Wow, I miss one day of blogging, and suddenly Park Slope has turned into the hyperventilating headquarters for Maclaren's Rahm Emanuel Appreciation Society:
"There's swine flu and Maclaren strollers," said Dara Kass, a mother of two, as she prepared to order at a Starbucks on Seventh Avenue.Oh, don't worry, we'll know who you are, just by glancing down at your hinge cover-less strollers. How long before they come out with hinge covers in trendy designer fabrics, or with reflectors you can spot coming from halfway across Prospect Park?...
But some Park Slope parents also said that the worries were overblown and that safety with strollers required little more than common sense. Several said they would continue to use their Maclaren strollers as they always had, and others said they were not even planning to register for the protective shield.
Most of those parents then asked that their names not be published, out of fear that they would come across as bad parents.
Did someone say trendy?
"It's sort of a chic thing," Brigitte Prat, owner of Lulu's for Baby, a baby boutique on Fifth Avenue, said of the stroller. "It hit the market at the perfect time, and now it's the stroller to get."Yes, there's never been a better time to buy the stroller whose unchanging design has been popular with New York yuppie parents for over 25 years. Says the woman in Paranoid Heights with giant stack of Stella McCartney Fall09 Maclarens in her basement.
Stroller Recall Stirs Unease in Park Slope [nytimes.com]
How could it be possible that a story that ultimately comes down to simple common sense continue to live on? Oh that's right, half-ass bloggers with nothing better to do with their lives keep it going. God Bless America!
Know what I love? Commenters with nothing better to do who tell bloggers they have nothing better to do.
Methinks someone owns a hinge cover.
Methinks common sense trumps hinge covers. I'll pass love.
Hah, you only have yourself to thank, John. I had actively ignored reports on reaction to the recall announcement, even the Time magazine article I got quoted in, because it seemed like self-perpetuating hysteria, frantic pushing of the media button to get another endorphin fix, when all we really needed to do was fill out a 30-second web form and keep the kids clear of the folding stroller. But your pointlessly politicized whining piqued my interest, and then the beautiful ridiculousness of that baby boutique owner's hype was irresistible.
But then the "simple common sense" narrative got a little complicated when the first details of an actual amputation emerged, and it wasn't some cell-phone-yapping, kid-ignoring Obamaniac, but a mom and a stroller salesperson demo-ing the Maclaren for the first time in a store. And then you have to wonder if "simple common sense" doesn't work the other way, too:
Isn't it "simple common sense" to expect that a premium stroller from a venerable brand being demo'ed in a well-established national store by a professional stroller seller doesn't pose an amputation risk the first time you open it? I would bet that until this week, the overwhelming answer would have been, "Duhyeah."
And that doesn't take into account the fact that all this happened more than five years ago, and that Maclaren left the design as-is, and that the company may have broken the law by not reporting such incidents to the CPSC as required, or that the CPSC may have been ignoring a steady stream of amputation reports all these years from all sorts of brands after all. So if you and your smug, Republican common sense don't want to see what the real story is here, then I suggest you stop checking back here every day.
People will always find some really stupid stuff to bitch about. The word amputation is always going to get headlines. Like one of the previous commenter said, I'm just amazed that this story lives on. And, if people do want the little cover thingy then that's fine I guess, but no need to get all worked up over it or try for the designer angle. Well, I'm sure I didn't add much to this thread because it's all been said before. :-)
"Rahm Emanuel Appreciation Society"
How are all the comments NOT about how awesome that is?
Because that is awesome.