I didn’t start this blog to write about Hillary Clinton every day. But this is really, really sad, people. At the right is a logo for a group with a really clever acronym (thanks to the TPM Media Borg for the reportage.) T-shirts with this logo are for sale at $25 each. Something tells me that this tactic might not be so smart. Is the “moustache rides 25 cents” t-shirt crowd even old enough to vote, let alone together enough to get registered and get out of the house on election day?
Keep it up, boys. Your mom is on her way home, and man, is she pissed.
Historiann 
It has already been a long and painful campaign season, hasn’t it? And we don’t even have the nominees yet. Sigh. But, as you say, this sort of thuggish frat-boy, craptastic nonsense will only make people more sympathetic to Hillary. Plus: $25 is really expensive for a t-shirt.
LikeLike
That’s right–so it’s clearly a stunt they’re pulling that’s designed more to get media attention than sell t-shirts. As a close friend of mine who grew up near Old Orchard Beach, Maine said, “it’s an insult to the ‘moustache rides’ t-shirt, which by comparison is pretty funny!”
LikeLike
Wow. I thought I was tasteless. That…wow. Wow. Don’t get me wrong, I like Obama and am hesitant to see someone as (inexplicably) polarizing as Clinton getting into office, but this totally sidesteps all issues. It is issuelessness itself.
I don’t know, I suspect that at $25 US a pop per irregular Fruit of the Loom the financial incentive is pretty strong among these bozos.
HJ
LikeLike
?!??!!!?
We live in strange times.
LikeLike
As horrible as this is, I applaud the fact that the wearers of this shirt would own their sexism. We all know that misogyny is alive and well in this country. What disturbs me more are the denials that gender isn’t an issue anymore, Or the politicians who hide their insidious attacks against women behind claims that certain things (like restrictions on abortion)are done “for their own good.” Or the attempt by the wearer of a “Hooters” t-shirt to deny the intention to offend. Anyone wearing this shirt is boldly embracing their sexism, and can be called out accordingly!
LikeLike
That’s right, ej–we should be grateful to the buyers and wearers of these shirts, so we know who they are and can see them coming a mile away! Remember when medieval scholar Betsy Hoffman, then the Prez of the University of Colorado, tried to make the argument in a deposition for the Katie Hnida lawsuit that the C-word could be read as an affectionate term? (Sq. might want to weigh in on this one, too.)
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/3419466/detail.html
I wonder if she’ll be asked to comment on the Clinton t-shirt? Maybe we should send her one?
LikeLike
As horrible as this is, I applaud the fact that the wearers of this shirt would own their sexism.
This strike me as the foundation for a very interesting question. I have to admit that I prefer a cultural context in which the above shirt’s seniments are legal but considered so horrible that people will only talk about them in whispers. Such a context doesn’t mean that there’s no sexism — or racism, or any other form of bigotry — so I get your point. Which reminds me of Richard Wright’s passages on the move from the South (Mississippi, if memory serves) to Chicago. Wright hated Chicago more, because he couldn’t figure out the rules. People despised him for his race, but they wouldn’t just tell him about their hatred.
I, by contrast, don’t want to know when people think I’m a Kike. That’s their business. It makes them small-minded, of course. And I don’t want to think that anti-Semitism has cost me in any real way (I don’t actually think it has, truth by told)*. But still, as long as cultural prescriptions make calling me a Kike a bad idea, I’m really much happier. At least I think I am. In short, I don’t want to live in a place where t-shirts calling Hillary disgusting names are considered okay.
But I also see how my ostrich tendencies make it less likely for real change to occur, for structural change to actually take place. And that’s a bad thing. Hmm.
* Because my people control the networks of power: banks, media, think-tanks. Duh.
LikeLike
Ari-your comment raises an interesting question about ej’s comment: are the wearers of such a t-shirt “owning” their sexism, or merely flaunting it? After all, many men could wear that shirt proudly, and deny that sexism still structures our economy, culture, and society. They just think that Hillary is an uppity C-word.
LikeLike