A syndicated column in Stars and Stripes contained this startling advice for a jealous wife: “Menage a trois. Everybody wins.” The column, July 28 , was Male Call, an often tongue-in-cheek offering from McClatchy Newspapers. Stripes periodically runs it on Page 2, which carries items for readers who might appreciate a break from the day’s serious happenings. Especially targeted are younger readers. More about them later.

The wife in question had written in complaining because she thought her husband was pining over a past affair with a younger woman who looked like the 23-year-old British actress Keira Knightley. The column quoted an unnamed e-mailer as saying that he’d be sad too if he had “access” to a younger lady who looked like Knightley “and my selfish wife refused to let me capitalize on such a rare opportunity.” Then came the suggestion embodied in the French phrase for “threesome.”

A letter writer, Connie Johnson Zottola of Landstuhl, Germany, found that “repulsive.” The advice was offensive, she wrote, noting that in the military adultery can be prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. “It is inappropriate for your newspaper to place this kind of advice with the majority of its readers being active-duty servicemembers,” the letter said.

Hold on, protested Stripes Executive Editor Robb Grindstaff. That wasn’t meant to be serious advice. It didn’t even come from the column’s author, he said, but from someone who wrote in to comment on an earlier column. It was “all done under the theme of ‘look what stupid advice our readers give,’” Grindstaff said.

Which explains the sarcastic postscript from the syndicate’s writer: “Good call; wish we had thought of that wise solution.” (Earlier in the column three e-mailers who with varying degrees of silliness had urged guys not to be “a wuss” were put down: “How many of you have a date for Saturday night?”)

Cloaked in irony or not, once-taboo topics and sayings have widely suffused the media over the past decade or so. Words once considered profanities, referring to body parts or bodily functions, are used freely in the press and on television. We won’t mention the Web. References to sex have taken the biggest leap. There was a time when even a humorous use of “menage a trois” would probably not be seen in a general-interest newspaper. Many readers don’t remember the days when on television and in the movies couples shown in bedrooms were always in twin beds.

Those readers would be the younger folks. To them, what the media are willing to do with previously taboo material won’t seem startling. In the jargon of the day, it will be seen as “edgy” or presented with “attitude.” I’ve noted in earlier columns how comic strips are evolving, becoming more concerned with political and social themes.

This is not to knock that trend. The media, including Stripes, have to keep their consumers’ interests and desires in mind. This newspaper carries a number of those comic strips, and columns like Male Call, which I imagine is just the ticket for younger single guys. Should anything go? Not by a long shot, but there’s a recognition among all in this business that the times they are a-changing.