The hysteria on the World Wide Interweb is starting to die down, but the consensus remains the same: Avril Lavigne has committed one of the greatest offences of our time. And it wasn’t taking Chad Kroeger and his fabled pants python off the Lavalife market.

In the unlikely event that you missed it, Napanee’s favourite Home Hardware shopper has been pilloried for shooting a video for her new single “Hello Kitty” in Tokyo. Based on the resulting uproar, the clip did more to harm relations between North America and Japan than Pearl Harbor, Godzilla, and that movie where the dolphins go straight from the cove to the hibachi.

Lavigne’s great crime? That would be rounding up every also-ran from Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Girls audition, and then using them as a backdrop for a dance-pop song ostensibly inspired by some fine Japanese pussy. (Get your mind out of the gutter—as every kawaii-culture disciple knows, we’re talking about a white Japanese bobtail cat with a red bow, not the stars of the Tokyo blue-movie extravaganza Would You Enter Men’s Public Bath With Only One Towel.)

In the time it takes a sumo wrestler to tackle a Pocky packet, Lavigne was condemned as the worst racist this side of Paula Deen. It didn’t help her cause that her Japanese backup dancers looked like they’d lost all will to live.

What was most shocking about the “Hello Kitty” clip was that anyone was shocked. If Lavigne is guilty of anything, it’s jacking Stefani’s solo-career shtick circa Love. Angel. Music. Baby. You might recall the moonlighting No Doubt singer refusing to hit the red carpet unless she was accompanied by her four seemingly mute “imaginary friends”: Maya Chino (“Love”), Jennifer Kita (“Angel”), Rino Nakasone Razalan (“Music”), and Mayuko Kitayama (“Baby”). In real life, Stefani’s Harajuku Girls were about as Japanese as Sapporo beer that’s brewed in Guelph, Ontario, but it was the thought that counted.

Lavigne should be applauded for hiring the real deals, not a bunch of dancers from New York and Los Angeles. As she posted on her Twitter account: “RACIST??? LOLOLOL!!! I love Japanese culture and I spend half of my time in Japan. I flew to Tokyo to shoot this video.…specifically for my Japanese fans, WITH my Japanese label, Japanese choreographers AND a Japanese director IN Japan.”

As for charges that “Hello Kitty” was offensive, everyone needs to take two steps back and breathe. Here are some things that really are offensive—heinously so—in the world of modern pop music:

• Michael Jackson returning to action with Xscape. In the spirit of Tupac, pop’s favourite diddler isn’t about to let the fact he’s dead slow down his recorded output. The world’s most famous plastic-surgery disaster moonwalks out of the grave with a cobbled-together collection of early demos and late-period throwaways, which, given his famous meticulousness, is every bit as wrong as that time he secretly replaced Bubbles with the impostor chimp known as Action Jackson.

• Steven Tyler’s hair. Seriously, dude, when it already looks like you’ve got a shrunken head, the last thing you want to do is pin Elvira’s fucking wig to your skull.

• The uncoupling of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin. If two crazy kids who have it all—namely, more money than the GDP of Zimbabwe—can’t make it work, what the hell chance do the financially maxed-out rest of us have? The next thing you know, Madonna will be breaking up with Guy Ritchie.

• Ted Nugent, who makes an even better case than all of Nashville for the mandatory sterilization of anyone who wears a cowboy hat.

And if all that’s not enough to convince you that there are better things to commit seppuku over than a western pop star having a little fun in Tokyo, here’s a suggestion: Google “Avril Lavigne + Brazil + no touching”. That will lead you to something really and truly offensive.