Great pop music can bring a crowd together, but when the most
controversial tongue on YouTube applies its slobber to a
sledgehammer, a foam finger or a backup dancer's jouncing
posterior, we're a nation divided.  Squares clutch their pearls.
Germaphobes clutch their Purel. The rest of us wonder what the
big deal is.  The tongue, of course, belongs to 20-year-old
Miley Cyrus, whose new album proves she is much better at
licking stuff than at articulating the lyrics to a series of
bland pop songs.  Misleadingly titled "Bangerz," this warm pile
of pre-masticated bubblegum comes 44 days after Cyrus's
performance at MTV's Video Music Awards, where she famously
danced around an army of teddy bears, wearing a foam finger and
tiny outfit while singing poorly. (For the record, she only
pantomimed licking that dancer's butt.) The morning after,
America was summoned to the digital water cooler for a tsk-
tsking that felt every bit as tiresome as the girl-gone-wild
image Cyrus had just put forth.  Which brings us to "Bang