Topless Miley Cyrus Picture in Vanity Fair Threatens Disney's Hannah Montana Empire?

We all thought that EVENTUALLY the career of Miley Cyrus (aka Disney's Hannah Montana) would crash and she'd end up posing topless for Playboy or Penthouse, but we thought she would at least wait until she was 18. Heck, Britney didn't even start flashing her privates around until she was over 21. For some reason, Cyrus must have thought that posing topless while grasping a sheet to cover her chest would be "artsy" and maybe help her reach a broader audience. Then again, maybe parents of impressionable tweens will just turn her show off and burn all of the merchandise with her name on it. At right is the cover of Vanity Fair along with the controversial photo of Miley Cyrus topless.
Here's more on the story from the New York Times:

Fifteen years old, topless and wrapped in what appears to be a satin bedsheet in the June issue of Vanity Fair. Did Miley Cyrus, with the help of a controversy-courting magazine, just deliver a blow to the Walt Disney Company’s billion-dollar “Hannah Montana” franchise?
Some parents reacted with outrage over the weekend when the television program “Entertainment Tonight” began showing commercials promoting a scoop: Ms. Cyrus, the star of the wholesome Disney Channel blockbuster “Hannah Montana,” had posed topless, albeit with her chest covered, for the Vanity Fair photographer, Annie Leibovitz.
Screen grabs of the photo quickly popped up online, sparking a blogosphere debate. “Bonfire anyone?” wrote Lin Burress on her marriage and parenting blog, Telling It Like It Is, referring to the mountain of Hannah Montana retail items — makeup, shoes, clothes — in the marketplace. “Parents should be extremely concerned,” Ms. Burress said in an interview. “Very young girls look up to Miley Cyrus as a role model.”
It is doubtful that one photograph — especially one that is tame in the context of an Internet awash in nude photographs of other starlets — could dent the Hannah Montana machine, said several Wall Street analysts. Retail sales for the franchise are expected to total about $1 billion in 2008. A motion picture is in the works for 2009 and Ms. Cyrus signed a seven-figure book deal with the Disney Book Group last week.