Finally, political products that take on terrorism, and put it on t-shirts, mugs, underwear and bumper stickers! I am apparently the last one on the global block to know about the online marketplace Cafepress.com, which bills itself as a "dynamic online retail experience."
There, according to the company press, everyone with an idea pithy enough to fit on a t-shirt or a mug can stick it on one and sell it. I went wandering the cyber-aisles this afternoon in search of "terrorism" products, thinking there were probably a few wits and sloganeers out there, and was amazed: there are exactly thousands of designs on tens of thousands of products addressing terrorism: from sincere to cynical to, strangely enough, even silly ("Flying Naked for National Security"?!)
For sincere, there is this bumper sticker, with a veritable op-ed's worth of wordage: "Drugs do NOT fund terrorism… Diamonds and gas guzzling SUVs do. THINK FOR YOURSELF AMERICA!" (If you put this on a car, hopefully it's a compact). Or, if you have gotten the point already, and only have bicycle, you can purchase a "Bush corporate greed at the gas pump Messenger Bag" (for $22.99).
There are anti-Bush t-shirts: "Fight Terrorism, Impeach Bush!"; "Yee-ha! Is not a foreign policy!" … and pro-Bush shirts: "I Heart bush" and anti anti-Bush t-shirts: "Hate Terrorists, Not Bush!" Also, anti-Bush-doctrine t-shirts: "Pre-emptive War is Terrorism."
… And anti-Osama bin Laden shirts. These veer from impolite to unprintable. And there are Bush and Osama shirts: "Bush's Policies are Al Qaeda's Best Recruiting Tools," instructs one bumper sticker, soberly.
Not all of the t-shirts are witty, but all strive to make a point: "Iraq Had Nothing to Do with 9/11"; "War: What Is It Good For?" asks another.
Foreign policy critique is popular: "Arrogance is bad foreign policy." So is "ignorance" according to another t-shirt.
Domestic policy also gets some play in the product line: "Hey, Hey NSA: Have you Tapped My Phone Today?" Or, there is this imperative, also related to the National Security Administration's admitted penchant for warrantless wiretapping of domestic phone lines, "Just get the da*n warrant!"
If ethnic profiling of potential terrorist suspects bothers you, you might want to don a "Taxi Driver by Day; Terrorist By Night" t-shirt, or even simpler, how about, "Suspected Terrorist."
Torture topic tees look to be popular sellers, "Waterboarding: Because Terrorizing a Terrorist Is Just Good Clean Fun," is one shirt's logo; another riffs on a well-known Las Vegas tourism slogan to declare that "What Happens at Gitmo, Stays at Gitmo." You can go for a more deadpan look with: "I support terrorist abuse." Not so deadpan, but even more to the point: "Torture is Un-American."
If we can't think up our own words of wisdom, others' do nicely: Gandhi goads us on 100% cotton to remember that: "There is no path to peace. Peace is the path." And Benjamin Franklin can be had on either a regular tee, or a golf shirt, reminding that "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary liberty deserve neither liberty nor safety." A little stern, but Franklin was like that.
One brave t-shirt maker takes on Greek tragedian Aeschylus and the Iraq war with one fell slogan: "Truth Is the First Casualty of War. The Rest Are Mostly Civilians."
You can get a conspiracy tee: 9/11 Was an Inside job." More complex version: "9/11: the government doesn't want us to look INSIDE but it's our JOB. Investigate 9/11."
Israel, as usual, can't be left out of the fray: you can support the Jewish state with a "Proud Supporter of Israel" or "Wherever Israel Stands, I Stand with It" t-shirt, or oppose it with a "Terrorist State Since 1948" cotton blend. Somewhere in between, I think, goes the mildly spicy: "Make falafel, not war"—which you can also get printed on a "classic thong" for $12.99. You may also want to "Save Lebanon" and "Free Palestine."
Many of the t-shirts are implausible for actual wearing under most circumstances. The winner in that department, I believe is: "Does this bomb make my butt look big?" Close second: "Relax, these aren't WMD's. They're only my biceps."
If you want to do your Christmas shopping early, you may want to start thinking about future conflicts. So far, for sale, there is a North Korean dictator rapper t-shirt "Kim Jong Il'lin," with said dictator in hip dark glasses. The other remaining point on the axis of evil also has a tee-shirt, sloganed, "No Iran War."
Political debate on war related issues may have just given way to dull procedural pow-wows in the American capital, but never mind, we global citizens of the world can have our own debate on terrorism, simply by shopping. Frankly, my trip to the online store was also one of the most vibrant exchanges of opinion I've seen in a while.
