I recieved a Yahoo! Daily Wire in my e-mail today. Five links to interesting websites, and a quick synopse of them are given. Well among these was a particular link to a site advertising "t-shirt hell". Looked interesting so I clicked, and saw a t-shit saying, "Bin Laden is a big fat doodiehead", which was worn by a man with a blue wigh.

Okay, not to bad, I enter and scroll down. I was appalled to see such things on these t-shirts:

" IF YOU'RE ALREADY THIS CLOSE
WHY DON'T YOU JUST SUCK MY DICK?"

" SCHOOL SHOOTINGS TOUR
1996-2001 T-SHIRT
Coming soon to a highly repressed rural middle school near you (Only shootings with fatalities listed). "

"HOMOSEXUALS ARE GAY!
T-Shirt Hell in no way promotes or tolerates hate or prejudice. We hate you and are prejudice towards you if you believe otherwise." (I believe otherwise, so be it.)

"ABORTIONS TICKLE!
The great potato state of Idaho averages 17.2 illegal abortions yearly. That number is growing steadily."

"ANOREXIA IS PHAT!
1. Intense fear of weight gain.
2. Distorted body image
3. loss of 3 consec. menstrual periods."

"I COMMITED SUICIDE
Since you have made it this far, you deserve a reward. I think you should reward yourself by giving yourself a gift. The gift you will give yourself is a coping resource."

I do believe in the first amendment, so yes, this company can display what they choose and I cannot stop them by law. More the question of weather or not these slogans should be on the shirts, is if a major media company such as Yahoo! should advertise such things. Keep in mind that minors recieved the same e-mail and link from Yahoo!, which is perfectly legal by the way.

GIMMIE YOUR OPPINIONS.

GIMMIE YOUR OPPINIONS.

What you have described is the right of free speech and your right to disagree.

Are you suggesting that a media company should have good taste? Excuse me for a minute while I stop laughing.

Actually, either the people at Yahoo are just genuinely stupid and have no notion of consequence (if only for the abortion one which is sure to enrage a few people) or there's a disgruntled rogue who's slipping in these things as a means to protest the wretched lifestyle as a dot-com slave. Sort of like the Disney animators who slip in bits of porn into children's movies. In which case, God-speed little rogue.


egads... I nearly typed 'rouge' instead of 'rogue'. I suspect that would have made less sense.

I think the "I commited suicide" one is kinda funny. So is the Homosexuals are Gay one. See... cause of irony... erm, yeah.

What is wrong with sending this to minors? I know that when I was in high school "Dick" was just one of the words we said, so they're not teaching them new words. Is it the school shooting one? If kids decide to shoot a school because of a t-shirt, there are underlying problems.

I gotta admit that tasteless seems to be the word that most aptly fits. I would think that this is one that will not be in the tshirt business for very long. Unless tastes have changed that much since I went to school. That is something I do not think I would have worn or would wear now. Maybe the new style is to wear them inside out....

I would hope so wet1, and I go to high school.

Thank god we have a limited dress/decency code.

Bah!
People need to get over themselves.
That's half the problem with the world today is that since we've striven to be understanding and tolerant, people have lost their sense of humor about anything. I've half a mind to buy a few of those t-shirts and wear them, just to prove a point.
And I've yet to hear why minors should be kept away from such material. It's obviously "dangerous" in some way.

i tend to agree with the last person we can't just take offence at everything or we might as well just be robots with no joking at all

I had an idea for a t-shirt once:

"Got adjectives?"

Those t-shirts seemed fairly satirical, and I really admire that art...I love being sarcastic, aaaah its such a high when you say something really incredibly funny (whether or not the people around you think so).

Here follows a satirical line that I made up upon hearing about a hillbilly-antisemitic neighbor. This is not really a joke but it is meant to show how moronic racism is of any kind, and how often it seems to just pile oxymorons on top of each other. I am not an anti-semite, in fact I'm half jewish, so don't take this the wrong way.

"If jews are so stupid, then how come they run the world?"

You see it is an oxymoron, as hillbillies around here think jewish=stupid and terrorists think that jews run the world. Yet none of these statements are true and they are all plainly idiotical, which hopefully is obviously illustrated in the previous quote.

Thoughts?

Ok, as a progress report, I have some gay friends, and I went to them for their opinions of the "Homosexuals are gay" shirts. They thought it was very funny.

Have you ever noticed how it's *rarely* the "offended" minority group that has a problem with a tshirt, or a joke, or a school mascott? It's almost always upper-middle class white kids who have nothing better to do with their time, and-maybe because of some deep seeded white guilt-have taken it upon themselves to liberate some group from the terrible and offensive whatevers that have gone on too long.

