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Tue 11 Apr, 2006 06:58 am
http://www.gawker.com/news/park-slope/the-park-slope-hat-spat-read-all-the-emails-166214.php
Quote:The Park Slope Hat Spat: Read All the Emails
READ MORE: Brooklyn, New York Magazine, e-mail, kids, park slope
New York mag has a cute front-of-book item today on an only-in-Park-Slope battle that recently raged on an email list for earnest and progressive parents in that earnestly progressive Brooklyn neighborhood. As Ben Mathis-Lilley explains:
Quote:A few weeks ago, a member of the Park Slope Parents e-mail forum who'd encountered a stray piece of winterwear in the neighborhood posted a notice to the group titled "Found: boy's hat."
[S]ubscriber "Lisa" went public with her problems regarding the gender-specifying description of the hat. Wondering how such a categorization would feel to a spiky-hat-wearing girl, Lisa wrote, "It's innocent little comments like this that I find the most hurtful." A third member responded soon after, saying such political correctness drove her "up the wall," and a heated discussion ensued. Lisa's supporters questioned their opponents' commitment to "the free interchange of ideas and questions"
while an opposing faction expressed facetious dismay that the original poster, who had described the hat as likely belonging to "an older child," was not more considerate toward "younger children who happen to have large heads."
[O]ne poster questioned the use of "hat," asking if the object might be more sensitively labeled a "soft, porous bowl."
Soft porous bowl!! Absolutely love it!!
Hints of sarcasm are always the best.
Ha!
Ben had my favorite post too:
Quote:Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 01:52:09 -0500
Subject: My hat
In order to make certain that inconsequential items like childbirth and education do not interfere with the worship of my hat, I have created a new YahooGroup.
This new group should allow the neighborhood's deconstruction of my hat and its impact on society, as well as the history surrounding the critique of my hat and the social consequences of that history, to be debated without comment from naysayers who do not appreciate the import of my hat.
To join my new YahooGroup, please send an email to <snip>
Perhaps this might finally remove any further hat talk from my beloved PSP.
# # #
This is a group for people who would like to address the myriad ways in which a 42 year-old man's little boy hat can cause gender stereotyping, bulletin board rage, and the decline of western civilization.
Give me my hat back, Helene!
Ben
That thread is as funny and weird as anything I have ever seen on A2K.
All your hat are belong to us.
Him name Hopkin green hat. P.S. I'll find my hat.
I just realized that the Ben Mathis-Lilley who brought this to the attention of The Gawker is probably Our Ben.
Shall we invite him to A2K? :-)
I just looked him up to go ahead and invite, but I guess he's a busy guy:
http://newyorkmetro.com/news/intelligencer/16665/
(That seems to be the original content, not that he contacted The Gawker, and Ben's a writer at New York Magazine.)
I don't trust men with hyphenated names.
"Our Ben", soz? Huh?
DrewDad wrote:I don't trust men with hyphenated names.
It is just a tad foppish now that you mention it.
I bet it's a hyphenated marriage -- he was a Mathis, married a Lilley, or his mom was a Mathis, married a Lilley, or whatever. (As opposed to "the ancestral home of the Mathis-Lilleys...") (Who knows...)
"Our Ben" is just that we both mentioned posts by the same Ben guy, and that Ben may be Ben Mathis-Lilley who wrote something about the whole shebang.
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