Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

In after Baud. Damn.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

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Reader Interactions

85Comments

  5. 5.

    scav

    it’s taking a bigger and bigger hit of the ignorant and mean to catch that sweet free viral PR attention anymore.

  6. 6.

    khead

    Irwin Mainway – not a parody nowadays. Also, do not taunt Happy Fun Ball. Two of my favorite SNL bits.

  8. 8.

    GxB

    Got to wonder what kind of thought process went on here. Just like you won’t go broke underestimating the stupidity of Merkins, you’ll likely do the same with malice. $129 a pop + probably a tenner to produce + substantial asshole/”ironic” buyers with plenty of disposable income = big bonus for the execs at UO.

  10. 10.

    raven

    Immediately after the shootings, many angry students were ready to launch an all-out attack on the National Guard. Many faculty members, led by geology professor and faculty marshal Glenn Frank, pleaded with the students to leave the Commons and to not give in to violent escalation:

    “I don’t care whether you’ve never listened to anyone before in your lives. I am begging you right now. If you don’t disperse right now, they’re going to move in, and it can only be a slaughter. Would you please listen to me? Jesus Christ, I don’t want to be a part of this … ![32]”

    After 20 minutes of speaking, the students left the Commons, as ambulance personnel tended to the wounded, and the Guard left the area. Professor Frank’s son, also present that day, said, “He absolutely saved my life and hundreds of others”

  11. 11.

    beth

    This smells fishy to me. How many people saw this- from manufacture to marketing to web design and no one said wtf? I wonder how much traffic this generated to their website today?

  12. 12.

    MattF

    I’m picturing five shitheads sitting around a table, and one of them is saying “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” We shall see.

  14. 14.

    Mike in NC

    I’m old enough to remember the Kent State shootings, where Tricky Dick Nixon called the victims “bums”.

  17. 17.

    Mike J

    My least favorite thing about the internet is the platoon of people who get to decide how seriously other people should take “jokes”.

  20. 20.

    jayboat

    @beth:

    I dunno about that- anyone who understands the mistake would most definitely not click and would just shake their head over the stupidity.

    Aside from the incredibly poor judgement shown here… maybe I need to get out more, but when the fck did sweatshirts start costing 129 bucks?

  21. 21.

    raven

    @Mike in NC: I’ll never forget it. I’d been back in the staes since September. I’d met my girlfriend and future wife in an anti-war demonstration at the U of I earlier that spring but, since I’d flunked out, I was living in Chicago and going to DupeU. When it happened I was sure that the revolution had come and I was overwhelmed with fear about what was coming. I called her and told her to stay put and busted ass down there as fast as I could. All of my friends were in the “movement” and that day galvanized us to act.

  23. 23.

    Eric U.

    my daughter made something very similar to this for an art project, only it targeted sweat shops and athletic clothing.

  24. 24.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    Urban Outfiters Design Department says, “Too soon?”

    (It really is pretty spectacularly tasteless.)

  25. 25.

    FlyingToaster

    @srv: So either the product’s been pulled and they’ll never admit it, or there are a shitton of fuckwit women who’d pay money for this fashion statement.

    I was a little kid when Kent State happened.

    This is just effing rude.

  26. 26.

    raven

    Fucking Tweety, all week last week he screamed that Obama needed to DO SOMETHING. Now he’s all, “what are we doing”??

  30. 30.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mike in NC: This is the guy who famously told the nation that he was not a crook, after all.

    No Rethuglican President since Eisenhower has not been a criminal.

  31. 31.

    The Other Chuck

    You’ve gotta be kidding me. This is outrageous. Someone should hang over this. I mean really, 129 dollars?

  32. 32.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Mike in NC: @raven:

    Those of us for whom Kent State is an actual memory are appalled and horrified. I pretty much got no words. And the pictured shirt is in no fashion a means to “have some fun.”

  33. 33.

