“Man Bites Dog” would be a welcome relief from the sometimes-terminal stupidity that seems to be making its way into the news, like this report from last month.

We’ve come to expect full intellelectual shut-down here in America, where Senator John Edwards failed to anticipate that  a $400 haircut might undermine his position as a man of the people, and where the CEOs of the Big Three auto makers flew to Washington, D.C., each in his own private jet, to ask congress for money to bail out their failing businesses.  But there’s something astonishingly disturbing about an adult who fails to recognize the difference between a giant Panda Bear and a puppy … or a Beany Baby.

“Yang Yang was so cute and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn’t expect he would attack,” the 20-year-old student, surnamed Liu, said in a local hospital, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

As I’ve already written, the sages predict that the generation before the messianic era will be characterized by hesik haDa’as — the failure of reason.  Perhaps the militant activism for same-sex marriage and the search for affection from a brightly-colored omnivore are symptoms of the same affliction:  a profound, irrational confusion over the nature of love and intimacy.

There was a time, not so long ago, when sexual perversion may have existed but was kept securely locked in the closet.  Social pressure forced abherrent sexual behavior underground.  It existed, but it wasn’t fashionable.  Consequently, it wasn’t terribly attractive.

As the line of acceptibility shifts, we can expect more stories like this one, and further demands from the radical fringe.