The World's Embarrassing Refute of Knut

"No Cubs over 15, Billy! Look, have you ever seen a Cub that's gone to green? You'll have to leave Cathedral then, Billy, because they won't let you stay here. And if you do try to stay here, Billy, your young friends here will rip your guts apart!"~Logan, Logan's Run

Poor Knut.

I actually began hearing portions of this story a few weeks ago (and by the time an event "hits" the Sunday morning Today show it's likely yesterday's news) the plight of this particular polar-bear "cub" has gone mainstream over the past few days. Now, Knut's meteoric rise and subsequent fall has come full circle...

In the wake of headlines screaming that "Knut Outgrows Fans," I would like to suggest that it is we, the celebrity-obsessed-disposable-hero world culture that was never worthy of Knut. Now like all things we become bored or jealous of, we look for reasons to make Knuts marginalization of dissppaearance acceptable and even understandable.

A captive-born polar bear who was born at the Zoologischer Garten Berlin on December 2006, Knut was rejected by his mother at birth, and was subsequently raised by zoo keepers. The first polar bear cub to survive past infancy at the Berlin Zoo in over thirty years, the cute and cuddle Knut, quickly became an international media darling and marketing tool. "Knut-mania" resulted in the zoo posting record attendance and tie-in profits. His story was the stuff of movies, or at least popular plush toys.

But, as many realize and few acknowledge, even cubs, puppies, kitties and human babies grow-up... just as has Knute. The even harsher truth of our world, like some bizarre Logan's Run is that when things (people, cars, animal) grow older or more mature we are somehow under this misperception that they also become equally undesirable.

It is generally regarded as acceptable to feel comfortable dismissing those animals who grow older, and less cute. As an "animal" on the cusp of doing so (I'll be forty in just over a year), it's not so easy to accept this belief when we are the one’s being told we are losing “value."

Poor Knute. Poor me. Poor us!

Breathe in, breathe out... YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!