    Roger Moore

    @Mike J:

    My least favorite thing about the internet is the platoon of people who get to decide how seriously other people should take “jokes”.

    The problem is that the Internet doesn’t do tone, so you wind up with a variant on Poe’s Law. It’s impossible to tell the difference between satire and criminally poor taste.

  34. 34.

    MomSense

    My mom called me fuming about this today. She worked at Kent State in student affairs and knew the students who were killed.

    This is not fucking funny or clever or cool.

  36. 36.

    Mustang Bobby

    For those of us who were living in Ohio at the time, involved in the anti-war movement, and knew people who were at KSU and were there on that day, seeing this is just too effing much. Yeah, I know; my generation is dying off and something from back then isn’t supposed to still hurt.

    What’s next, Jackie Kennedy’s pink Chanel suit?

  39. 39.

    Christopher Mathews

    As soon as I saw the picture, I thought of Allison Krause. From Wikipedia: Krause was shot in the left side of her body at about 330 ft (105 m) fatally wounding her. A subsequent autopsy found that a single rifle bullet entered and exited her upper left arm, and entered her left lateral chest fragmenting on impact causing massive internal injuries. She died from her injuries later that same day.

    I wonder whether the placement of the blood stains and spatters was intentional.

  40. 40.

    greennotGreen

    I was in college when the Kent State murders took place. The next day several students at my school were seen wearing white tee shirts with red bulls eyes on them. Then, the message was clear. Forty-four years on, the meaning is lost, as is the makers’ humanity.

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    Believe someone was recently marketing kids’ pajamas (or was it a woman’s sweater?) with black and white stripes and a gold star on one breast.

    Product was pulled after complaints it looked like Holocaust prison camp clothing.

  43. 43.

    namekarB

    Wow. Maybe I’ll dig out my old “I heart Pol Pot” Tee. Might be all the rage in today’s fashion.

  45. 45.

    MCA1

    Urban Outfitter’s response was a straight up lie (it’s just natural fraying and discoloration, we swear, we had no idea it might be perceived this way) followed by a non-apology apology (we’re sorry that people took offense). I would like to know, though I refuse to visit their site and investigate, whether they’re selling sweatshirts like this with other university names emblazoned on them, too, and other colors besides red for the Kent one.

    I actually think this might be an exception that proves the rule of no publicity is bad publicity. Their business is likely to be appreciably harmed by this. Not that a lot of Boomers shop there, anyway, but a damned lot of Neil Young listening Gen X’ers is what made that store a success in the first place, and they’re not likely to see this and think “Oh, yeah, I haven’t been to that place in years – I think I’ll go now that I’ve been reminded about it.”

  48. 48.

    Tom Q

    According to NBC News, the company’s claiming it’s not blood and bullet holes, just discoloration and moth holes. And, I believe that, because I’m a moron.

    Count me among those for whom Kent State was a major life-signifier. Freshman year at Northwestern; couldn’t believe, when I heard the news, that such a thing could happen in normal America. The whole campus rose up, and nothing was the same for the month remaining till summer. You make light of that, a lot of us take it very personally.

  50. 50.

    AdamK

    I kinda believe UO’s explanation. I don’t think it was “an idea for a product.” It was just a one-off pre-owned sweatshirt, and some kid marketer didn’t get what would be offensive about it.

    “Urban Outfitters sincerely apologizes for any offense our Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt may have caused. It was never our intention to allude to the tragic events that took place at Kent State in 1970 and we are extremely saddened that this item was perceived as such. The one-of-a-kind item was purchased as part of our sun-faded vintage collection. There is no blood on this shirt nor has this item been altered in any way. The red stains are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray. Again, we deeply regret that this item was perceived negatively and we have removed it immediately from our website to avoid further upset.”

    _________

    Does anyone ever remember Jackson State?

  51. 51.

