…and as much as I’d like to, I can’t take any credit for this.
Our very popular Toxic Waste tee was used last week by online media behemoth Gawker as a visual accent in a blog post riffing on fallout from the market meltdown. The piece doesn’t really address the shirt in any way — it’s a metaphor, you see — but any press is good press (or so the mantra goes). We commend Gawker, apparently the site for NYC-related gossip, for their good taste in tee shirts.
Major props to FIC superfan Anne Lewis for bringing this to our attention here at It Goes To 11. On a related note, let me use this as a convenient opportunity to segue into a final word on FIC tee-spotting. If you scout our shirts somewhere cool (in print, on-stage, the web, tv, etc.), please, by all means, let us know. Photographs, video clips, links — the more specific the evidence, the better. If it’s something we don’t know about or arranged ourselves behind the scenes, we’ll hook you up with some FIC swag. No joke, yo.
Last week, I wrote a post about embattled United States Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska that was in a tight spot, steering down a double-barreled shotgun of federal ethics charges and a bitterly contested bid for reelection against a spirited Democratic candidate, Mark Begich.
Stevens’ colleagues at the Republican State Party, observant readers will no doubt recall from my earlier blog entry, had these shocking, but poorly designed, garments printed for a Welcome Home rally just prior to the election.
Lost in the white hot glow of Obama’s election night victory was news that United States Senator Ted Stevens (R, Alaska) was locked in an exceedingly tight contest with his Democratic challenger, Mark Begich, the Mayor of Anchorage. Even now, more than one week after the election, no winner has been named in what is shaping up as a crucial race that will help determine control of the Senate.
Stevens, an icon in his state who has held federal office since 1968, was convicted on federal ethics charges the week before the election, having failed to disclose a number of lavish gifts bestowed upon him by friends, lobbyists and contractors. This development prompted the majority of political pundits to write him off and other politicians to call for his resignation.
On the weekend before the election, Stevens returned to Alaska and addressed his followers in an airplane hanger. Ever the pugilist, the Senator defended his record and defiantly proclaimed his innocence (”our founding fathers knew that mistakes could be made and innocent men could be wrongly convicted…this is one of those times”) which provided some red meat for his Luddite supporters. As the New York Times reported, Stevens spent more than half of his 8-minute speech besmirching the prosecutors in his case.
With the Presidential election now less than a day away (thankfully), t-shirt entrepreneurs on both sides of the political spectrum are scrambling to milk the Obama cash cow for every last drop of cream.
Urban Outfitters, for example, peddles no less than 11 Barack-related designs. As it is, I’m rather partial to this one and its cute word play:
(The irony, you ask? The company’s leadership is rumored to shower politicians on the extreme Right with financial $upport. Commerce and politics have always been strange bedfellows.)
More examples of shirts in this playful vein are plentiful. Take these two, which riff on the same pun.
Still not convinced of Barack’s commercial potential? Take a peek then at Zazzle.com, which offers more than 30,000 Obama-related items that encompasses everything from t-shirts to skateboard decks. Not to be outdone, Cafepress.com also features a seemingly infinite number — 87,500, to be approximate — of user-submitted designs that can be individually customized with regards to color, size, text and image placement. As you might imagine, they range from creative to crass, stupid to smart and inspired to insipid.
As reported Wednesday by the arbiters of cool over at Pitchfork, the L.A.-based, lo-fi punk rock sensations No Age were entangled in an unseemly dispute with the powers-that-be at CBS earlier this week.
The band, glowingly profiled here in this very blog just days ago, was in NYC to tape a scheduled appearance on The Late, Late Show With Craig Ferguson. Everything seemed good, until word filtered down at the last moment from corporate execs that guitarist and vocalist Randy Randall would not be allowed on-camera with his pro-Obama tee (pictured below).
As justification, CBS cited an obscure FCC policy known as the Fairness Doctrine, which requires networks to give equal airtime to opposing candidates during an election cycle. According to the Pitchfork post and an e-mail the band sent to media outlets in wake of the episode, Randall (and his partner in crime, drummer Dean Spunt) were basically told that they would either remove the offending garment in question, or not perform.
The band apparently gave some consideration to ditching, but ultimately thought better of it (the exposure being what it is) and arrived at a clever compromise: Randall turned the shirt inside out and using a thick, black sharpie, affixed “Free Health Care” to the front. It’s unlikely that this incident tops other infamous late night flare-ups, like say The Doors vs Ed Sullivan, but the twosome saved face in a tight spot with a nifty bit of damage control and subsequently took to the offensive after the taping. That old saying about life, lemons and lemonade seems particularly pertinent right here…
For what it’s worth, Ferguson tried to explain away the controversy later that day on his show before segueing into video of the almost-aborted No Age performance. As you’ll see below, he makes it quite clear that while he had nothing to do with any of his employer’s Orwellian scheming, he is not above milking them for laughs.
Readers seeking additional details about these events should turn to a piece that I found yesterday on the L.A. Times website. Amidst the fallout, the angry accusations and the blanket denials, one certainly gleans the impression that the band will be leery of making televised appearances in the future.
Feedback? Convey it here: travis@founditemclothing.com
