Along with Comcast, JetBlue, Marriott, Southwest Airlines and PR Newswire, I have always viewed Zappos as a Twitter poster child. The shoe retailer has been praised by many for taking part in the online conversation, rather than simply pitching corporately approved drivel in the direction of consumers.

That’s why I was taken aback yesterday when Zappos tried to generate headlines by insulting the independence – both financially and intellectually – of women.

In a press release and via its web site, Zappos claimed it received complaints from spouses that some shoe buyers had significantly overspent their families’ budgets on footwear. The company’s publicity stunt included the ability for angry husbands to pay $50,000 for an intervention that blocked the ability for the little misses to spend the family fortune on shoes.

About three hours after I tweeted that the campaign was sexist, @Zappos_Service responded: “The shirts are actually for boyfriend, husband, girlfriend and wife.. the shirt’s message changes for the different colors. “

The default photo that pops up on the ZapposGear page promoting the intervention is a black men’s tee shirt emblazoned with “It only cost me $50,000 to stop my wife from shopping at Zappos.com!”

I have no vested interest in this issue, having never worked with Zappos or its competitors. Nor have I shopped with Zappos. I have followed the company’s social media exploits and admired the clever sponsorship of shoe bins at airport TSA security checkpoints.

I also empathize that Zappos did not escape unscathed from the brutal spending slowdown that has impacted virtually every retailer – online and offline – and that prompted CEO Tony Hsieh to slash staffing by 8% in November.

For a company that basked in the glow of corporate social responsibility, particularly around the issue of transparency, it must have been very tempting to quickly return to “business as usual” in a playful way after suffering such a jolting setback.

In choosing such a cheesy way to generate buzz, it is possible that Zappos considered the risk and genuinely knows its customers so well that it can safely say they will not be offended by being caricatured as shopping-frenzied, financially irresponsible women whose husbands hold the purse strings. Misogynistic remarks by Hseih have been part of his spiel before, such as at the June Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, sponsored by O’Reilly Media and TechWeb. (Watch video) The joke fell flat there, but Hseih didn’t get the hint.

Perhaps the fact that I grew up as the only boy in a household of four sisters in the feminism-crazed 1960s and ‘70s is tainting my view of the world. (My immediate family now is women, too – my wife and two daughters.) But I have worked closely with enough talented and professional women colleagues and clients to know that perpetuating the dated stereotypes of television sitcoms is unnecessarily hurtful.

Unless, of course, Zappos is planning a re-imaging campaign along the lines of TV shoe salesman Al Bundy. In that case, the Cease and Desist tee shirts illustrate the company’s values perfectly.