Some Country for Old Men

Many years ago — before it turned into the stupid person’s USA Today — the New York Times used to cover news. Or so we’ve heard. Lately, though, all we’ve seen in the Old Grey Lady are stories about raccoons and subway musicians. (Interesting note: the guy in that picture is even creepier in real life. He’s not so much a musician as a guy who travels around with a box of dancing dolls and a keyboard. True story.)

Anyway, we’d just about given up on the Times when damnit if she didn’t just suck us right back in with a hard-hitting story about hugging! Yay, hugging!

Turns out kids these days (damn kids) — when they’re not all doped up on marijuana and sexting each other — are into something called “hugging”. Take it away, Woodward and Bernstein.

There is so much hugging at Pascack Hills High School in Montvale, N.J., that students have broken down the hugs by type:

There is the basic friend hug, probably the most popular, and the bear hug, of course. But now there is also the bear claw, when a boy embraces a girl awkwardly with his elbows poking out.

There is the hug that starts with a high-five, then moves into a fist bump, followed by a slap on the back and an embrace.

There’s the shake and lean; the hug from behind; and, the newest addition, the triple — any combination of three girls and boys hugging at once.

OK, we get it. Kids are hugging, and they’re coming up with sexy, sometimes hedonistic ways of doing it. What of it, good sirs?

Girls embracing girls, girls embracing boys, boys embracing each other — the hug has become the favorite social greeting when teenagers meet or part these days. Teachers joke about “one hour” and “six hour” hugs, saying that students hug one another all day as if they were separated for the entire summer.

Did everyone get that? The New York Times — the newspaper of record — has an entire article today letting us know that kids use hugs as a way to say ‘hello.’ Nevermind that crazy Walnuts McCain was caught hugging George W. Bush in the picture above, or that, FUCK, people hug all the goddamn time.

In no way is this a story. You don’t need to look any further than the experts cited to see that. (Most of them are kids.)

“We like to get cozy,” said Katie Dea, an eighth grader at Claire Lilienthal Alternative School in San Francisco. “The high-five is, like, boring.”

As boring as, like, speaking properly?

“If somebody were to not hug someone, to never hug anybody, people might be just a little wary of them and think they are weird or peculiar,” said Gabrielle Brown, a freshman at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in Manhattan.

Before we go slamming young Gabrielle Brown (wait, it’s coming…probably), she may be on to something here. What kind of loser doesn’t like a good hug?

Amy Heaton, a freshman at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Md., said casual social hugging seemed disingenuous to her. “Hugging is more common in my opinion in people who act like friends,” she said. “It’s like air-kissing. It’s really superficial.”

Dude, Amy Heaton is such a total spaz. I mean, did you see what she was wearing today? Those jeans, what are they, like, her mom’s! Amirite!

Now, seriously, New York Times, can we stop with these stories? There’s a new supreme court nominee (you may have heard about that), a couple of wars, Kim Jong-Il’s straight cold shootin’ missiles into the ocean, and this is what you’re reporting? Kids like to hug? You really want to run this story in the same week that you ran “Kids are all getting injured from texting“? You sure about this?

UPDATE: This story — about how kids like to hug! — is the No. 1 story on nytimes.com.