T-Shirt Times

In a state where 10 percent of the population identifies as Irish American, and a country where 1 in 3 people have Irish ancestry, why is it acceptable for one of the largest national retailers to market a line of T-shirts that uses overtly racist stereotypes of the Irish?

One of Target’s line of St. Patrick’s Day T-shirts proclaims, "I survived the Murphy/Kelly Family Reunion, March 17, 1988," printed above a pair of boxing gloves. Another names the wearer as a "Green Beer Taste Tester," while a third is an advertisement for the "6th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Race for the Beer." Product features on the Target Web site for this shirt note that this is "a witty gift for your favorite Irishman;" and "you’ve trained hard and you deserve a commemorative T-shirt."

How does a national retailer have the freedom to use racist stereotyping at a time when similar assaults against other ethnic groups would be denounced roundly as infringements on civil liberties? The answer is complicated, and speaks to the manner in which Irishness in America is interpreted as both a category of difference, as well as a brand of white ethnicity that is safe to target in a way that other ethnicities, as well as the community at large, would not and should not tolerate.

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Reporter: Kevin MacDonald

Joe-College.com opened in Downtown Lawrence in Feb. 2006.

"They actually sent a guy dressed in a FedEx uniform and he just sent me a package," Larry Sinks, Joe-College.com owner, said.

That’s how Sinks found out KU’s athletic department was suing him.

His store sells t-shirts with dozens of sayings.

Sinks says they’re intended to get the goat of Jayhawks’ opponents, and give KU fans a good laugh.

"We’ve had some kids who’ve hit the floor laughing. They’re just messages that we put up and are funny," Sinks said.

The buzz on campus reached the front page of the student newspaper.

"I think we really need to reconsider what we portray to other colleges," Tara Lorenzo, KU freshman, said.

"I just think it means we’re a competitive school and we’re into our sports," Aaron Welch, KU graduate, said.

KU’s athletic department isn’t laughing, and they’re going to court to stop it.

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Media Credit: Katie Friesen

Perhaps the most ubiquitous of products, the design and function of a T-shirt is simple. It fits over your body, your arms go through two holes at either side, and your head goes through the hole at the top.

They are cheap and readily available, relatively comfortable, and they help to keep you warm and not exposed to the world. Sometimes they say funny things on them. End of story.

Not so fast.

With art, commerce and morality coming into play, the simple T-shirt is no longer, and never was, simply a T-shirt. For a generation drenched in irony and rampant sloganeering, the cultural importance of the T-shirt canvas is apparent to anyone who has traversed the corridors of any high school, university or shopping mall.

Ami Keahola, an editor of the design, technology and culture weblog Cool Hunting (coolhunting.com) said that, "As a fashion staple, it’s taken on a symbolic status over time, making it full of significance as an everyday object and an effortless way to play on notions of high versus low culture".

Today’s endless variety of T-shirts does just that. No longer a useless garment, masters of screenprinting, graphic arts, illustration and painting have embraced the T-shirt as a living canvas. Once overlooked as mere utility, and once even shocking to a society scared of atomic bombs and rebellious teeny-boppers, some of the most prestigious art and modern art galleries in the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and the Tate Modern in London have all released their own lines of T-shirts.

With countless online T-shirt shops and clubs springing up from Toronto to Tokyo, artists are using the plain cotton canvas as a medium of niche, specialized (and very often fantastically clever) expression of political will, philosophical enlightenments, or jokes about flatulence.

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By: SCOTT MARSHALL - Staff Writer

NORTH COUNTY — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal appeals court to dismiss the appeal of part of a lawsuit a former Poway high school student filed against the Poway school district over the way school officials responded to a T-shirt he wore that called homosexuality "shameful."

An attorney for the student, Tyler Chase Harper, who goes by his middle name, said the decision from the nation’s highest court was "very significant" because it eliminates an August 2006 ruling in the case from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and gives Harper and his family a "clean slate" as they appeal the main portion of the case.

The appeals court ruling, which applied to all courts in California and most of the western United States, had upheld a U.S. District Court judge’s decision that allowed schools to stop students from wearing statements thought to demean or infringe on the rights of others.

An attorney for the school district described the issue decided Monday as "esoteric," said that the Supreme Court did not reverse the appeals court decision, and noted that Monday’s action does not affect the "real case," which a federal judge in San Diego decided in the district’s favor while the appeal to the Supreme Court was pending.

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Martin Davies’ T-shirt was spotted by eagle-eyed Newsnight viewers

A T-shirt with a rude slogan in Welsh about Englishmen made an unexpected appearance on BBC Two’s Newsnight.

It was worn by an interviewee in a film revealing that a version of the Welsh national anthem had not been played by guitar legend Jimi Hendrix.

Messages left on Newsnight’s website said the programme had been "had".

But while host Jeremy Paxman did not offer a translation - or an apology - he suggested that non-Welsh speakers could look up the meaning.

The T-shirt made its appearance in the Newsnight report, which went out on the eve of St David’s Day, 1 March.

The flagship news programme has been following the tale of the guitar version of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.

Speculation had been growing that it was an undiscovered piece of work by Hendrix, who died in 1970 and is regarded by many as one of the greatest rock guitarists.

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FAKE bullet-proof vests and clothes cashing in on the gang culture which has claimed dozens of lives in Manchester are on sale in a city shop.

The clothes are marketed to young people as `urban streetwear’. But a council chief said their sale was `despicable’ - and community leaders condemned them for glamorising a lifestyle Greater Manchester is trying its hardest to fight.

For £23, we bought a T-shirt showing a gun-toting hoodie, emblazoned with the words ‘Gunchester’ and ‘snitch at your own risk’. (View gallery, right)

For another £20, we bought a fake bullet-proof vest, while £1.50 buys a Velcro badge for it saying Moss Side, Salford, Cheetham Hill, Longsight or Whalley Range – to accessorise it with.

These are all areas affected by gun and gang crime.

The garments were bought at Jean Image, on Bury New Road, Strangeways, which has t-shirts on show in its window which say: ‘Manchester Cocaine Business’ and ‘Liverpool Cocaine Business’.

Store bosses say they have done nothing wrong.

‘Shame’

Milly Henry, whose 15-year-old nephew Jessie James was murdered in Moss Side last September, said: “These people are getting rich off the back of dead children. Shame on them.”

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