A T&S feature I just invented in the last three minutes: Sidebar Smackdown

Perusing our sidebar this morning, I discovered the same article linked twice, along with each linker’s distinct spin on it. Well if T&S bloggers get to rampantly editorialize in the sidebar, so should you! Feel free to sound off in the comments about the article. Personally, I am opposed to mocking French people. Oh wait, no I’m not.

And as long as I’m at it, feel free to sound off on any other sidebar items that catch your interest.

17 comments for “A T&S feature I just invented in the last three minutes: Sidebar Smackdown

  1. As enemies of France, we are naturally opposed to measures that would stop beautiful French women from starving to death.

  2. I thought Wilfried’s response was funny, but wasn’t sure if he actually thought it should be a crime to teach people how to live on just an apple a day, or if he just wanted to defend the French. In any event, any legislation with the term “inciting thinness” certainly deserves double-linking.

  3. Here’s a suggested feature: sidebar links that only surface within individual posts. That way “runs up the rainbow flag” can find a proper home in “their victory is our defeat.”

  4. Brad, that could work, but in the extreme one could just go to blogs that cater only to one’s own proclivities and all the posts and comments will be a match for one’s views. But I think the free-for-all approach is more fun!

  5. # 1, LOL, Adam! Great response.

    # 2 As a boy from Flanders, I have no natural tendency to defend the French as such.

    Seriously, I thought I had to give a sign that this topic of anorexia among girls is a very serious matter. I’ve been following the background of this legislation, saw documentaries on the tragedies associated with eating disorders, and know things of personal experience helping people… I just saw another survey that found out that main motivation of European girls to start smoking is that it helps them to still hunger … At least the French are doing something about it, whatever the weaknesses in their approach. In this context I thought it was improper to call French lawyers the “world’s nuttiest”.

  6. Fwiw, I was reminded of the “Monk” episode where Monk tells Natalie to avoid the food at the fashion show because, “I just saw three models throwing up.”

  7. Um, wow that law sounds vague! The Spanish law requiring a minimum BMI seems pretty sensible. I suppose it is limited in its effects because it only applies to runway models . . . No question there is a big problem with notions of beauty.

    But really, doesn’t the strangeness of this law tell us something about the mismatch of ends and means here? There are serious problems with the way our culture constructs femininity. Do we seriously think we can address those problems by making laws like this? This is a very feeble gesture compared with the magnitude of the problem. That’s what makes it nutty if you ask me. To think this is a rational response is to show a complete failure to grasp the depth of the problem.

  8. I should have said, for a lawmaker to promote this as a serious attempt to address the problems with our construction of feminine beauty shows a complete failure to grasp the depth of the problem. For a bystander, overlooking the comical mismatch between ends and means here is forgivable! (ahem, Wilfried . . .)

  9. I can’t believe I’m comment #11 and the first one to say “good grief, and Thomas Jefferson actually admired these people for their commitment to liberty and justice?” Or something to that effect.

    They seriously want an EU-wide ban on speech based on its content, using an incredibly broad definition of that content — and per the article, seem to plan on punishing publishers (with jail time!) based on the actions of psychologically disturbed teenagers. Come on.

    Maybe it’s just because it’s five AM and I am the exact opposite of a morning person, but this seems really disturbing to me.

  10. Use obscenity laws to suppress display of jutting pelvic bones (outside of contexts where viewers over 18 have signed off on their desire to view obscene thinness).

  11. Maybe you could keep an open thread, sort of like the General Conference threads, for comments on sidebar spins. Some deserve a quick, cutting comment that just won’t do much good on an obscure blog in a galaxy far away.

  12. Yes, from time to time I’ve wanted to make comments on the sidebar items. An open thread could get a little messy, though.

  13. Mark and East,

    Drop me a line when you see something you’d like to comment on and I’ll see what I can do.

  14. I see Adam Greenwood in a recent sidebar link calls Alaska’s Gov. (JustDeliv’r’dMotha) Pallin “governess.” Which is—–too diminuitive? But wudda any other femininizing suffix of worked better? Even the sort of “dominating”-ly sounding Governix?

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