This is what happened to my college, Miami Univeristy. The college was built in the very early 1800's, WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE MIAMI INDIAN TRIBE. Anyone from the Miami tribe are still automatically admitted, and can get all sorts of scholarships to basically make the education free. The mascott of Miami used to be the Redskins. But, some bored white kids on our campus SOUGHT OUT the leaders of the Miami indian tribe (somewhere in Oklahoma, I think) and talked them into issuing a statement about the racially charged name "redskins" and how they thought it was offensive, even though they had endorsed the name in years past.

The fact of the matter is that we have entirely too many people who whine about too many little things. Wearing a shirt that says boldly on the front "I commited suicide" does not endorse people killing themselves. It won't make people kill themselves. It won't! Really. Seeing a shirt that says "Homosexuals are gay" is not going to make someone any more or any less hateful of homosexual people. It's not going to detract from the difficult time that many gay people have in their lives. It won't increase violence against gays. It simply won't.

Honestly, I'm not really sure what people are so afraid of. Maybe deep down, there is a group of people who knows that if people were able to look past things, if they were able to make jokes and not worry about what "message" it sent, if we really COULD see that reactive groups are dangerous AND divisive no matter who they say they're trying to help, if for one god damned day there could be some *actual* understanding, if people could simply grow up and get over themselves and their center-of-all-known-existance-everyone's-out-to-get-me mentality (yes that means ALL people of ALL races, white, black, green, blue and polkadotted) that is perpetuated by two particular organizations which will at this time remain nameless, if we could achieve all of this that the world would actually BE a better place, fewer people would be pawns, and everyone MIGHT just be a little happier.

Maybe what you're trying to say is that if a joke is grounded and generally makes sense, i.e homosexuals are gay or jews are jewish, the people seeing the shirts won't have a problem and will probably laugh at the shirts once they realize that they aren't meant to be offensive but are really meant to poke fun at those who would offend jews or gays.

But I think saying that rich white boys stand up for any racial slur in a joking matter that works the same way as the above paragraph is a generalization, because some jokes or t-shirts may in fact be really racist but on the outside appear to be poking fun at racists, maybe like that whole thing in a power plant *somewhere* where they had nooses hanging on telephone poles, black employees were underpaid and black customers were overcharged. The blacks were the ones that stood up for their rights and now each and every one of them is going to get some insane amount of money because of it. Makes me wish that a rich kid did something like that to me (half jewish but doesn't fit the profile at all) so I could sue him for every penny and scrap of food he had to live out my life a happy and content person.

Originally posted by Pollux V
Makes me wish that a rich kid did something like that to me (half jewish but doesn't fit the profile at all) so I could sue him for every penny and scrap of food he had to live out my life a happy and content person.Makes me wish that rich and poor alike would stop doing that, actually.

Peace.

Yes...

Hell, don't get upset until they come out with a

KILL A NIGGER FOR GOD!

Tee shirt. After all, it's all in fun.

Take care ;)

I apologise. That is a situation that needed to be changed, and the people who were taken advantage of did the correct thing in standing up. But I think you misconstrued my argument. It's that the rich and bored college students are the ones making most of the unnecessary fusses in the world, mostly about things which were actually intended in innocence. My point was not to say that minority groups never have problems, it was simply to say that fusses over minor things tend to leave bad tastes in people's mouths for the big things and the serious issues.

Then I believe we find ourselves in agreement, Riomacleod.

Now you've got me curious.

Which BOB said "Fuck them if they can't take a joke" ????

Take care ;)

J. R. "Bob" Dobbs
The Church of the SubGenius (http://www.subgenius.com)

Peace.

thecurly1,

It's just the media doing it's work again...
Everything for the damn green paper...
It's like the society works... unfortunatly.
It's the essence of capitalism.
Competion...
Publicity...
Violence in the name of "freedom"...

If we want to change, we have to cause revolution in the world, against capitalism.

It's just a mount of crap...

... Patience... :(

Love,
Nelson

I swear, not a week goes by that capitalism isn't blamed for something. Why do you think that it's the fault of an economic system that these apparently "evil" shirts were made? What is wrong with free market competition? Please, if you're going to post something, have the decency to give a better argument than "Capitalism sucks because I said so". For a better discussion of capitalism, I'd go look through the archives, because a small group of us really fleshed it out some.

Riomacleod,

Well... a system based in competition shall destroy itself and cause lots of violence. And the media allways brainwashing people with their bunch of products. Many are completly meaningless and desnecessary! Just watch this programs about products... it's all junk. Even in The Simpsons sometimes talk about it too (not everything on TV is bad... :D).

A society where everyone fights to get "the highter place" is doomed to destroy itself. A society based on service and virtues is a strong and good society. It's not our case...

Our society promotes violence in TV, and in the movies... and we even let our children watch them! From where do you think a guy had an idea of two planes crashing into two buildings killing thousands of innocent people? And then, the Americans go there and kill thousands or even millions of Afghanistan civilians in the name of "freedom"! What freedom is that that make everyone be frightend with the possibility of even a nuclear war? Americans allways promoted violence and are still promoting it.

