Paul McCarthy's Tree is the holiday gift that keeps on giving. First, the massive inflatable butt plug sparked right wing outrage and vandalism; then, it inspired French president Francois Hollande to pen an impassioned butt plug defense. Now, the giant butt plug is gone, but hundreds of ordinary-sized butt plugs have sprung up in its wake.

The Boston Globe, among our country's most venerated journalistic institutions, republished a New York Times story about chocolate on its website today. For some reason, the photo it chose to accompany that story on Twitter shows a chocolate butt plug next to a chocolate Santa Claus holding a chocolate butt plug.

Francois Hollande, President of France, has something to say to the haters about the giant inflatable butt plug that was recently removed from Paris's Place Vendome: get used to it!!!

An 80-foot inflatable butt plug by American artist Paul McCarthy was cut down from its supports early Saturday morning by vandals, forcing authorities to deflate the installation that many prudes in the city of Paris saw as an eyesore.

In Place Vendome, one of Paris's beautiful historic squares, next to a 19th-century column commemorating Napoleon's glory in the Battle of Austerlitz, sits a 24-foot inflatable butt plug. Despite the city's reputation as haven for cosmopolitan artsy types, some Parisians aren't having it.