(2003-03-13) Teddy Bears For Adults

Matt Taibbi on teddy bears for grieving adults. It can be exhausting at times, following these endless, media-fueled orgies of adult grief that surround whichever gruesome random catastrophe is currently dominating the headlines - the Space Shuttle, the Chicago stampede, the transplant girl, now the Great White fire... For about a decade now, and especially since Sept. 11, Americans have been grotesquely, luridly self-pitying, ready at the drop of a hat to celebrate - with the aid of a vast array of bureaucratic accessories - their collective grief over any kind of loss, real or imaginary... None of this resembles the behavior of people with either real problems or real interests in life. It may be that life in America has become so grim and constricting and sexually repressed that mawkish public displays of canned grief are the only socially acceptable avenues people have left for acting out... There were no little kids at that Great White show, but bears all over the place. Bears in Great White caps... Or maybe teddy bears just have the bad fortune to perfectly represent America's current desired emotional self-image: harmless, pitiable, vegetatively loyal, family-oriented, built to grieve. They also perfectly represent mainstream America's idea of political morality: Teddy bears don't do anything wrong, but they don't really do anything, either.