Sweden's trade minster issued a formal rebuke of the country's iconic furniture retailer Ikea for airbrushing women out of the Saudi Arabian version of its familiar ready-to-assemble furniture catalog.
That rumor that Google is providing a restroom for transgender employees at the search engine's gigantic Chelsea offices? It's delicious, but probably not true. Delicious, because Google's earnest political correctness—the company's well-networked gay employees call themselves gayglers—is so much at odds with the culture of the media establishment, which still retains some of the glamor and sexism of the 1960's Manhattan portrayed in Mad Men. Probably not true, according to one trans urinator: "It might be that they have the same thing that we have, which is in most buildings in the lobby, there's a single restroom for men/women (for visitors mostly). I do know that some people who are transitioning choose to use that, but its not the "trannies only" restroom, which would have a picture of what on it exactly?" Google's press office didn't get back to us.
As the folks over at CBS's Public Eye note, summer is the season of the list. (The article functions as a collection of lists itself, which is probably intentional.) Why is this the case? Well, nothing happens between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and lazy journalists need to fill space. This problem also affects bloggers, who are even lazier than journalists. Inspired by Jon Friedman's contribution to the genre ("The biggest media stories of 2007 are..."), we decided to make another list of our own biggest stories this year, as judged by another special correspondent. She's very moody and capricious and opinionated! You could even say lippy!
