If you're known by the company you keep, our own Betsy Ross Secret Soup (left) and Pajamas Media A-List blogger Roger Kimball (right) were caught with their pajama bottoms down this afternoon:
Who's that hussy, left, pretty in black, drawing the viewer's eye away from our patriotic bowl of soup? A super-sized-me lingerie model for Catherine's Plus Sizes 16W – 34W, that's who.
Same gal, together with a colleague, pretty in white, who's making our head spin as Roger Kimball's dapper image goes head-to-torso with the kind of thing that used to be hidden away in our day in the back pages of movie and women's magazines. Beyond the visual shock, shock, was the humorous disjunct between blogger's and advertiser's copy.
Take our own post, for starters, where we interspersed excerpts from the Declaration with anectodal reportage of our festive Fourth-of-July family gathering down east. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" vies with "Buy one, get one 50% off. 18 Hour Comfort Strap bra: A favorite for the comfort it delivers." But come to think of it, isn't that what the Founding Fathers were after? "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," however defined by the individual. Not to mention that the business of America is business. We say, bring 'em on!
Then there are Roger Kimball's cogitations on the undermining of American identity under fire from the cacophonous chorus of the cacodemons of pc and so-called multiculturalism — "really a form of mono-cultural animus directed against the dominant culture":
These various agents of dissolution are also elements in a wider culture war: the contest to define how we live and what counts as the good in the good life. Anti-Americanism occupies such a prominent place on the agenda of the culture wars precisely because the traditional values of American identity — articulated by the Founders and grounded in a commitment to individual liberty and public virtue — are deeply at odds with the radical, de-civilizing tenets of the “multiculturalist” enterprise.
Public virtue? When it comes to those Catherine's ads, the jury's still out, but if you're taking talking individual liberties, they're downright uplifting.
Update: Is that a Freudian slip bra?" asks Dr. Sanity in the latest Carnival of the Insanities, now open for business.
Update II: Is nothing sacred? Roger himself gets upstaged by the larger, lovelier "comfort strap bra" woman:
"Ah, the sophisticated voice of the Zabar’s Zeitgeist."
Update III: A pretty girl may be like a melody, but that ubiquitous plus-size model is to our eyes like unwelcome elevator Musak to our ears:
Gentlemen. There are ladies present.
Yes and no. One celebrates the freedom of expression while holding one's nose against the poor taste and lack of manners.
Posted by: goomp | July 06, 2008 at 09:07 AM
Mea culpa - this cries out for puns and giggles.
It's all an endowment problem. I think the Catherines have proven that they have both unalienable rights as well as lefts, proving that all women are not created equal.
You should probably be grateful that whatever Google match "only" picked up Catherine from endowment. It could have been much, much worse - like an ad on TV for male enhancement drugs.
Posted by: Carol Ward | July 06, 2008 at 06:58 PM
Um... LOL. Well, I guess there are advantages to being so small no one would consider advertising on one's blog. ;-)
Posted by: Teresa | July 07, 2008 at 12:33 PM
Talk about breaking the brass ceiling! Your sense of humor never fails Sissy!
Posted by: Laura Lee Donoho | July 07, 2008 at 12:35 PM
I actually used to buy my bras there! Before I had the boobectomy! NOBODY needs to be a double H!
(:
Posted by: Gayle Miller | July 08, 2008 at 03:14 PM