Volume 20, Number 50
Greetings, and thanks for joining me for another week. Starting us off are a few news stories you may have missed. First, Art Basel, the annual weeklong festival for “One-Percenters” in Miami Beach, happened last week (I wasn’t invited), and among the many excesses is the sale of on-demand caviar, available by text message, to be delivered in person within the hour, at $275 for a 125-gram tin. Miami New Times calls Art Basel “ComicCon for the world’s moneyed elite.” Among the extravaganzas is an “exotic dance club sheltered inside a greenhouse.” Four thousand artists, from 32 countries, participated.
Next, we all like to shelter of kids (well, most of us), but when did this happen? Four Columbia University students complained earlier this year that courses in Greek mythology and Roman poetry need “trigger” warnings — advance notice to super-sensitive students that history may include narratives of “disturbing” events (that have somehow been studied without such warnings for centuries). [Washington Post] Maybe college courses need a rating system as movies have.
Finally, the reports of his death are greatly exaggerated. A newspaper in Norway is sure to be on this year’s naughty list after it accidentally published a fake obituary for Father Christmas. The hoax announcement in Aftenposten claimed Saint Nick died at the age of 226 in the country’s most northern point of Nordkapp on Dec. 3, the BBC reported. It also revealed his funeral would be held at the North Pole Chapel on Dec. 28, according to the Evening Standard. His birth date was given as Dec. 12, 1788 — but no cause of death was stated. It’s unclear who created the pretend death notice, or how it ended up in the publication’s obituary page. It was later removed from the newspaper’s website. Norway’s second-largest newspaper later released a statement to apologize for the incident and said it was reviewing its internal procedures. “Aftenposten has strict guidelines for both the content and use of symbols in our obituaries,” a spokesman said. “This ad is a violation of these and should never have been published. We will find out what has happened,” he added. (Yes, Virginia, there was a Santa Claus.)
What are you doing this New Year’s Eve? How about crying and eating bread by yourself on the floor? That’s what about 72,000 people are planning to do on Dec. 31, according to the public Facebook event Crying and Eating Bread by Yourself on the Floor — one of the hundreds of random hilarious (their opinion; not mine) fake events that are taking over Facebook. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Don’t worry, it’s only a matter of time until you get invited to, or notice a friend is “attending” eat flamin hot cheetos till you see god, PET EVERY SINGLE DOG or even get beat up by ur friends for attending fake fb events. While the events are amusingly random, they evince some motifs like snacks, crying and existential despair. There are two nearly identical events about Drake and sadness, Listening to drake and crying on Dec. 31 and Listening to old drake songs and cry on Jan. 1. Each has over 20,000 attendees. The fake events are at once totally unexpected and familiar, as their particular brand of sadness, entropy and hating school is a mainstay of Tumblr and Reddit anti-humor. They perfectly illustrate the self-referential comic possibilities of the Internet, where you can’t take anything for granted or seriously, not even a seemingly utilitarian feature like a Facebook event. Their timing is perfect, too: a wry counterpart to the endless, replicable, real-life holiday events full of forced cheer that come our way this time of year. (Me? I’ll be trying to stay awake! Want to join me? Maybe I will create an event on FB!)
Do as I say not as I do! A Florida lawyer, known for his work with DUI defendants, was arrested on charges of speeding and driving under the influence. Fifty-nine-year-old Tom Hudson, author of “The Drinker’s Guide to Driving: The Secrets of DUI from One of America’s Top DUI Lawyers,” was pulled over after being caught speeding in Sarasota. Police say Hudson was driving 15 miles over the speed limit and “weaving in the lane but not crossing lines.” When police administered a drug test, Hudson’s alcohol was above the legal limit at .12. Officers Chuck Flint and Jimmy Adams instantly recognized Hudson and described his speech as slow and soft-spoken. “All of this is in stark contrast to the defendant’s normal behavior and demeanor,” Flint said. Hudson admitted to having a drink at a local bar and was arrested after refusing to participate in field sobriety tests. Once in police custody, Hudson agreed to breath and blood tests which showed his alcohol level above the legal limit of .08. Hudson told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that the experience of being subjected to these tests, which he had himself challenged in court, made it easier for him to sympathize with his clients. “I can tell you this, it’s been an eye-opening experience to see what my clients have been going through for the past 15 years,” he said.
Merry, uh, whatever. A New Jersey city council’s decision to add the word “Christmas” to the name of its tree-lighting ceremony prompted one council member to step down because it “turned it from a non-religious event to a religious one.” Charlene Storey announced her decision just minutes after the Roselle Park council approved the change Thursday night, NJ.com reported. She later rescinded her resignation, which was supposed to take effect on Jan. 7, the newspaper reported. Storey, who was raised Catholic but describes herself as a non-believer, said the town’s decision to change the ceremony’s name from “A Tree Lighting” to “A Christmas Tree Lighting” favors one religion and “cuts non-Christians out of the loop.” When she handed in her resignation, Storey said she regretted her decision but called the issue a matter of principle. “I cannot in good conscience continue to be part of a council that is exclusionary or to work with a mayor who is such,” Storey said in her resignation letter. After rescinding her resignation, Storey said she still disagreed with the renaming and would not attend the event, according to NJ.com. Roselle Park Mayor Carl Hokanson, who proposed the move, praised Storey for her work on the council. He said everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but added that each town can use whatever title it wants to use for the ceremony. “I can’t believe that people are going this crazy over this,” he said. “There are more important things going on in this world.” “It’s not a street, it’s not a building, it’s a Christmas tree,” Hokanson added.
A study by the Pew Research Center finds that younger Americans are more likely to believe that the government should prohibit offensive speech, despite Freedom of Speech being a cornerstone of American freedoms. For instance, when it comes to offensive speech about minorities, only 12 percent of the “Silent Generation” (ages 70-87) think the government should outlaw such speech. That increases to 24 percent of Baby Boomers (ages 51-69), 27 percent of Gen-Xers (ages 35-50), and 40 percent of Millennials (ages 18-34). Protesting college students just don’t get it, says Emily Ekins, a research fellow at the Cato Institute. They “believe free speech and promoting social equality are at odds and remain unaware of free speech’s vital importance,” she says. “For some, this may have been the first time they heard that allowing free speech is not synonymous with endorsing its content.” [Los Angeles Times, Detroit News] …And they don’t see the irony in using their freedom of speech to protest freedom of speech.
Finally, Uganda Hold ‘em…. Hazel Sycamore, a nurse in the Southland of New Zealand, was going to Uganda as a volunteer aid worker and anticipated a need there. Before she went, she put up signs at the local hospital and the Breast Care Centre where she works asking for a specific donation. “Within three weeks I had about 400 bras,” Sycamore said. “They just kept coming in the door.” She hauled them all to a Ugandan church for distribution. Many of the women there had to be shown how they were worn, but “their delight was amazing, it was just so touching,” Sycamore said. [Southland Times]
Later.