My own love affair began, as these things often do, one Friday evening last summer. It was too late in the day for another Snapple, too early to start cracking open the beer. I turned the radio on to the golden oldies station, in the hope of catching an up-tempo classic to help me regain the will to live. Flicking on the dial, I didn’t hear the usual “Help Me Rhonda” or “My Girl” - but I did find Elvis. As “Radio, Radio” blared, I pogoed around the living room in amazement like some idiot in a John Hughes movie. It was instant, breathless infatuation. A bland voice deadpanned, “We’re Jack.” Well, helllllo, mister.

By the next day, the news was out. The station’s owner, Infinity, had sprung the surprise format change just minutes before I’d happened to tune in. The oldies and the stable of the city’s most venerable DJs were out. The new image would be modeled more on the iPod’s shuffle, with an automated playlist of thousands of songs from the last few decades, and no disc jockeys. With little bits of patter between songs now delivered in a prerecorded, just-not-that-into-you drone, Jack was about as genuine as a 2 a.m. pickup line. And for me, just as promising.

Like Rush, Men Without Hats, and Dudley Do-Right, Jack originally hails from Canada. His “variety hits” format took its name from a Vancouver DJ’s on-air persona and migrated to the States in 2004. Why give a radio station a guy’s name? Because you can’t get the hots for something called Smooooth or Lite. But Jack? That’s someone you banged, or wish you had.

In the ensuing weeks, Jack has become my new constant companion. He’s like the investment banker I used to date. The guy had a ponytail. He was a soulless yuppie douche bag. But he radiated horniness, and there are times in a woman’s life when that’s just her type.

While the deluge of business-related articles written about Jack lately have focused on his ADD-level playlist and efficient elimination of costly on-air personalities, the real secret to Jack’s allure is his blatant 24-7 fixation on sex. Sure, hooking up is an inevitable motif in any pop-based playlist. But Jack is never more than one song away from another ode to shagging. “Justify My Love” follows “Let’s Get It On” follows “Give It to Me, Baby.” Which is followed by an ad for car insurance, just to mess with my head.

It’s been so long since I turned on the radio and felt any element of surprise; I don’t even mind that as often as not, the surprise isn’t a good one. One moment I’m putty, wailing along with Patti Smith or Led Zep, the next I’m spanked back with a dose of Huey Lewis. But when I tune in and he offers the playfully erotic call-and-response teaming of “Brick House” and “I Want Candy,” I think, I don’t care if it’s just a random, computer-generated thing. Jack, you get me.

As a woman in the death throes of her 30s, I know I’m an easy mark for an operator like Jack. I don’t know what he looks like, but Jack smells like Obsession. More than half of his playlist is composed of top-40 hits from the ’80s. It’s the music you remember hearing on an overheated night in a parked car, right down to the awesome song followed by a sucky one. It’s a lyrical reminder of that time in life when going all the way still meant something, and “I Was Made for Loving You” wasn’t a piece of ripe musical cheese but a full-blown state of mind. Listening to Jack feels like being buzzed on wine coolers, making out to the Cure with a stranger at a party - a little nauseating, but fun as hell.

There are Jacks now all over the country, in dozens of cities from Las Vegas to Buffalo. Every market he penetrates with a cocky swagger. He slightly adjusts his personality to blend with local tastes, yet he remains essentially the same guy wherever he goes. In Philadelphia, he’s Ben. In the South, he’s Hank. Last month, I drove around New England, and at a certain point on the road Jack went away and Mike took over. Mike’s not my Mr. Right either, but for a few days, he was Mr. Right Now.

I keep telling myself this thing with Jack is a fling, a little “Hot in the City” to get through the long, cold winter nights. We’ll never make it stick, what with his repetitive, canned small talk and penchant for 38 Special. And it’s killing my self-esteem when I realize he’s got me singing along to Stevie Nicks and feeling like a creature of dubious, potentially deviant appetites.

But my preferred pleasures have always been the guilty kind. Even if I finally pony up and make the commitment to get an iPod of my own, and even if I fill it up with obscure B-sides and alternate tracks, I know I’ll keep Jack on the side. Because tonight he might just play “Shame.” And I’ll know he’s playing it just for me.

