JCP Media Inc
What does this look like to you?
It’s a teapot. Specifically it’s a picture of a teapot on a JC Penney billboard next to the 405 Freeway here in the Los Angeles area, down around the LAX airport, somewhere in Studio City.
Anything odd or unusual about it?
I wouldn’t have thought twice about it if I had seen it (which I haven’t). It’s a teapot. Chrome. Shiny. Bronze bell of some sort on the spout. Black handle.
Apparently other folks don’t think so. There were a few complaints about it, apparently starting with Twitter and Reddit. Now the media’s caught on to it and the story’s made the newspapers and TV news. Apparently there are no other more newsworthy stories to report. (I’m thrilled to hear that the damage in Oklahoma has been all fixed, there are no murders or terrorists acts to speak of, the wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan are all over, poverty and hunger have been solved…)
The “offensive” item has been removed from JC Penney’s website. The billboard has been taken down. The “offense” a handful of folks are complaining about?
They say the teapot looks like Adolf Hitler.
Yep. Couldn’t make this up. If I could, I would be writing for Saturday Night Live or David Letterman. I’ll give you a second to scroll back up to look at the picture, squint a little, maybe have a couple of stiff drinks to help your eyes unfocus.
See it? Yeah, just like the “Jesus in the burnt toast” or “Mother Theresa in the broken Dorito” images you see on the Interwebs. It’s called “pareidolia“. Google it for hundreds of examples, images, and explanations.
The folks with the overactive and malfunctioning pattern-recognition lobes in their brains are offended that JC Penney would sell a teapot that they say looks like Adolf Hitler and they raised a ruckus. Now they’re getting news coverage and action. They even got the mayor of Culver City to say that he was “outraged” and “offended”, in part because he’s Jewish. Even the Anti-Defamation League got into the act, although their response was less inflammatory than the mayor’s. There were initial reports that advertising executive(s) at JC Penney were getting fired over this, although following up on it this afternoon I can’t find confirmation of that story.
There’s the part that pushes this beyond farce and into mind-numbing stupidity. If politicians and corporations like JC Penney are so cowed by the societal pressure to be politically correct and 100% non-offensive with every breath, even when they’re dealing with something that’s totally imaginary & straight out of La-La Land, how can they be considered leaders?
Where is the leader in our society (corporate or political) who, when faced with this sort of low-grade psychotic nonsense, will stand up and politely but firmly say, “It’s just a teapot. We’re not sorry – we haven’t done anything to be sorry for. As for the news media, we’re happy to let you know that you can go back to covering Lindsey Lohan and the Kardashian de jour. This is not a news story. It’s just a picture of a teapot. Move along. Get a life.”
At least someone at JC Penney’s Twitter account had the common sense to put out this:
Let’s hope no one got fired for this tweet.
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