Thursday, November 05, 2009 - Posts
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Like Lauren, I enjoyed Jim Windolf's insightful attack on cute culture, but I find the otters-holding-hands/Iraq War connection to be a bit of a stretch. Windolf suggests that we're asking for forgiveness through penitential offerings of cuteness, but it's not my impression that most Americans think we need to be forgiven. Maybe popular cuteness is intended "as some sort of correction" to our new status as invaders, but that presupposes a level of remorse I don't really see. Which is not to say cuteness and politics never meet; they certainly do in Japan. Here's Prince Pickles, the rosy-cheeked mascot of Japan's Defense Forces ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)
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A post from DoubleX writer Lauren Bans:
Several times a week I walk by the marketing section of my office and see a group of grown men and women in their business-casual attire standing over someone’s computer screen giggling and cooing. Almost daily, I get an e-mail entitled, “SO CUTE I WANTZ TO DIE” or “AHHHHHHZZ! CUTEGASM!” along with a link for, say, a YouTube video of a sweet-faced pug so fat it can’t roll over, or a 4-year-old performing the Single Ladies dance. Most of these videos live up to the adorability claims of their “z”-infested titles. (Apparently bad grammar signifies something is SO cute it’s made one functionally retarded.) Though, admittedly, in order to enjoy the slew of children-dancing-to-Beyonce-videos I’ve been sent, I have to actively forget the gross reality that there are parents behind the camera who have trained their kids to be delightfully adorable circus monkeys for the Internet masses ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)
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A post from DoubleX writer Sonia Smith:
What have I learned over the past week watching polygamist Raymond Merril Jessop’s trial in the sleepy west Texas ranching town of Eldorado? Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints save everything. And now, with the first criminal prosecution of an FLDS leader in Texas, this tendency to hoard every little scrap has come back to bite them. In trying to prove Jessop impregnated his 16-year-old “spiritual” wife in November 2004 at the sect’s Yearning for Zion Ranch, the prosecution is relying heavily on documents seized during last year’s raid. And there are a lot of them ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)
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