The print campaign, launched last fall, included a plea to purchase the calendar. But the bolder message, using pretty girls tugging on their panties as a means of persuading customers to nip off to Düsseldorf, was instantly contentious, prompting complaints to the ASA and a petition campaign. Of course, beautiful girls in very little clothing are used all the time to peddle everything from beer to car to sandwiches to domain-name businesses. That’s the nature of advertising.

Why did this campaign attract protest? Because there’s a huge difference between selling a product and selling a service. When you see an ad for diet soda, you understand that Sofia Vergara is not included. An ad that boasts of an airline’s “hot crew” and presents its staff in its underwear says something else. It takes something that was perhaps considered sexy and fun in one context – a calendar – and exploits it, making that allure seem part of the staff’s job duties. Or to put it another way, firefighters have a calendar too, but that’s not really their biggest selling point when they’re extinguishing the raging inferno that used to be your house.

This isn’t Ryanair’s first time in the advertising standards doghouse. In 2010, the airline had to pay damages and publicly apologize for depicting the founder of a competing airline as Pinocchio. And in 2008, the company caught flak from the ASA for promising its “hottest back to school fares” with the image of a naughty, miniskirted schoolgirl. Ryanair, the official airline of Neanderthals, shot back by calling the ASA a “bunch of unelected self-appointed dimwits.”

In a change.org petition by “Cabin crew against sexism” that garnered over 11,000 supporters, a flight attendant named Ghada explained, “I’m a member of an airline Cabin Crew and what’s more I love my job. My work colleagues, many of whom are male, work hard with me to ensure the safety of our passengers. Safety is our No. 1 priority, not the brand of our underwear. Ryanair needs to have these types of adverts banned. We have come a long way from seeing women purely in a sexual way as opposed to a professional way.”

We have, indeed, come a long way from an era when a woman was considered something to be boarded and flown. But the fantasy of hot babes there to dispense tiny bottles of alcohol and provide eye candy all the way to Barcelona is a persistent one. It’s also pretty comical, as anyone who’s ever flown knows. Modern air travel isn’t sexy. Just getting to your destination without delay or a cavity search is an achievement. Forget the “hot crew”; most airlines won’t even give you a bag of pretzels anymore. And when it comes to taking flight attendants and their jobs seriously, why use an airline that’s clearly got miles and miles to go?

Grace, the woman who has made an entire cottage industry out of her indignation over Casey Anthony, who paints herself nightly as the avenging angel of poor dead Caylee, has never been one to trade in subtlety — or, for that matter, facts. CNN had to settle a wrongful death suit after the mother of a missing child killed herself after being browbeaten on her show. (The parties agreed that Grace “engaged in no intentional wrongdoing.”) She fearlessly championed the prosecution’s side in the Duke lacrosse team rape case, blithely referring to “the victim,” and went ballistic over the very notion that the accused might be innocent. (She then conveniently remained quiet on the subject after the case was dismissed.) This, folks, is a woman who has guilt-tripped abduction victim Elizabeth Smart for not playing along with her interview tactics. And even after a jury found Casey Anthony not guilty last summer, she has held on to the story like a dog with a bone, insisting that “I told the truth,” luxuriating in descriptions of “the backdrop of 2-year-old Caylee’s decomposing body just a few houses down from where Tot Mom put her pillow every night,” and excoriating Anthony for – rich irony alert –“generating interest in herself.”

Yet apparently there just aren’t enough kidnapped babies and alleged gang rapes out there to keep Grace satisfied. She’s turning her attention now instead to the mysterious death of a diva. Grace, who famously said last summer that she knew more than the “kooky jury” on the Anthony case, now seems to know more than the L.A. coroner’s office. Despite word that foul play is “not suspected at this time” in Saturday’s death of Whitney Houston, Grace isn’t so sure. On Monday she appeared on CNN to ponder, “Who, if anyone, gave [Houston] drugs following alcohol and drugs.” That itself isn’t a crazy question, though it is a bit of a reach – a suggestion that the story of a superstar dying alone and surrounded by prescription bottles just isn’t sexy enough. Not when surely there’s a villain on the loose for Nancy Grace to bring to justice. Cue dramatic theme music!

