot of attention for the ad for which it doesn't have to pay, like this post.

I do what I can to teach my kid to be skeptical about advertising and wary of the ruthlessness of the junk food industry. I’ve got to wonder, though, where the responsibility lies for our corporations. I am, by no means, a prude; as a journalist, I stand firmly behind the First Amendment. That said, I take great offense to this ad. This isn’t a freedom-of-speech issue; it’s about using some corporate brains and exercising some corporate responsibility; it’s about doing the right thing.

This Burger King ad is so egregious, it makes me want to holler: “I’ll kick BK butt, and I cannot lie.”