Hi… nice to meet you. Can I call you “Bill”? Oh… Billy Ray it is, then. No, no… it’s fine. It’s just that I feel like I should be talking to the buck-toothed, trailer-dwelling, plumber-cracked spawn of some backwoods eugenics program when I address someone as “Billy Ray”. No offense.

Anyhoo… I think we all know why we’re here. This is going to be an awkward situation no matter what we do, so in my experience, the best approach is to just jump right in. I’ll start.

Billy Ray, you know the rules. You know that –as the father of an attractive teen girl– you have a single responsibility in her life. Just as a refresher, allow me to briefly turn this process over to Mr. Rock, who I believe sums matters up perfectly in a mere 22 seconds:

“Keep my baby off the pole,” indeed. That’s what it’s about, sir. The rest of the males in our society are working hard to get her on the pole, and you are the balancing influence that says, “Hey, maybe there are better ways to get attention.” You are the key to your daughter developing the tools she needs to make an informed decision between becoming a vice-president of marketing studies at General Electric and wiping a mix of jizz and Pabst off her ass in a champagne room at 2am.

(Allow me to hasten to mention that the latter scenario is not inherently inferior… this is about preserving options, not making moral judgements. Except with regard to you, Billy Ray. We’re definitely gonna judge you.)

So imagine everyone’s surprise when we spotted your little lady initially showing up like this at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards:

…and immediately following that up with a performance that looked like this:

See? Ice cream! That's innocent, right? Nothing more Disney than ice cream! And booty shorts. That's just good marketing, right there.

"Now I'd just like to take a moment to say 'fuck you, Nick Jonas,' you pencil dick. This pole has already given me more pleasure than you ever could."

Now, don’t get us wrong. To a large extent, you’re doing the world a favor here. If we track the Britney Spears Awesome-Jailbait-to-Insane-Nightmare Arc and match it up to sweet Miley, it rapidly becomes clear that we’re in for at least five years of increasingly exciting, erratic entertainment. (Did I say “erratic”? Sorry… “erotic”.) In fact, she may even be ahead of schedule; she could be dancing in a harem outfit with a snake next summer at this rate.

Artist's rendering, obviously. I mean, Miley's boobs will never be that big.

Let that image burn into your retinas for a moment, and then consider what little Smiley has been posting on the interwebz:

For all the people calling me the “next Britney” THANK U. I couldn’t ask for a better compliment

@mileycyrus on Twitter

Says it all, does it not? Miley doesn’t even have the sense to spot a cautionary tale when it’s hitting her in the face like a crazy bald bitch with an umbrella. Do you really want a soul-patched jizz-tube draping himself all over your baby?

Take steps now, Mr. Cyrus, before your family’s gene pool is polluted by Federline 2.0 while you’re installing underwear verification monitors and spending your evenings wiping Cheetos dust off your girl’s chin.