Year of the T-Shirt
Year of the T-Shirt When I was a kid, my favorite radio program featured ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his two dummies, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Charlie was the pretentious city slicker; Mortimer was his freckle-faced, buck-toothed country cousin. (Yes, I realize that there was something bizarre about featuring a ventriloquist on radio.)
I ate with a Charlie McCarthy teaspoon, and I wore a Charlie McCarthy t-shirt, which I got in trouble for wearing to a public school assembly. You can understand, then, why I'm particularly sensitive to people getting in trouble for wearing t-shirts-an offense for which 2004 has been a banner year.
? The private Cape Cod Academy in Osterville, MA, updated their student handbook, and the new guidelines forbid all t-shirts with writing on them. "This very strict new dress code is, quite honestly, ridiculous," complained the student-body vice president. "You can't really represent yourself the way you'd like."
? During the national Day of Silence, an annual event sponsored by gay-rights groups, a high school junior in San Diego was not allowed to wear a t-shirt that read "Homosexuality Is Shameful" and "Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned."
"The school district wants [him] to be politically correct," his attorney said. "We want the school district to be constitutionally correct."
? When the father of Nick Berg, who was beheaded in Iraq by al Qaeda-connected militants, was a guest on Good Morning America, he declined to remove his t-shirt that read "Bring the Troops Home Now," so ABC wouldn't show it on the air.
? Michelle Goldberg reported in Salon that author Irene Dische was covering a George Bush speech for the German paper Die Zeit, sitting with artist Art Spiegelman, when police removed them both from the press stands and questioned them about their t-shirts. Spiegelman's said, "Pray For a Secular Society"; Dische's featured the word "Bush" and Chinese characters. She convinced police it said, "I love Bush." It actually meant "Shit on Bush and flush him away."
? A woman wearing a t-shirt with the words "President Bush You Killed My Son" was detained after she interrupted a campaign speech by Laura Bush.
? A radical Hong Kong lawmaker won a fight to wear his Che Guevara t-shirt to legislative meetings.
? In Franklin County, WA, on election day, a man reported being turned away from a polling place because he was wearing a t-shirt that said "Vote or Die."
And there's the problem with suppressing freedom of expression. How d'ya know when yer finished?