Monday, January 24, 2005

This hilarious article was in yesterday's NY Times... since it's a tad long, I've condensed it to its best parts for your reading pleasure. And if any of you are from Vermont, you ought to be ashamed, especially for the crazy wheelchair comment.

Toy's Message of Affection Draws Anger and Publicity
The Vermont Teddy Bear Company believed it had a winner of a Valentine gift: its "Crazy for You" teddy bear, a cuddly bundle of fur - with paws restrained by a straitjacket and the outfit accompanied by commitment papers.
But when the company, a nationally known retailer and tourist attraction much loved in Vermont, started selling the teddy bear this month, it created an uproar.
Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican who considers the company's president a friend, called the bear "very insensitive" at a news conference, saying: "Mental health is very serious. We should not stigmatize it further with these marketing efforts."
Pleas to stop selling the bear have come from state legislators, medical professionals and mental health advocates, who say they object not to the "crazy for you" sentiment but to the straitjacket and commitment papers because they represent such an extreme and painful image of mental illness.
The mother of a mentally ill teenager in Massachusetts started a petition drive, helped by students in local public schools.
And both the president and the chairman of Vermont's only teaching hospital, Fletcher Allen Health Care, criticized the company, significant because the president of Vermont Teddy Bear, Elisabeth Robert, sits on the hospital's board. Mental health advocates want Ms. Robert removed from her hospital position, and the board chairman, William Schubart, is considering the request.
The company has received about 150 supportive e-mail messages and phone calls regarding its "Crazy for You" bear and about 400 in opposition, she said.
Fueled by the uproar, about 2,000 bears were sold last week, she said, a volume considered "very high," but sales have recently "leveled off."
Supporters of the company's decision to keep selling the bear say opponents are too politically correct.
Ken Schram, a commentator for KOMO-TV in Seattle, said on the air that "the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill is bouncing around its round rubber boardroom." And Robert Paul Reyes, a columnist for The Lynchburg Ledger, a weekly newspaper in central Virginia, advised the head of the Vermont chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill chapter to "take a Valium, or better yet buy a 'Crazy for You Bear.' "
Mr. Bounds said he thought the controversy was "good for the company because it will put them on TV, so that will bring money into the community."
But others say a straitjacket on something as cute as a teddy bear trivializes a traumatic experience and reinforces a stereotype of mentally ill people as violent.
"If Vermont Teddy Bear had produced a bear with a noose around its neck saying, 'I'd love to hang with you,' and called it a Ku Klux Klan teddy bear, the response would be overwhelming disgust and horror," said Anne Donahue, a Republican state representative.
Maureen McNamara of Westboro, Mass., whose 13-year-old son has been committed to psychiatric hospitals and put in a straitjacket, started a petition drive against the bear. "You wouldn't have a bear in a wheelchair saying, 'I'm rolling over the hill in love with you,' " she said.
On Thursday, at the company's store here, Irene Brimicombe, 81, of Shelburne, looked at the prominently displayed bears and said, "They should take it off the market, so many people are against it."
But her friend, June Quinn, 76, who recently moved from Virginia, bought one. "I'm tired of being politically correct," Ms. Quinn said. "I'm tired of balancing what comes out of my mouth. And, he's cute as all get out."
Ms. Quinn also bought an American flag sweater for her bear.
"Well, he can't sit around all the time in this," she said, gesturing to the straitjacket.
"See," Ms. Brimicombe said, "that proves it isn't right."

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