Want to know how little respect HR gets? So little that a Sunday New York Times story about job-title inflation takes a prominent and pointed shot at HR and its “chief people officers” the first chance it gets.

The premise of the story is that everyone these days gets some sort of overinflated title to call themselves, and here’s the first quote: “Now you find instead of the head of human resources, it’s chief people officer,” Steven E. Gross, the global rewards consulting leader at Mercer, told the newspaper. “The role hasn’t changed. There is this upward pressure for everybody to have bigger titles.”

And this is the funny thing: The New York Times story isn’t about HR, or chief people officers, at all. No, the business story is actually titled “Maybe everyone will be a CEO,” yet the first real example and the first quote in the Times story takes a prominent and dead-on shot at those who lead HR departments. And why is that?

Here’s a wild guess: Maybe it’s because the title chief people officer is not only incredibly pretentious but also vague and terribly overdone. Plus, it’s laugh-out-loud nutty—like something from the “Department of Silly Titles” in a Monty Python skit.

HR always seems to be a punching bag in the business world, and surveys and research done year after year always seem to highlight the shortcomings of the human resources profession. Frankly, I would be getting awfully tired of it if I were working in HR, and I would be really sick of it if I saw myself as a high-powered human resources executive who was deeply focused on business strategy and driving the organization’s bottom line.

This is where the Society for Human Resource Management should step in. Rather than wasting big chunks of money on vague image advertising (with no discernible ROI) during the presidential debates, SHRM should work on improving the image of HR professionals by focusing on their skills and expertise as strategic businesspeople. For example, maybe the “I Am SHRM” print ad campaign could be changed to something like “I Am a Strategic Business Partner.”

Yes, that may sound a little stupid, but certainly no more so than “chief people officer.” And if SHRM were to do it right and spend anywhere near the many millions that have been pumped into the SHRM ads broadcast during the debates, it might find that HR people get a little more respect. Plus, it may make newspapers like The New York Times think twice before taking gratuitous shots in print that do nothing more than make HR executives the bad example in yet another business story.

One more suggestion while I’m here giving advice: Get rid of “chief people officer” as a title. No one wants to be the punch line to a Monty Python sketch.