We don’t even know how to respond except to say: what the hell? Sure, MacFarlane was a little out of line when he said–about a nine-year-old girl, mind you–that “it’ll be 16 years before she’s too young for Clooney”. But this was just ridiculous. Was it supposed to be funny? We hope, for the sake of whoever posted it, that he was very drunk at the time (we’re about 99.9% sure it was a he, because no lady we know would ever use that word in public).

We can’t say that we’re offended on her behalf like Wendell Pierce, aka Bunk on The Wire:

@thesteamer We should never allow someone to call a child a C___. I don’t care if was an attempt at a joke. Maybe that’s ok with you. Not me

— Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) February 25, 2013

But this was definitely the worst attempt at humor we’ve ever seen on behalf of The Onion. And we have a feeling they’ll be issuing an official apology by the end of the day.

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We almost want to congratulate the company: it’s pretty hard to offend two huge groups of potential customers with a single item while calling it “whimsical” and pricing it at 400 bucks.

Anthropologie apparently removed the offending stick from its site after thousands of Twitter messages and emails decried it as the racist knicknack that it so obviously is.

…and here’s the inevitable response from the retailer’s PR director:

“An independent artisan makes these one-of-a-kind candlesticks from vintage ceramics. Unfortunately two that we received included extremely inappropriate figurines, and we have removed them from our website. We sincerely regret the offense we have caused.”

Yeah OK, but we know how retail works–somebody approved this thing for sale, entered it into the system, wrote a copy block describing it, etc. The question barely needs to be asked: WHY?!?

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Fussy New Yorkers love some high-concept dining—our restaurant industry is notoriously brutal, and if a new Manhattan kitchen doesn’t have a great pedigree and a killer hook then it’s not likely to last a year. High-end restaurateurs don’t just sell great food, they sell an experience—for example, the recent re-branding of five-star eatery Eleven Madison Park includes card tricks, smoke-filled domes and cheese courses served in tabletop picnic baskets.

That being said, we think we can add “dining in the dark” to the long list of business ideas best kept in the board room. Midtown Manhattan’s Danse le Noir? (question mark theirs!) claims to free diners from their “inhibitions” and “awaken” their senses by empowering them to “completely re-evaluate…perception[s] of taste, smell, and texture.”

Yeah, OK. But the food fanatics at Eater make short work of that idea in a hilarious blog post describing dinner at Danse as “the worst experience I’ve ever had in a restaurant.” One editor writes that “I’ve never come so close to having a panic attack in my entire life.” More, please!

continued…

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