Isn't it strange how the silly season just keeps hitting closer and closer to home?
- Hispanics Criticize American Girl Doll: New Doll by American Girl Draws Criticisms for Depiction of Hispanic Neighborhood:
Some residents of Chicago's largely Hispanic Pilsen section are upset over a new doll in the popular American Girl series because her storyline says the Mexican-American youngster and her family left the "dangerous" neighborhood for a better life in the suburbs.
Many in the West Side neighborhood say the characterization is insulting and inaccurate.
"It's very offensive and it's really a slap in the face to the hardworking people of the Pilsen community," said Alvaro R. Obregon, who lives near where the doll, Marisol, supposedly lived before setting out for suburban Des Plaines.
According to the biography that accompanies the doll, which was introduced just after Christmas, she is the daughter of a transit worker and an accountant. One day her mother tells Marisol the family is leaving their apartment for a house in the suburbs.
The old neighborhood "was no place for me to grow up," the doll's story says. "It was dangerous, and there was no place for me to play."
American Girl officials said that they never intended to insult the community.
"Our feeling is that when people read the book in its entirety, I think they'll see the picture that we painted of Marisol in the book is from a very warm, lively and very close-knit community," American Girl spokeswoman Stephanie Spanos said Wednesday.
Spanos added that the "dangerous" comment was a reference to traffic in the big city and that Marisol's parents moved to Des Plaines because they wanted a house and a yard for their daughter to play in.
- The Devil Made Me Pay It:Unusual Venezuelan Bill Collector Embarrasses Debtors Into Paying:
...Rodrigo Herrera, who runs a small debt-collection business in Caracas, Venezuela, has no such bailout policy. His business name is Dr. Diablo, Spanish for Dr. Devil. He is perhaps one of the world's most effective, and most unusual, bill collectors.
Dr. Diablo doesn't break your bones, or shoot holes in your kneecaps. He embarrasses you to death.
Let's say that you are really behind on your car payments. The car dealership hires Dr. Diablo, who shows up at your office, or home, or maybe even your church, dressed as the devil and accompanied by a carload of women in skintight costumes and a vicious dog.
He makes lots of noise with the siren on his SUV, which is painted with hellfire flames. In general, Dr. Diablo makes sure that your neighbors, or your boss, know that you, until now a pillar of the community, are actually a deadbeat.
It's not very discreet. But that's the point...
- Cable Companies Provide Porn While Funding Politicians: Critics Say Politicians Morally Obligated to Refuse Donations:
While its previous owners considered adult entertainment "immoral," Adelphia Communications Corp., the country's fifth-largest cable television provider, last week became the first to offer hard-core adult films on pay-per-view to its subscribers.
"It's a very lucrative source of funds," said Dennis McAlpine, a media and entertainment industry analyst. "The cable companies and the satellite companies are programming agnostics in the sense that they don't care what the programming is. It's what the viewers want to see."
Viewers can watch such sexually explicit movies in the Hilton and Marriott hotel chains on video services like LodgeNet or on "On Command," which is owned by Liberty Media, formerly a part of AT&T; at home via DirecTV, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp; or via virtually every cable company, including Cox, Time Warner and Comcast.
Sexual content at Hiltons. How inappropriate.
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