March 8, 2007

Fantasy Rape or Erotic Dream?

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Dolce & Gabbana pulled an ad today after women’s groups in Italy and Spain alleged that the ad depicts a “fantasy rape” and thereby promotes violence against women. Dolce & Gabbana counter that the ad was meant to portray an “erotic dream” (presumably among consenting, of-age dream avatars). What do you think?

I say neither. Looks like your standard, creepy pseudo sensual D&G spread to me–too unemotional to be either violent or particularly erotic. Lesson: never make love to a model.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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