by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service Fashion Writer
This spring, ostentation is the name of the game (Derwood P. Ostentation, actually, but that's a story for another time) on the runways of Paris, Milan and Rising Falls, Belarus. The small red As that once dotted high end business suits have been replaced by a single bold character.
The trend was led, as it so often is these days, by Wall Street pirate Raj O'Goodmozrubfein, who created financial instruments so obscure that attempting to understand them caused IBM's Watson to start smoking and eventually blow up in an homage to an ancient Star Trek episode. O'Goodmozrubfein eschewed the subtle in his latest televised shaming and went straight for the double breasted pinstripe with the three inch letter A on the right breast.
"It was a bold move," said fashion journalist and anti-Jenny Craig activist Armenium Phitoplanktonite. "Raj was one of half a dozen people who made billions even as the stock market lost a jabillion dollars of value. He…he has taken shame fashion to a whole new level!"
In the 12 years since public shaming replaced prison sentences for white collar criminals convicted of theft or fraud of $100 million or more, the nature of the punishment has changed. At first, business tycoons looked decidedly embarrassed to make their confessions in prime time while wearing the red As (chosen because of some misplaced sense of tradition, although bloggers soon came to call them "flaming red Assholes").
"It was brutal television," said John Brigoodmitpennow, critic for the Hate It Now Website. "They were so nervous and what they said was so banal, it quickly stopped being fun watching the disgraced executives squirm. Seriously. Reruns of Winnifred the Hippy Hoppy Rhino got better ratings, and most of its 12 to 16 year-old audience was already in bed by that hour!"
However, when they realized that public shaming had no long-term consequences (except, perhaps, for the need to increase one's security staff), the disgraced executives realized that they could actually have fun with their public confessions. Jared Blankskillratlayoff, who literally made his billions by foreclosing on the mortgages of widows and orphans, bought his first half hour of shaming and hired Martin Scorsese to direct it.
"Jared's mea culpa was written by an Academy Award winner!" Brigoodmitpennow enthused. "Now, that was an exercise in public shaming that was worth watching!"
Once this had become the norm - with high ratings to prove it - competition to see who could wear the most stylish As began. The scarlet letter became all the rage at the hautest of haute couture shows. Of course, knockoffs made their way down the fashion food chain for those white collar criminals who didn't meet the exacting creteria for public shaming.
"You've got to throw the little people a bone," Phitoplanktonite laughed.
"I wanted a simple yellow daisy knee-high skirt with a large red A on it, and they wouldn't sell me one!" pouted celebrity celebrity Oshkosh Kardsooksonrichon. "Just because I made my billions the old-fashioned way - I was born so fabulous that my daddy had to make them for me! It's not fair!"
Hmm. Ninety-eight per cent of the first 100 people who have gotten their letters were men. This suggests that either women do not have the opportunity to commit sufficiently dastardly crimes, or that they are deterred from committing them because they fear they won't look good wearing letters.
"Shaming fashion has, historically, been hard on women," Phitoplanktonite simply explained.
Token smart person Amy Sheshutshotshitbam protested this fashion trend: "No, no, no, no, no! You can't shame people who know no shame! It's like trying to teach an armadillo to sing the lead in La Traviata! For the Met! You need penalties! In law! And, serious enforcement! That's the only thing that will get them to stop! Aaargh! Why do I even have to explain this to you? If you steal a loaf of bread, you go to jail for 20 years, but if you steal a million people's pensions, you get half an hour on TV to cry about how sorry you are that you did what you did, with no promise that you won't do it again! How does this make any sense?" Sheshutshotshitbam bit her knuckle in an attempt to stop physically exploding from despair.
"Sometimes," she muttered, "being the token smart person is a thankless task!"