After getting burned earlier this year for spotlighting a specious social phenomenon on its front page (see Gelf commentary here and here), the New York Times went back to the well on Sunday, giving A1 treatment to a story about stuffed animals tied to the front of trucks. This time, though, the editors made sure that they had the evidence to answer that most important of questions: Why are the toys there?

Here's the Times's nut graf:

Interviews with half a dozen truckers as well as folklorists, art historians and anthropologists revealed the grille-mounted plush toy to be a product of a tangle of physical circumstance, proximate and indirect influence, ethnic tradition, occupational mindset and Jungian archetype.

Has the paper of record ventured into self-parody?