Pirate's Cove

I like the way Yahoo has the headline on their news front page: “Luxury brand yanks 2 ads after right-wing uproar.” Does this mean that the left-wingers have no problem featuring children in very adult, sexualized ads?

When High Fashion and QAnon Collide

Ever since Demna became artistic director of Balenciaga in 2015, the storied brand has become a lightning rod for controversy, often intentionally so. See: remaking IKEA’s 99-cent shopping bag as a luxury good, putting heels on Crocs, selling destroyed sneakers for $1,850, dressing Kim Kardashian in a head-to-toe black body stocking for the Met Gala, and sending models who looked like refugees down the runway carrying trash bags made of expensive leather.

The outrage provoked by such moments often seemed to be the whole point. Each only bolstered the reputation of Demna’s Balenciaga as a brand that forces consumers to grapple with the very meaning of “taste.”

Now, however, the release of two new campaigns by Balenciaga, which is owned by Kering, the French luxury conglomerate that also owns brands such as Gucci and Saint Laurent, has taken the public opprobrium to a new level. One campaign featured photos of children clutching handbags that look like teddy bears in bondage gear. Another campaign featured photos that include paperwork about child pornography laws. Together, they ignited a firestorm that traveled from the internet to Fox News, fueled by allegations that Balenciaga condoned child exploitation. The controversy has become one of the most explicit collisions of internet culture, politics, fashion and conspiracy theories to date.

The meaning of taste in putting children in these ads like that? These people are demented. You apparently need to be Qanon to complain about the ads

On Nov. 28, almost two weeks after the storm started brewing — and after a series of Instagram apologies that failed to quell it — the brand issued a statement admitting “a series of grievous errors for which Balenciaga takes responsibility.” The fashion house announced ongoing “internal and external investigations” and “new controls” and said it was reaching out to “organizations who specialize in child protection and aim at ending child abuse and exploitation.”

Balenciaga blamed the ad agency they hired, but, executives at Balanciaga surely knew what was coming. Ads are not developed in a vacuum. The people coming up with the ads will run their thoughts by the suits, and, the final product will need to be approved by someone at Balenciaga before going active. And the NY Times article notes that employees were on hand for the photoshoots. Did no one say “um, this is a bad idea?”

The internet is full of trolls. Why did this controversy take off?

As online criticism of the campaigns spread, the story was picked up across right-leaning media outlets, including The New York Post and the prime time Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” The show has helped to publicize and mainstream QAnon, the internet conspiracy theory that “a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.”

“Here you have a major international retail brand promoting kiddie porn and sex with children,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 22, “and not promoting it subtly but right out in the open.”

See, it’s only right-wingers that have a problem with sexualizing children. And trolls. Apparently, those who complained about the ads are trolls. Liberals are just fine with it. That’s the meaning I take out of it.

And maybe they are

California Releases Thousands of Convicted Pedophiles Within a Year of Conviction

California has released thousands of convicted pedophiles after spending only a few months in prison.

Such pedophiles have been convicted of “a range of horrific acts, including raping kids under 14,” according to the study investigation conducted by the U.K. Daily Mail.

More than 7,000 persons convicted of “lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age” have been released in the same year they were convicted. Convicts who committed even more heinous crimes, such as sodomy and rape of children, also served short sentences.

Some short sentences include 365 pedophiles convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child — all of whom spent fewer than 12 months in prison. Thirty-nine cases were convictions for sodomy with a child under the age of 16, while there were three cases of kidnapping a child under the age of 14 “with intent to commit lewd or lascivious acts.”

Most of this has appeared to happen in the past 10 years in the People’s Republik Of California. Are you Liberals good with this?

Read: NY Times Is Upset That Right Wingers Objected To Balenciaga Child Bondage Ads »