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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWe owe you an apology
This week was all about the apology.
It wasnt just that the New York Times had to apologize for mistakenly referring to Dick Cheney as the former president of the United States. Apologies abounded! Like the one from Jacob Dorsey, the 19-year-old Republican candidate for the Wisconsin Assembly, who not only apologized but dropped out of the race after his hurtful (his term) comments about black people and gays resurfaced on social media. Future GOP politicians, take note: Its never too early to figure out that calling people f*gs and n*ggers on Twitter and YouTube might not be a winning election strategy. Even in Wisconsin!
Speaking of insensitivity, the next OOPS came from the editors of the Lancaster New Era, which had published an editorial cartoon that compared cramped, modern air travel with the horrors of humans packed into slave ships. To somehow link the inconveniences of air travel with slavery in general and the slave ships in particular was not only just plain wrong it was deeply hurtful, the editors later wrote with what seemed like genuine remorse.
More ambiguously, Sarah it takes a village idiot Palin came along this week to declare that she owe[s] America a global apology [sic]. Not for refusing to go away but for John McCain not winning the presidency in 2008.
We were trying to figure out if Palin finally realized that her candidacy was a global joke when along came another apology, this time from the retail giant Urban Outfitters. This one was a doozy. And, no, they werent apologizing for for making teenagers look funny.
Urban Outfitters never tires of offending people selling things like a Monopoly board game parody called Ghettopoly (where players build crack houses and projects instead of houses and hotels) and stuff like T-shirts declaring Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl thats printed amid a sea of dollar signs. Its part of a long list of ways the company has pissed people off.
This time, one of their Mensa-Merchandisers thought it would be a good idea to sell faux-vintage university sweatshirts. Not just any university. Kent State University. Circa 1970. And part of the sweatshirts faux vintage effect include what looks like bullet holes and bloodstains.
In case you grew up on Texas schoolbooks, Kent State University is where, in 1970, four unarmed students were caught up in a protest about the escalation of the Vietnam War when along came the patriotic Ohio National Guard to shoot them to death. Nine more students were injured; one was permanently paralyzed. Half a century later, the chilling details of that day still spark outrage.
So what the hell was Urban Outfitters thinking? The red stains are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray, went the official response from the company. Oh, and the bullet holes made it difficult to fit longer words like Virginia Tech or Sandy Hook Elementary on the front. Mm hm.
Is there anything Urban Outfitters wont commodify? Kent State. Urban ghettos. Jewi$hne$$. We didnt even mention the time they were called out for hawking sparkly gun-shaped Christmas-tree ornaments in crime-ridden Philadelphia, or forced to stop selling a shirt with the word depression printed repeatedly across the front.
Sensitivity be damned. Offending people may not work for everyone, but Urban Outfitters obviously feels it works for them surely theyll find more ways to offend. Its going to be hard to top a bloody Kent State sweatshirt, however. So lets help them out! Since they clearly want to find the most offensive way to market their brand, what will they sell next? What do YOU think?
-- The "Helen Keller Special Edition of Scrabble" with all blank tiles?
-- American Indian blankets with "smallpox" stitched on the underside?
-- "Just for Jews" 40 Lashes Mascara?
Be as creative as Urban Outfitters in the comments.
(Published with permission of author. Original sources and poll at http://lesterandcharlie.com/2014/09/18/4-dead-in-urban-outfitters/)
fayhunter
(221 posts)is supposed to keep companies in line and result in better products, services and prices for the consumer. I remember a time when that was true, or mostly true.
It's not true anymore. It means cheap burgers for us that are the result of starvation wages for others. It has devolved into the restoration of monopolies like Exxon/Mobile. To Walmart, which convinces manufacturers that what the lose by lowering their prices and quality they will make up in volume (yeah, that works).
At least in the midst of this could pretend to have some respect for the dead and fighters for open government.
Urgh.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)They've set their own little monopolies for hubs in different cities...there's no competition on most of the routes people travel now.
fayhunter
(221 posts)I've pretty much eliminated planes from my options. Unless I have to travel far, I got for trains or buses.
bondwooley
(1,198 posts)the regulation-free, free market proving it's merit.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)...now peddled nation-wide to a universally hep-cat population. Get your worldliness cheap! All brought to you by the Anti-Establishment Establishment, Inc.
scrubthedata
(382 posts)scrubthedata
(382 posts)Some of those answers in the real poll are a little harsh. Funny, but harsh.
randome
(34,845 posts)[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you don't give yourself the same benefit of a doubt you'd give anyone else, you're cheating someone.[/center][/font][hr]