Apparently, the most offensive thing about Philadelphia Weekly’s Holiday Guide issue a couple weeks back was not that it hit streets in mid-November and played heartily into Daniel McQuade’s puppyfucking fetish. No, dear readers, it was the image of a hamster dressed up as an Orthodox Jew on the cover that some extrapolated offense from, and even though the issue’s already been buried by another, it’s starting to grow something of a long tail. If you’ll pardon the pun. Cue one of the staff Jews to rise to the art director’s defense:

That animal is the pet of Liz Spikol, the newspaper’s senior contributing editor.

Spikol said that once it was decided to have “cuteness” as the theme for this year’s guide, cute animals came to mind. She immediately thought of her male hamster, whose name is, coincidentally, Tinsel, and whom she described as “super cute.” [...] Spikol said that the paper’s art director created the “hat ensemble” for Tinsel to wear; it was geared to be “more graphically appealing” and “to make it readable as a Jewish observance.”

She added that, as a Jew herself, she doesn’t find the image offensive, and she doesn’t “understand why Orthodoxy would be offensive.”
“I just thought it was a fun image in context of our theme,” said Spikol.

Spikol, we’ve told you this before and we’ll tell you again: They do not pay you enough for this. And as for the time-honored Jew/rodent slur, let us just say this: A hamster is not a rat, but neither is a gerbil. Just ask Larry David.
JewishExponent: You Want We Should Change It To A Dog?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 12:52 pm.