By Jerry Dowling

Well, there certainly has been a moral awakening in this country. Such an unfortunate time for the world of sports to behave poorly. The stories dominating last week's sports headlines included a program promo that worked like a charm and a terrible fight in Auburn Hills, Mich., which could be the setting for Desperate Housewives.

ABC evidently has found a way to re-create Sex and the City as Sex and the Suburbs. Next season, we'll get Sex and the Country. For now, the network is tirelessly promoting Desperate Housewives, going so far as to prop the mature blonde starlet, Nicolette Sheridan, naked in the arms of Philadelphia Eagles jackoff Terrell Owens on the intro to Monday Night Football.

The whole skit should have been worth no more than a chuckle when Sheridan closes the deal as Owens says, "I guess the team's going to have to win without me." Like TO would blow off a football game over tail he could get any time.

As the nation's high-profile political punditry has emphasized for the past couple of weeks, about half of this country flat out doesn't understand the other half. Under the circumstances, it's easy to be provocative. Just push a couple buttons and you'll kick up a firestorm from the most gullible and morally prosaic elements of the society, social conservatives who are afraid of people who aren't just like them.

Two weeks earlier, the majority of voters heard the call of their president, who said to them, "If you think it sucks to be sick and uninsured, swimming in debt and under-employed while your kids are far away, having their heads blown off to no good end, imagine what hell is like!" The voters heard him, and they agreed.

So ABC had to expect exactly what occurred, a barrage of moral outrage from football, media and government people. We already know people are scared to death. Now, we're giving them a mature white woman -- old enough to know better! -- seducing a big-eyed black football player right at kickoff? Surely, this is the work of The Devil.

Why do we make it harder than it has to be? Will the day ever arrive when we can just call publicity whores publicity whores, leave black, white and sex out of it and thereby foil the publicity whores?

No, we can't let this naked self-promotion stand for what it is. Not with all this deep social meaning to decode. Suddenly, we're reinforcing deflationary stereotypes about black athletes -- evidently, it's a vicious peculiarity of black athletes that they might be seduced by sexy white women.

As it turns out, women can forget about equal pay for equal work now that Sheridan dropped her towel and seduced a black man in a TV skit. The whole women's rights agenda has been rendered completely incredible due to this representation of a woman asserting herself to get what she wants. Is there a suggestion here that women must be irresponsible with freedom?

And can you imagine the terrible effect on kids, those little ones who talk about sex in the school yards? Normally, kids are exposed to so little sexual imagery, you know.

The fallout went on like this for nearly a week. ABC couldn't possibly pay a large enough fine to regret the episode after all this word of mouth. And the rest of us can feel gratified that our long, national discussion has clarified reality.

As we turn back the clock on civil liberties and equal rights, we'll know better than to put it on the courts or the legislative process. Turns out TO and Nicolette Sheridan set blacks and women back in one fell swoop.

And all this time, they just thought they were getting laid. Or is that forbidden, too?

Contrary to some Hollywood commentators, the skit was neither clever nor especially funny. Lightly entertaining, at best. At worst, it's an occasion for sound and fury, a moral molehill built into a mountain for the sake or reducing moral mountains into mole hills. Get used to it.

· · ·

There's no getting used to the events of Nov. 19, when a fight broke out between members of the Indiana Pacers and fans of the Detroit Pistons at The Palace in Auburn Hills. We know there's no getting used to it, because players and fans attack each other every couple months and it's always an outrage.

The most remarkable aspect of the fight was the comments from some NBA players in the aftermath. Even once NBA Commissioner David Stern suspended Indiana's Ron Artest for the remainder of the season and removed two other Pacers players for long stretches, one still heard NBA players saying they would defend their honor by attacking unruly fans.

Everybody's feeling too much sense of entitlement. The boorish fans who threw beer on Artest as he laid on a table must have been prosperous or well-connected members of society, as they threw their beer from very expensive seats. They must not be louts in their daily lives.

But at least the fans involved might plead they were drunk. That's easy enough to fix by controlling beer sales at sporting events. But how does the NBA handle fools like Artest, who initiated the melee with his cheap foul against Detroit's Ben Wallace in the closing moments when the Pistons had the game won, then showboated after Wallace retaliated with a good shove, then jumped into the stands after fans, not even really knowing who threw the beer.

The best news to come from the fight is that we won't have to hear much more about Artest's antics for the rest of the season. That isn't necessarily good news for the Pacers, who also have lost Stephen Jackson for 30 games and Jermaine O'Neal for 23. The Pacers will be lucky now if they make the playoffs.

Stern needed to come down hard on players who are responsible, and he further promised review of procedures involving fans. Should fans be denied entrance to NBA games if they've proven they can't behave themselves? Absolutely. They're worse than a nuisance.

But players need a sense of proportion, too. Without defending fans who make inappropriate comments, players need to be able to walk away in the interests of a league that pays them very well. In too many cases, though, the high road seems out of sight.

Stern's intuition seems to be that many players won't be able to figure this out on their own. He's banking on major suspensions to scare rogue players into restraint.

Maybe it will work. For the rest of this season, anyway.