Medical accountability is to be considered whenever someone dies who may have had drugs administered to him or her. Just ask physician Conrad Murray, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson. But where Grace, in her totally Nancy Grace-like way, went totally bananas was when she asked, “Who let her slip or pushed her underneath that water? … Who let Whitney Houston go under that water?” Uhhhhhmm… Whitney Houston?

The sad desperation of news networks, and their flailing competitiveness in a glut of information overload, is rarely pretty to watch. But Grace isn’t just some blowhard, saying provocative things to get a rise out of the viewership. She’s a full-on loose cannon, a disseminator of disinformation and an ego gone rogue. That CNN and its sister network HLN continue to permit her to spew her wild speculations, to proudly flaunt her flat-out contempt for the facts as they are known, and to engage in character assassination long after a not guilty verdict has been rendered in a court of law, is blatant and arrogant recklessness. Unchecked, how long before Grace decides she knows who “pushed” Houston under the water? How long before she’s on another crusade, deciding who is a victim and who is a perpetrator? How long before a real criminal investigation or trial is tainted because of her nightly yammering?

After her jaw-dropping segment Monday, CNN anchor Don Lemon had to leap into fire-dousing mode, issuing a hasty reminder that “This is not CNN’s reporting. We don’t know that to be true.” Here’s a crazy idea – you shouldn’t be talking about things you don’t know to be true on a network with the word “news” right there in the middle of it. And CNN shouldn’t continue to provide a platform to a woman whose self-interest makes a mockery of journalistic credibility.

We’ve also seen the surprisingly low-key response to the arrest Sunday of Hugh Hefner’s son Marston on a domestic abuse charge. The younger Hefner is accused of assaulting his girlfriend Claire Sinclair, the 2011 Playmate of the Year. The Los Angeles Times reports that police, responding to a domestic assault call, “determined Sinclair had suffered minor injuries consistent with an assault,” and a photo of a bruised Sinclair on TMZ seems to corroborate.

Sinclair says she doesn’t want to press charges “if [Hefner] keeps his word to give a public apology for physically abusing me on several occasions, and seeks psychiatric help for his anger issues.” (She has, however, sought a temporary restraining order.) And ever since the news broke, the always-classy TMZ commenters have been busy calling Sinclair “a whore [who] deserves everything she got,” “gold-digging trash,” and “a ho ass liar.” Because girls who pose naked in magazines and date the boss’ son shouldn’t be surprised when they wind up bruised, right?

Hef himself, meanwhile, has been expectedly tight-lipped about the altercation. He did tell People this week that “If they care about each other, they’ll patch it up.” Sure, sometimes couples get in fights and they turn physical on both sides. But that’s a hell of a hopeful response to having your son accused of beating his girlfriend – a woman you know and work with, by the way. A word or two about how it’s not OK to hit the ladies, that the Playboy empire does not condone violence, might have been nice to add, as well.

But the biggest winner this Abuse-uary has been Chris Brown. Brown, who pleaded guilty to felony assault in 2009 for the beating of his then-girlfriend Rihanna — and has been known to go berserkers after TV appearances and fire off a homophobic tweet or two for good measure — was off to a rocky start Thursday when a Los Angeles judge denied his request to end his supervised probation early for good behavior. But by Sunday, he was all over the Grammys – performing in not one but two frantic numbers and snagging the prize for best R&B album.

The most demoralizing thing about Brown’s triumph – sadder, even, than his bat-winged backup dancers — was the way in which it set off a grotesque array of supportive, “go ahead and hit me” responses on the Internet. Perhaps inspired by Brown’s track record, Buzzfeed quickly slapped something up: a collection of tweets and Facebook updates from viewers who declared they’d be happy to let Chris Brown beat them to a pulp. A banner night for Brown – a Grammy and a deluge of offers to “punch me in the face.”

You can’t judge a civilization on the dumb comments people leave on Twitter and TMZ. But you can wonder what would happen if we valued each other enough to start from a place where no one “deserves” or invites abuse. As Roxane Gay eloquently explained in the Rumpus, “We fail you every single time a (famous) man treats a woman badly, without legal, professional or personal consequence.” And the failure isn’t just in the relative ease with which the Violence Against Women Act can be brushed aside or a girlfriend beater can win music’s highest honors. The failure is renewed every time we shame and blame women based on how they dress or what they do for a living, or romanticize assault as something to be patched up or playfully pleaded for. The failure is whenever we decide that violence is a legislative inconvenience or a joke. The failure isn’t just at the end of a man’s fist. It’s in the culture that condones him.

