The T-Shirt Wars

November 29, 10:37 AMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

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The once unpretentious T-shirt has become ground zero in America's never-ending culture war.

Wearing the wrong shirt in the wrong place at the wrong time can get you banned from airports, expelled from schools, barred from military bases, kicked out of shopping malls and threatened with arrest just about anywhere.

The media is littered with stories of people stopped, threatened or arrested for attempting to board commercial airliners with cartoon guns on their T-shirts. The reasoning is always the same; it's a security risk.

When the transpo-police can't explain how a fabric firearm figure can possibly pose a threat they quickly backslide into that most politically correct of platitudes: "It's offensive." 

Classic Che tee for weekend
revolutionaries
(source: thecheststore.com)

If a mere picture of a pistol on a T-shirt offends some folks because "guns kill" why aren't those same people put out by NASCAR shirts? After all, cars kill more people every year than guns do.

(Of course, wearing the wrong color hoodie in the wrong 'hood can get you killed, but that's a whole different culture war.)

In today’s super sensitive society, everything is offensive to someone. Red Sox fans find Yankee sweatshirts offensive. Secularists are offended by Jesus jerseys. Drug War warriors hate pullovers portraying pictures of pot plants. Freedom fans freak out over leftwing weekend revolutionaries duded out in cheeky Che Guevara wear.
 

Che Mickey shirt for young
capitalist radicals
(source: Bureaucrash)

For those who haven't a clue who Che Guevara was, here's a handy pocket-sized guide you can pack in the flap pocket of your counterfeit camo khakis: Ernesto Rafael "Che" Guevara de la Serna was Fidel Castro's sociopathic murdering thug who loved to personally execute the helpless victims of a revolution that turned one of the most prosperous countries in the western hemisphere into a stinking poverty-plagued prison island.

But don't despair. In America's remnant of a free society you still have the right to wear a stylized commercialized image of an anti-capitalist serial killer silk-screened onto a cotton polo manufactured by twelve-year-olds in a sweatshop in Honduras owned by internationalist entrepreneurs and sold globally in corporate-owned big box megastores for a pretty profit so you can feel all zeitgeisty and superior in suburbville.

To libertarians, the concept of capitalists cashing in on a caricature of a communist killer constitutes the ultimate in-your-face irony. If every anti-capitalist icon can be turned into a commodity for sale to clueless college kids, freedom has a bright future after all.

Otherwise, wearing just about anything will cause students, parents, teachers and administrators to go stark raving bonkers in the nation's public school systems. Consider these headlines from earlier this year, compiled by the folks at Banned T-Shirts:

Kiss Our Class Goodbye T-Shirt Banned at School
Number 69 T-Shirt Banned in Middle School
Virginity Rocks T-Shirt Stirs Debate at School
Tennessee teen battles school's Confederate flag ban
Lesbian T-Shirt Cover-up at School
Anti-Gay T-Shirt Banned in School District - Judge Rejected First Amendment Rights
Student's 'Be Happy, Not Gay' t-shirt ok

It's hard to tell from these headlines who bears the brunt of the banning binge, Left or Right; one anti-gay shirt gets cold-shouldered while a judge justifies another. Then there's this:

In Pennsylvania a fourteen-year-old boy received detention for wearing a T-shirt with a gun design that he said was intended to honor his uncle, a soldier fighting in Iraq. Meanwhile, on a sports website no less, another kid commenting on those ubiquitous Che Guevara tees posted, "Che shirts are popular" and "People in my school wear them."

Conservative patriotism bad, liberal Marx-hugging good.

The root of this evil is government monopoly schools. In a free society where governments are forbidden to meddle in education, students and parents would be free to shop for educational services the same way they do for lawyers and carpet layers. If you don't like your school's rules you can take your tuition bucks down the street to a different school.

Happily, political correctness, like most childish fads, will eventually pass.

Just keep your shirt on.