| Good morning. In the last few days, you may have come across and even chuckled at a seemingly endless outpouring of JD Vance memes — y’ know, the ones depicting our sad excuse of a vice president in Michelin Man-esque guises as absurd as the caterpillar in A Bug’s Life. But are we falling back into a retrograde trap of gender-based and body-shaming tropes? As Staff Writer Rhea Nayyar warns in her analysis today, “This brand of surface-level humor is too apathetic, a lukewarm coping mechanism meant to turn our biggest threats into digestible jokes.” In the news, the ACLU is suing the National Endowment for the Arts over its compliance with Trump’s “unconstitutionally vague” and anti-trans concept of “gender ideology.” And with workers at the Brooklyn Museum facing sweeping layoffs, union members, city officials, and supporters rallied outside the institution yesterday in the hopes that leadership might walk back the cuts. Hyperallergic has been closely following both of these stories over the past month. If you have tips or information, you can always write to us at tips@hyperallergic.com — we promise to respect your anonymity. Also below, don’t miss A View From the Easel, Required Reading, and the cheese puff shaped like a Pokémon that sold for over $87,000. Cheeto, I choose you!!! — Valentina Di Liscia, News Editor |