Everyone wants to be the most powerful, even if this means destroying others' lifes.

It just all propaganda in the name of the green paper!

Love,
Nelson

I don't see that, Truthseeker. I'll grant that the media does do its fair share of obfuscation, but you have to know that that will happen in *any* economic system.
Competition is a natural process. It's what shapes and directs the creation of all living things. One of the reasons why our societies are so strong is because there has been constant competition to keep them.

Why is competition bad? If the place you work at has one position open for a manager of an area, then shouldn't the person who is best get that position? or should you promote Stupid McGee because he's been around the longest?

A society which fights to get to a better life is more likely to actually survive than a society where everyone maintains the status quo. Even if there are winners and losers in the first society even the losers are better off than the people plodding along and sharing.

The reason that societies crumble is because there's NO competition. Because they're not constantly making themselves better, militarily, economically, and educationally, they'll fall behind eventually, become content and lazy, and eventually stagnate and die.

What is the impetus for making new things if there is no competition? Why should any agency try to make a product better if everyone has to buy their product anyway? Corporations have a responsibility to make money. That's their sole purpose for existance. If i wasn't getting paid I sure as hell wouldn't be working where I'm working right now.

From where do you think a guy had an idea of two planes crashing into two buildings killing thousands of innocent people?

I'm curious to hear where you think that he got the idea. I always thought it was from advisors who were pretty smart. Maybe you think the media made Bin Laden do this? Maybe he's just a victim of society, instead of a very intelligent general. Personally, i don't think that the Afghanistan "war" has much to do with the role of capitalism.

Like I said before: Make your case, we're all waiting.

Riomacleod,

I don't see that, Truthseeker. I'll grant that the media does do its fair share of obfuscation, but you have to know that that will happen in *any* economic system.

There's... we just need to invent it... ;)
Aren't we so creative?

The reason that societies crumble is because there's NO competition. Because they're not constantly making themselves better, militarily, economically, and educationally, they'll fall behind eventually, become content and lazy, and eventually stagnate and die.

Look to goofyfish's signature...
The true victory is when you win yourself.
A rich man can be economically victorious. He wins everyone. But why can't he stop smoking? Is he really a winner?
Is very easy to win from the others... but it's hard to win from yourself.

Competition against others is not healthy... there's no winners when you almost kill yourself comparing to others and trying to be allways the best.
There'll be allways a fight, because there'll never be a winner that last forever...

I continue later...
My friend wants to use the computer...

Love,
Nelson

A rich man can be economically victorious. He wins everyone. But why can't he stop smoking? Is he really a winner?

it isnt a matter of win vs lose. I suppose there is an element of that in the cause to be the best that you can be in a field. Who goes out and says "I want to be a mediocre scientist" or "I wan't to be a slightly below average cook?" I find it hard to believe that anyone would say that.

The rich man has "won" in a manner-assuming he actually made his money and didn't inherit it-because he took a look at his situation, and worked hard to change it. This is the first generation that has seen "spontaneous" wealth. In almost every other time, the wealth was accumulated over generations, and that's still the case today. Are you better off than your parents were? Than your grandparents? Mine were german farmers, poorly educated and farming to stay alive. I'm a chemist. I compete for jobs, and for mates. That competition has required me to become a very good chemist, work hard, and succede at it.
Free-market society is what allowed people to move into other roles in society.

Competition ENSURES the survival of fit animal species, because only the best are doing what the best are good at. Unfortunately, this means that there are the people who aren't good enough at anything to do anything. In nature, the omega wolf generally leaves the pack to starve, the weak antelope are caught by the lion. Humanity requires we take care of our weak links, which I'm not disagreeing with. i have no problem with the advantaged taking care of the disadvantaged, within reason.

Everything that I'm saying is that the system should be more centrated in people as individuals and then make it universal. We must first take care of ourselves and then, take care of the others. If you, yourself have problems, how can you help others. That's the real competition: beat yourself. It's what sports are all about. Actually, you can see the difference pretty well in sports. Those who fight to beat themselves... like runners for example... they will allways get better and better REGARDLESS to the others in the "competition". But the ones who pay attention to be the best than the others, will never accomplish nothing, because he is not centered in what he can do by himself, but what he could be. A real winner fights against himself. You are your worst enemy. You can beat yourself more easily than others can do it. That's the true spirit of sport, as well as life. You have to recognize your limits and do YOUR best, not worring about the others. Can someone with wheelchair run faster than a runner that has two legs? No... but he, in the wheelchair, has to be really strong first to fight against his belief that he can't do it because he is in a wheelchair, then to make a real effort to actually run with a wheelchair. He is a true winner.

Love,
Nelson