This full-page ad a<\/a>ppeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this morning\u00a0 [May 11, 2014].\u00a0 They’re kidding, right? They lifted this from The Onion, right? They can’t be serious! Who came up with the brilliant idea that a knife holder depicting a person being stabbed in the head, the heart, the stomach and the legs would make a lovely addition to one’s highly stylish kitchen as a way of\u00a0making it “more interesting?”<\/p>\n

And I’m not about to give it a pass because the product is made in oh-so-chic, design-savvy Italia, either.<\/p>\n

Are we so inured to violence in the media that it’s okay–or actually effective–to market a product using such a violent image? I guess we are, because the manufacturer’s ricsb.com website features the same knife holder in a slew of designer colors–pink, orange, black, white,\u00a0\u00a0plus gold [sorry, sold out]\u00a0 and chrome [also sold out], for the low-low price of $159 [reduced from $169]. But wait, there’s more: You can also buy a pen holder depicting the same unfortunate stick man being similarly pierced by sharp-ended writing implements. That one costs only $99.<\/p>\n

I get that whoever designed\u00a0these things probably thought\u00a0they\u00a0were whimsical. But he or she was wrong. Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I fail to see the humor.<\/p>\n

Somewhere\u00a0along the line, someone needed to just say no. It’s just awful, and the New York Times Magazine should have\u00a0used better judgment and refused to run it. But I suppose that, in an era of declining revenue and a much skinnier than ever publication–a full-page ad is a full-page ad. And it did, of course, catch my attention, driving me to write about it and even promote it by including the website address in my post. I can only hope that the whole thing is a hoax, and that my outrage is part of the joke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This full-page ad appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this morning\u00a0 [May 11, 2014].\u00a0 They’re kidding, right? They lifted this from The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,1],"tags":[1048],"yoast_head":"\n