Baby, It’s Colder Inside

Since the advent of the internet, it seems that every season is Silly Season. That oasis of frivolity used to be limited to the late summer, when all the usual public troublemakers had taken off for their vacations—and so the newsrooms were left to report oddball human interest stories or to straight up fabricate them when even the reliable eccentrics had headed to the beach. These days, all that is needed is for someone have a strong opinion about something, particularly if the view is likely to generate a strong reaction from all sides. It’s most probably a necessary defense mechanism to save us from a pandemic of panic in the face of reports of shriveling ice caps, microplastics lurking in everything we eat and drink, and various ghastly and horrific humanitarian crises everywhere. The internet graciously provides us with those reports and images with thudding regularity, delivered conveniently to our phones, tablets, and desktops. It is probably the least the internet can do to offer a means of distraction from those intractable and ubiquitous horrors. Thus, it throws us outrages and controversies that aren’t really outrageous or controversial, and we get good and angry over nothing much in particular. The annual Christmas Controversy is always something to look forward to. This year, instead of an insufficiently reverent coffee cup design, it centered on the sexual