That high-paid celebrities, many of them donors to the Democratic Party, were able to persuade the Republican Congress that they shouldn't have to reach into their Prada bags for saying naughty lines on-air is no small feat.
She generally had the honor of delivering the naughtiest line of the night.
The spot even borrows a page from the Super Bowl ad playbook of major marketers by ending with a mildly naughty punch line.
Perry started off as a gospel singer before giving up her wholesome values for winkingly naughty, assembly-line pop songs; she has always seemed like the kind of performer who is willing to do whatever it takes to look cool at a given moment, jumping on and off the cultural bandwagon as it shifts direction, but doing nothing to guide or control it.
The big obvious ones for me were Every Sperm Is Sacred [from The Meaning of Life], the Spanish Inquisition, and although it's not technically a sketch, "he's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy" [a line from Life of Brian], which obviously are all wonderful and huge and magical But I will eventually plump, very peculiarly, even for me, for something that is not a famous Python sketch.
This was echoed by Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times who said it was fun to hear Knowles mimicking "the pizzicato line" in "Naughty Girl", and that it was not much fun to hear her try to sing "like a naughty girl".
The first half of "Dangerously in Love" has some impressive moments -- Beyoncé arpeggiates her way up and down the scale whereas most of her contemporaries merely slide, and it's fun to hear her mimic the pizzicato line in "Naughty Girl".
Or perhaps, like Santa's naughty list, it is a way of keeping kids in line all year round.
The sleaze also rises in "The Look of Love," Michael Winterbottom's flat look at the British sex-entertainment mogul Paul Raymond Steve Coogann), whose twisted road from naughty to nasty was lined with coke and casualties.
British tourists, we gather, are a significant part of the audience: in the naughtiest number, the dancers line up as the Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace, complete with horsetails, in front and back, and bearskin hats, all of which they remove in silhouette.
