Wednesday, September 19, 2007

I refuse on principle to think of a dirty play on words on a children's classic with which to title this post

You know how we conservatives are always saying that liberals have absolutely no moral compass? Well, it may usually be a slight exaggeration, but not today, not in the crazy mixed up world of NYT reporter Alessandra Stanley.

Stanley today writes a review of the TV adaptation of the Gossip Girl series. The very series that, not long ago, was rightly eviscerated by Naomi Wolf in these same pages, revealed as the repulsive piece of trash that it is. So what does Stanley have to say about the soulless, materialistic, drug-fueled, sex-obsessed characters? Why, that they remind her oh so very much of the Little Mermaid! Or, no, wait, perhaps Sleeping Beauty. Well, in any case, definitely Willy Wonka. You see, folks, it's just another fairy tale!

"Like 'Peter Pan,' 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland' or the 'Harry Potter' series, these novels are fantasies and projections of an imaginary world where parents are dead or peripheral, and lost boys and girls struggle on their own with good and evil, or in this case, Bergdorf Goodman and evil.
Even the characters’ names — Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen — are as fancifully evocative as those found in children’s books ...."

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me. I know, I know, Judy Blume is still banned in some places for her sexual themes, Alice got high from her mushrooms, and some Harry Potter fanfic has just gotten way out of hand. But, and I will try to muster the deepest reserves of my eloquence here, come on!

The moral of this story: if you have kids, make sure to keep them away from Alessandra Stanley!

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