    Mustang Bobby

    @AdamK:

    The one-of-a-kind item was purchased as part of our sun-faded vintage collection. There is no blood on this shirt nor has this item been altered in any way. The red stains are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray.

    And yet they want $129 for a piece of clothing from a yard sale. Yeah, pull the other one; it jingles.

  52. 52.

    MomSense

    My Dad was the CO adviser for Kent State. The anti-war movement there started in ’66 and he was their adviser. They met in the basement of his church. It wasn’t a spontaneous event. They had been organizing and protesting for years before the massacre.

  53. 53.

    Mandalay

    Urban Outfitters are claiming that it’s just an amazing coincidence that they were selling a sweatshirt with the words “Kent State” with what appears to be blood and bullet holes:

    In response to the backlash Urban Outfitters has released a statement posted on Twitter apologising. It read: “Urban Outfitters sincerely apologizes for any offense our Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt may have caused. It was never our intention to allude to the tragic events that took place at Kent State in 1970 and we are extremely saddened that this item was perceived as such.”

    The company said that the red stains on the top are “discolouration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray. “

    Yet again, the cover up proves worse than the original crime.

  56. 56.

    Soprano2

    I don’t care whether that’s a publicity stunt or a serious product, that’s in horrible taste. What could they have been thinking?

  59. 59.

    raven

    @Mustang Bobby: It’s intense. Parker and Geneviève Bujold as well as Tori Spelling and Freddie Prinze Jr. Prinze and Parker are incestuous twins who reenacted the Kennedy assassination before getting it on. “You be him and I’ll be her” as she waves in slow motion. It’s really edgy but really good.

  61. 61.

    srv

    This kinda looks like something an IT tester would come up with. Big retailers sometimes have fake products that they run synthetic workloads against on a production systems. You aren’t supposed to see them externally, but on occasion a software feature slips out.

  62. 62.

    scav

    @Joel: I do rather suspect Urban Outfitters have a team planning the next outrage or two — their leaving up the ‘sold out!’ ploy certainly smells a bit of the lamp, along the lines of faux reviews and astroturfed sales figures elsewhere. And it just keeps happening with them. It’s practically a part of their brand identity, rather like the frisson of covert coerced possibly underage sex was a part of American Apparel for so long.

  63. 63.

    raven

    Good buddy of mine just posted a picture of a Gap “1969” t-shirt label with Made in Vietnam right next to the 1969.

  64. 64.

    joel hanes

    @AdamK:

    Does anyone ever remember Jackson State?

    Hardly anyone.

    As a nation, we’re pretty blase about black folks being victims of all kinds of terrible shit.

    But when the delightsome white children of our pure white elites are the victims, Katy bar the door!

    Just as true today as in 1970.

  66. 66.

    Mandalay

    @MCA1:

    I actually think this might be an exception that proves the rule of no publicity is bad publicity.

    I agree. If they had just profusely apologized for their marketing blunder it would have become a nothingburger after a couple of weeks.

    But they really screwed up by issuing a non-apology apology, and pretending that it was all just an amazing coincidence. They are treating their customers like they are fucking idiots.

  67. 67.

    MomSense

    @raven:

    I guess what matters is that they were a very disciplined group. They had intensive training in non violence over many years. They did not do anything that would justify violence from the National Guard.

  69. 69.

    Elizabelle

    @joel hanes:

    Wow. You are so right. I was a kid, but remember Kent State — although I didn’t fully understand how shocking it was — and never heard anything about Jackson State until tonight.

    Wiki:

    The Jackson State killings occurred on Friday May 15, 1970, at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Jackson, Mississippi. On May 14, 1970, a group of student protesters against the Vietnam War, specifically the United States invasion of Cambodia, were confronted by city and state police. Shortly after midnight, the police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve. The event happened only 11 days after National Guardsmen killed four students in similar protests at Kent State University in Ohio, which had first captured national attention.

    28-second fusillade against the students.

  71. 71.

