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Before this week, you’d probably never heard of Miley Cyrus unless you’re (a) a pre-pubescent girl or (b) very disturbed. Although here in the U.S. Cyrus is bigger than religion and McDonalds combined, in the U.K. she’s just another irritatingly perky cog in the Disney machine.

Until now. This month’s issue of Vanity Fair just came out, featuring Annie Liebovitz shots of “Hannah Montana” star Cyrus wrapped in a blanket and baring her naked back. What’s the big deal, you may be thinking, when we’ve all seen Britney Spears’ ladyparts more times than her husbands have? Unfortunately, Cyrus is only 15.

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The American right-wing media doesn’t tend to react very well to teenage sexuality.

There’s the Bush-enforced approach to sex education, for example, where only programs promoting abstinence get government funding (condoms are to be mentioned merely in terms of their high failure rate).

So the furore over the latest “sex” scandal involving a Disney star has provoked more media attention than Obama disowning Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Jamie-Lynn Spears’s underage pregnancy barely caused half the scandal (probably because everyone expects the Spears sisters to be trashy these days).

And R. Kelly’s upcoming trial for soliciting child pornography (filming himself urinating on a naked 14-year-old girl while another one watched) has hardly been mentioned at all. Instead, Fox News is up in arms about Cyrus’s naked back.

So who’s to blame? Vanity Fair maintains that the photos were taken while Cyrus’s parents were present (Billy-Ray Cyrus, the mullet-sporting country star of “Achy-Breaky Heart” is Cyrus’s pimp, sorry, father).

Annie Liebovitz says she thinks the picture is “very beautiful.” “I’m sorry that my portrait of Miley has been misinterpreted,” she said in a statement. “The photo is a simple, classic portrait.”

Alas, nothing is simple when the Disney Corporation is involved.

It seems like only yesterday that naked pictures of Disney star Vanessa Hudgens emerged on the Internet (it was late last year).

Britney herself was a former Mousketeer. Is there a curse condemning female Disney stars to lives of cracked-out whoredom? Or is this just what happens when you make kids famous and give them lots of money and slutty clothes?

Jamie Lee Curtis, herself famous from an early age, had this to say on the Huffington Post.

“Ms Cyrus is a young girl. She shouldn’t have to deal with any of this. It is called Show Business. Show-ABYSSness. I call it Show-off Business. You throw a child into the jaws of a business, and they will get eaten.”

Maybe Cyrus’s parents have a lot to answer for.

In the footage from the Vanity Fair shoot, there were some awfully creepy poses of Cyrus lying pouting in her father’s arms. Miley has given him a career-revival that washed-up country stars can only dream of, so presumably he’s torn between protecting his meal ticket and keeping her in the news.

And Cyrus herself? Officially, she’s “embarrassed.” Read: exploited.

“You can’t say no to Annie,” she said. “She gets this puppy-dog look, and you’re like, OK.”

If this is her attitude to female photographers, god help her with teenage boys.