Don't let Christina Ricci near hemophiliacs

I don’t usually do this, but I'd like to use this post to rebut an article I read recently. I was perusing Town Hall, as I often do, when I came across the new column by Michelle "Kill All Immigrants" Malkin. Surprisingly, it's not an anti-immigration screed. How I wish it were. No, this time around she decides to take on the new teen epidemic of "cutting", or using sharp objects to inflict bodily harm on one's self. This is undoubtedly a harmful practice and measures should obviously be taken to curb it (though I'm skeptical that the scope of the problem is as large as Malkin makes it out to be…her evidence is mainly anecdotal, and what few statistics she provides seem to be pulled out of her ass). Unlike most everything else that she rails against, this issue is actually deserving of concern. Such an important problem warrants sound reasoning and exhaustive research, no? Could this article prove to be at least somewhat logical and enlightening? Well, let's see:

"This madness would not be as popular as it is among young people if not for the glamorizing endorsement of nitwit celebrities such as twentysomething actress Christina Ricci."

Whoops, I guess not. So she blames "Hollyweird" for the new self-mutilation "craze". And specifically, Christina Ricci. Okay. Where to begin? Malkin is correct in her characterization of Ricci as being "twentysomething". I saw Ricci on Conan last night, where she divulged that she is 25. The fact that she was on Conan in the first place attests to her "celebrity" status, so Malkin's right on that, too. I don’t know about the "nitwit" part, though my impression is that it isn't so. And the fact that immediately after seeing her interview I did not run to my kitchen cabinet and gouge my eyes out with a corkscrew casts doubts on Malkin's claim that the teen cutting craze is masterminded by Ricci herself and facilitated by the persistent stream of hypnotic mindbending brainwaves she emits, which, upon entering the brainosphere of impressionable youngsters, render them completely incapable of resisting her commands. Even if she had these powers, I think maybe she might use them for purposes other than propagating a teen self-mutilation craze. But I could be wrong. After all, she did play the macabre Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family, which is a *gasp* HOLLYWOOD movie. And with Hollywood, who knows? Anyway, this claim struck me as being odd:

"It may be all fun and games for a Hollywood starlet like Ricci, but her mindless stunts have inspired countless young girls to carve themselves into a bloody stupor."

Bloody stupid is more like it. I was going to write a paragraph about how fucking stupid and not-only-wrong-but-unprovable this claim is, but it turns out that Malkin is actually absolutely correct. Uh-huh, the New England Journal of Medicine in conjunction with the National Insititutes of Health has recently released a study, 25 years in the making, that conclusively attributes the rise of both teenage self-mutilation and AIDS to one and only one source: Christina Ricci's nipples. She has also been linked to certain types of cancer as well as a rare form of brain disease confined primarily to the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Please Evan, tell your girl to use her superpowers for good, not evil.

So yeah, it's pretty clear that Michelle Malkin and logic don’t play well together, but what's really remarkable about this article is how ridiculously clueless she is about youth and popular culture. The following quote will make your head explode:

"There is even a new genre of music -- "emo" -- associated with promoting the cutting culture."

To which I must reply, "Guh? Guh muh dehhhhh urrrrnnnngghhh nnnuuuhhhhhhhfff? Fuh flagh! Muhfarfuhblah!! Serrrooooo!!! Woop wamp weee!!!! Nuh nuh nuh nuh waaaa fffttttpppppphhhh bleh."

I hope you agree.