Culture war, crew-neck division
The always-fashionable E. M. Zanotti says that the left wing has way better T-shirts:
I don’t get angry about the tee shirts because of the slogans. There’s some truth to the idea that youth carries with it liberalism. Kids don’t have to pay bills or deal with the economic implications of the market on a daily basis, they aren’t looking at a draft so they won’t be immediately headed to war, and all they get from their progressivism-infused public school systems are touchy-feely soliloquies about the dangers of global warming and the horrors of the third world. Peace and the Earth are great things, don’t get me wrong, and without some imbued sense of reality, it’s easy to see how those two things might outweigh actual, physical, day-to-day concerns of the country. My generation is stupid; kids are stupid. I can live with it as long as they continue to pay into social security and get the hell off of my lawn. The more I talk about it, the more I tend to look like — John McCain.
What annoys me is that there’s a generation of conservatives and libertarians out there who have sorely failed at coming up with catchy slogans that adequately describe their ideological leanings, and moreover, that they manage to publish what few slogans they have on tee shirts that tend to look a little like they were designed for Christian bookstores. Hideous, malformed things that replicate K-Mart purchases of the past, or works of art produced by chimpanzees on acid using Microsoft Paint. At least “I Only Date Democrats” serves as a billboard for one’s political leanings, and eliminates the need to take another girl to the bar just so that you can have her pose as your lesbian lover when ugly guys try to buy you a drink.
Just for comparison, here’s a picture of E. M. with John McCain.
Addendum: Reasons not to wear a politically-themed T-shirt:
I don’t like inviting debate when I’m out in public, and politically themed t-shirts seem to beg to do that. I have a t-shirt declaring “Prairies are our rain forests” which is about as political as I get, and I once ran into someone — at a cookout to celebrate a colleague’s birthday no less — who wanted to argue it with me and would not let it drop even when it was clear I wasn’t interested in rising to the bait.
And it would really be a drag to, say, be trying to find the best carton of strawberries at the wal-mart and have someone trying to argue your t-shirt slogan with you.
Then again, the sort of folks who really, truly value political commentary on T-shirts don’t strike me as the sort who’d shop for produce at Wal-Mart. Not that I ever notice one way or another.
McGehee »
21 June 2008 · 9:55 am
EMZ quoted a line that would make an excellent conservative slogan, IMHO.
torasham »
24 June 2008 · 9:35 pm
i am agree with you. i’am just imagine, t-shirt is another efectively slogan even for politic.