Bennett knows plenty about drugs — and the ravages of addiction. He’s been upfront in the past about his own experience with drug abuse and his near fatal 1979 overdose on cocaine. In his 1998 memoir, “The Good Life,” he wrote of passing out in a bathtub, an eerie foreshadowing of the discovery of Houston’s body in her hotel tub. And on Sunday, he shared a Grammy win with the late Amy Winehouse for a duet on “Body and Soul.”

Back in September, Bennett said that Winehouse “knew that she was in a lot of trouble” and “that she wasn’t going to live.” After taking the stage with Winehouse’s parents Sunday night, the 85-year-old Bennett told Rolling Stone that drug legalization would “get rid of all the gangsters that make people hide. One thing I’ve learned about young people, when you say ‘Don’t do this,’ that’s the one thing they’re going to try and do. Once it’s legal and everybody can do it, there is no longer the desire to do something that nobody else can do … I witnessed that in Amsterdam. It’s legal, and as a result there’s no panic in the streets. There’s no deals, there’s no ‘Meet me at the corner and I’ll give you something.’ You’re always afraid you’re going to get arrested. You have to hide. Why do that?”

You don’t have to be Zach Galifianakis to know that America’s 40-year war on drugs is a joke. Or as the Global Commission on Drug Policy called it last year, a flat-out failure, one with “devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.” Arrests for nonviolent possession offenses continue to rise, disproportionately targeting minorities and creating a booming prison population. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Between 2000 and 2007, drug offenders represented 45 percent of the growth in the federal prison population.” Meanwhile, even the president of the United States can acknowledge, “I inhaled frequently. That was the point.”

But talking about drugs – and how we as individuals and a society handle them – can’t be managed with a simple “It’s all good.” To do so ignores not only the enormity and unmanageability of the international trade but the complexities of consumption. Smoking weed and running a meth lab out of your basement aren’t exactly the same things. We can’t just make blanket statements about “drugs” as if they’re all the same, not in a culture where we still expect limits on environmental toxins. And if you’ve ever wandered into a circle of thuggish, hooker-seeking British tourists in Amsterdam on a summer weekend, it’s worth asking – Hey, Tony Bennett, is this really the greatest argument we’ve got for how great legalization is?

Yet what really muddles the waters is the examples Bennett used, of Michael Jackson and his friend Amy Winehouse. The claim that “Once it’s legal and everybody can do it” problems go away is sadly untrue. Michael Jackson didn’t meet his maker shooting heroin into his veins; he died of “Acute Propofol Intoxication” — and his doctor, Conrad Murray, was subsequently convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Other drugs found in Jackson’s system at the time of his death were the FDA-approved Lorazepam, Lidocaine, Diazepam and Midazolam. Winehouse, meanwhile, died of alcohol poisoning.

Houston was no stranger to the illicit. In 2009, she admitted doing “heavy drugs, every day,” including cocaine, to Oprah Winfrey. But the investigation into her death so far has focused on prescription medications. A plea for a saner approach to our misguided, punitive drug war is a valid one to make. But accessibility doesn’t cure the problem of abuse. And as Dylan Thomas, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Jackson, Winehouse — and quite possibly Whitney Houston — discovered, you can die just fine without breaking any drug laws.

Bruce Springsteen

With all his trademark energy intact and backed with a massive string section, the Boss — who lost his longtime collaborator Clarence Clemons last year – kicked off the evening with a rousing version of “We Take Care of Our Own.” It was soulful, spirited and just the right touch of mournful.

LL Cool J

Admitting that “There is no way around this — we had a death in our family,” the night’s host then announced “the only thing right is to begin with a prayer … for our fallen sister.” Depending on your philosophic perspective, watching the audience solemnly bow its collective head while Cool James invoked our “heavenly father” was either a moving tribute or a sudden reminder of why having an atheist like Ricky Gervais host awards shows is a cool idea. But when he cut to clip of Whitney blowing the roof off with a live performance of “I Will Always Love You” at the Grammys a generation ago, it set a bar for vocal performance that would be damn near impossible to match for the rest of the night.

Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt

Honoring the late, great Etta James, two knockout performers of different eras and genres gave a stripped-down version of “Sunday Kind of Love.” It was one of the few pairings of the night that worked, a stunning moment of sincerity and finesse in an evening that often veered heavily to schmaltz.

Chris Brown

It’s not that we can expect the music industry to ignore chart-topping, domestic-abusing, frequently terrible Chris Brown. He’s had a huge year, and on Sunday’s broadcast, he even managed to pick up a Grammy. But aside from his historic awfulness, there’s another reason to ponder whether it was really necessary to subject America to two separate performances. Decked out in his preppy “I’m not dangerous, ladies!” varsity jacket, he jumped around lip-syncing “Turn Up the Music” and “Beautiful People” with a posse of bat-winged, masked performers in a performance apparently inspired by the old video game Q*Bert early in the night, then came back near the end for a dead-behind-the-eyes “tribute to dance.” At least he managed to prove that he doesn’t need his abusive record to be reviled; feel free to shun him just because he sucks.

Jennifer Hudson

It took the powerhouse Jennifer Hudson — who two years ago performed Houston’s most successful smash for the woman herself at the BET Awards — to take “I Will Always Love You” back from the place of power ballad clichés where it’s lived the last two decades and make it ache like new. No big crescendo, no sappy orchestration, just a clearly emotional Hudson belting her heart out. Beautiful.

Foo Fighters

In an intense performance outside the Staples Center for the regular folk, Dave Grohl and company – a gang whose own experience of tragedy was brought home by that audience member thrashing around in a Nirvana shirt — howled through a fiery rendition of their “never wanna die” anthem “Walk.” Later, picking up the Grammy for best rock performance, Grohl admitted, “We made this one in my garage with some microphones and a tape machine,” eloquently pleaded for “the human element of music” and promised, “It’s not about being perfect.” It was a shining example of old-school authenticity, only slightly undercut by the appearance, immediately after, of Ryan Seacrest.

Glen Campbell

Lifetime-achievement award winner Campbell, who last year announced he was facing Alzheimer’s and would release a final album and do one last tour, is not going gently into his disease. After the Band Perry shouted uncomprehendingly through “Gentle On My Mind” and Blake Shelton did a serviceable “Southern Nights,” it was Campbell himself who rocked the house. Looking undeniably unwell but in remarkably stronger voice than the likes of fellow Grammy performers Carrie Underwood or Paul McCartney, he staunchly belted out “Rhinestone Cowboy,” enthusiastically coaxing the entire audience to sing along. It was by the far the greatest exhibition of bad-ass, rock ‘n’ roll indominability of the night.

Katy Perry

Aw, remember when Katy Perry did the Grammys gently swaying in a trapeze swing, showing off home movies from her wedding? Sure you do; it was last year. Post-Russell Brand divorce Katy seems to have decided to go for a different vibe. Performing her new song “Part of Me,” she was all about shattering glass, engulfing ice effigies of men in flames, and declaring, “You can keep the diamond ring, in fact, you can keep everything.” Katy, you blue-haired, pissed-off little minx, you know what? I believe you.

Nicki Minaj

The Catholic Church hasn’t taken this much of a beating since Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” era. In a performance of “Roman Holiday” that topped even Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro,” Minaj went through a confession gone wrong, an exorcism, and wound up surrounded by dancing monks getting groped by hot leather babes – all while “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” took on a whole new meaning. Did we mention she levitated? It was the closest the Grammys has ever come to turning into a Ken Russell movie.

Adele

Taking the stage after vocal surgery in November, the night’s biggest winner was clearly not in as forceful voice as in her Royal Albert Hall performance of last year. But she was so clearly enjoying her triumphant night of multiple wins, pointing at herself while snarling, “You could have had this all,” she personified bittersweet awesomeness. When the audience thundered to its feet, Adele’s mastery of simultaneous heartbreak and victory was not just in powerful evidence, it was conspicuously infectious. And when, later, she tearfully picked up the final award of the night for album of the year, she copped both to an inspiring “rubbish relationship” and to fending off “oh my God, snot.” And that is whyyyyyyyy we will always love youuuuuuu, Adele.