Sharp Turn for Miley Cyrus

When Miley Cyrus, 17, released her new music video last week, chatter about her attire (fetish gear), suggestive dance moves (writhing on her back) and setting (inside a black bird cage) spread like wildfire.

Some fans were you-go-girl positive. But the majority of people seemed shocked to see Ms. Cyrus — who will appear as the wholesome title character in “Hannah Montana” on the Disney Channel for another year — taking a naughty page from Lady Gaga. “I don’t want to explain to my kids why Hannah Montana has no pants on in her latest video,” said a post on the blog MomLogic.com
Whether a 17-year-old should be using sex to sell CDs can be debated, and it is too early to tell whether the brand has sustained any lasting damage. (Previous scandals involving Ms. Cyrus have not dented ratings.) The real surprise might be that the Walt Disney Company helped it happen.

Hollywood Records, Ms. Cyrus’s label, is owned by Disney. Although she personally paid most of the video’s cost, the label at the least oversaw its creation and distributed it.

It’s not uncommon for divisions of media conglomerates to work against one another — except at Disney, which aggressively extols its companywide synergy to investors.