T-Shirk

One of these T-shirts is sold on John Aravosis’ AMERICABlog.

One is from Rush Limbaugh's website.

Can you tell which is which?


Now, I am a huge fan of AMERICABlog. I check it ten times a day. John breaks big stories and is relentless towards the Bush Administration (The coverage of Jeff Gannon was my personal favorite.) But I think that many top liberal bloggers get so overwhelmed (and who can blame them) by being CONSTANTLY at the front lines of the insane shit transpiring in the world today that the inevitable gallows/ER-humor sets in to offset outrage fatigue. Which I understand. Exposure to absurdity requires release.

What I can’t accept, however, is why the fuck anyone would honestly think any good is being done by wearing a T-shirt about Guantanamo Bay, even one reading Please ask me about Guantanamo Bay. Dittohead-types are wannabe schoolyard bullies who think this shit is funny. But to be truly opposed to torture, extraordinary rendition and prisoner abuse, you must oppose the dehumanization of people: the erasure of a detainee’s humanity, their objectification, their particularity denatured to ABSTRACTION.

And so, if you are opposed to this depersonalization, why are you buying a fucking T-SHIRT, a "IRONIC" T-SHIRT ABOUT TORTURE THAT IS INDISTIGUISHABLE FROM THE SHIRTS ON THE "PRO-TORTURE" WEBSITE, when what you should be doing is spending that 13 bucks of time or money talking to other people, donating it to Amnesty International or contacting your reps? You can't use the same medium to express supposed outrage at the forced sodomy of maimed detainees as you would to express dude, I saw Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at Coachella and they fuckin' rocked! What the fuck is wrong with you people? You are essentially DOING THE BAD GUYS' WORK FOR THEM! There's nothing IRONIC or CLEVER when people are TORTURED, FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

Snark has its places: ranting, stand-up comedy, bar conversation. But the guy wearing the git mo? shirt is the biggest kind of prick, interpolating his need of public in-group clever-points over any actual empathy with the crimes that occasion his righteousness: in this case, particular men in a particular hellhole, feeding tubes being shoved down their throats again and again and again.

The Dittohead may be an asshole: Mr. Wardrobe by Cafe Press is a COLOSSAL asshole.