Lowercase Tee
Being a fairly well-rounded, politically and globally aware modern-day sort of person, it’s not escaped my attention that the Americans are having some sort of election, which seems mildly extravagant to me, seeing as they only just had one four years ago.
Anyway, it’ll be Bush, or it’ll be Kerry, and I don’t really know which. Kerry would seem to be the sane, logical, sensible choice, but then, what’s the point of being the world’s most prosperous, powerful, and influential nation if you don’t have some right-wing, Christian fundamentalist cowboy running the whole show? Let’s be realistic; would we have all spent the last four years with that constant, sparkling frisson of abject terror if Al Gore had landed himself the top job? I think not.
So, I’m watching the ongoing campaigns from afar, with the casual interest of an Englishman who’s vaguely curious as to who Tony Blair is going to be bending over for next, and who’s also always fascinated by grown men in suits bickering childishly at each other. The various tit-for-tat spats regarding military service records I found uninteresting, though, and it seemed clear that in the end, if there was to be any really vicious campaigning, it would be carried out by Joe Public. Today, I found an aspect of this campaigning that bothered me. It was on the internet, which never usually bothers me, but this did.
It’s a website run by Coudal Partners, entitled lowercase tee, and what they do is make t-shirts for children aged 2-6 years old, with a choice of slogans; “Mommy wants a new President”, and “I wouldn’t vote for Bush if I were you.”
I seem to be in a minority, but it bothered me, for a couple of reasons. To start with, the sole purpose of political sloganeering is to express one’s political viewpoint and hopefully affect other people’s political viewpoints. So, any parent dressing their child up in one of these shirts is then using their child as a means of campaigning, and that’s so very wrong. I don’t care what the cause is, but to me, this is as bad as taking your child on an anti-homosexual rally, and giving them a shiny banner reading “Thank God for AIDS” (which I’ve seen happen). The child, obviously, is unaware of what they’re proclaiming or what they’re part of, so they’re essentially just some sort of walking poster for their parents’ opinions, and to just use your child in such a way, well — and I apologise in advance for my language — it upsets me a bit.
It’s not the only level that it bothers me on, though. I’m just as disturbed by the idea that toddlers wearing t-shirts like these might actually affect the way people vote. That some brooding adult, who was going to vote one way, will vote another way due to a cute child in a cute t-shirt with a cute slogan. The optimist in me thinks it’s unlikely, but the realist in me just shakes his head sadly and accepts the possibility. Have things really grown so bad, he wonders, that a hung election can be prevented by a 2-year old?
Normally, anything that’s anti-Bush gets my approval, and a quick google does reveal that the response to these shirts has been exclusively positive. I do wonder, though, that if this was a bunch of Republicans making children’s clothes with anti-Kerry slogans, if the reaction would have been as warm. I think probably not.
Is having political slogans on t-shirts better/worse than displaying the marketing slogan of a multinational sportswear firm, or the vapid characters associated with the latest children’s film, or even the letters f, u, c, k coupled with some inane slogan?
I would say it depends upon the circumstances; what bothered me wasn’t so much the content as the usage of children as a means of advertising and campaigning. If adults want to wear brand names, that’s up to them.
It is an utterly piss-pauvre method of campaigning, I have to say, though probably no worse than the party faithful who hold out babies to be kissed by the dessicated lips of a man whose orders indirectly (and sometimes directly) have resulted in the deaths of many children.
On a related note, when idling round London in flaneur mode at the weekend, I noted a place selling toddlers’s T-shirts with “Norf London” on them. This was quite obviously for the tourists. Sarf London I can understand, but in North London we can actually, y’know, speak and stuff.
…although as good middle-class urbanites we can’t spell “toddlers’” either. Shite!