    MomSense

    @raven:

    I’m probably defensive. My dad was their adviser and did a lot of the trainings. After it happened everyone kept trying to blame the students for what happened.

  72. 72.

    Mustang Bobby

    @MomSense: I lived near Toledo at the time and was about to register for the draft that September. I remember working with people from the University of Toledo to get my testimony together to apply for CO status at the draft board in Bowling Green. I wouldn’t be surprised if those people I worked with knew and worked with your father.

  73. 73.

    Geeno

    What is totally f-ed up is that at least one, and I believe two, of the dead were “bystanders”. They were just going from one class to the next when a miss from the NG managed to end their lives. The one I’m positive about was a home ec major on the steps of what was then the home ec building. It later became the Music building where my then fiance (early 80’s) attended classes – Munzenmayer(?) Hall, I think. They leveled it for parking in the 30-odd years since.
    I attended just over 10 years later and there were all sorts of stuff – in orientation, in memorials around campus, etc. – that said “this is a big deal to us” “Remembrance Day” (May 4th) was still a day the campus closed. They compressed spring semester classes so it could be arranged to be a day off during finals week. You still heard talk from some of the older staff there, for and against the students.
    Anyway – I would be shocked if Kent State actually licensed use of their logo for this. If they did – I’ve been shocked many times before – then they (the administration) have REALLY lost their way as human beings.

  76. 76.

    grandpa john

    @MomSense: and not the moronic Guard commander who allowed the issue of live ammo. Afterwards most guard units as the one I was in had a yearly training session on crowd control tactics which did NOT use rifles and certainly no live ammo,

  77. 77.

    Melissa

    My brother, with his wife and infant daughter, crossed the border to Canada12 weeks after Kent State.

  78. 78.

    Elizabelle

    @grandpa john:

    Thank you. Orangeburg Massacre was linked to Jackson State article. Yet another sad episode to learn up on. Again, had not heard of it previously.

    I remember when James Meredith was shot, and the Life magazine articles/pictures on the Ku Klux Klan during the 1960s.

  79. 79.

    Gravenstone

    Bad taste, that tastes good. Related insofar as I wanted to toss it out there, I was always a fan of the Ball U (with “I-69” on the back) Tees and sweats from back in the day. Sadly, they stopped making those a couple of decades ago.

  80. 80.

    Elizabelle

    @raven: I’m glad to see the antiwar protestors getting some respect. Like 40-50 years late.

    The 1960s must have been something to live through when you were of draft age.

    And was that the last war that all/most Americans served in? Kept us more honest.

  81. 81.

    gbear

    @joel hanes:

    I was 16 years old and remember both Kent State and Jackson State. I will say that the image that comes to mind for that whole period was the young woman kneeling on the ground with her arms outstretched in agony over her dead friend. I was living in the suburbs of St. Paul and I asked my mom if I could use the family car to go be a part of the riots that were happening on the U of M Minneapolis campus. She, of course, said no way.

  82. 82.

    Gravie

    One of the most horrible thng in the aftermath of both Kent State and Jackson State was the number of “good folks” who supported wholeheartedly the idea that the kids had it coming to them. Many, many people in the older generation(s) earnestly believed that.

  83. 83.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Gravie: Shit, read comments here on this blog about how people “escalated” situations with the police and bear some responsibility for being handcuffed or beaten. It is dispiriting.

  84. 84.

    Funkula

    @gbear: no offense intended in relation to such a serious subject, but I find the concept of asking mom if you can borrow the car to join a riot intensely hilarious.

  85. 85.

    low-tech cyclist

    The ad should be accompanied by: “Order today, and we’ll include a free MP3 of Neil Young’s “Ohio.” ”

    And while it took the Jackson State shootings a few weeks to break out of the news ghetto of ‘bad shit that happened only to black people’ (a news ghetto that’s still all too real, unfortunately), it did manage to do that by early summer of 1970.

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