Farewell, T-Shirt Hell

I'm so sorry to say one of my favorite online merchants of offense and hilarity is closing. T-Shirt Hell, the fine purveyor of over-the-top, offensive joke shirts that pioneered the whole indie t-shirt business, in my opinion, is going to sell its last shirt on February 10, 2009. And that's it.

I loved this place because it sold me the one black shirt I always wore out on dates when I was single - the plain black trekkie-font "Talk Nerdy to Me" long-sleeve. I'd crack up on the completely inappropriate shirts that I'd never wear, but the beauty of that kind of humor is that if you actually take the shirt seriously, you're probably doing more to harm whatever cause you're fighting against than the people who are wearing it.

I saw people in Gay Pride parades wearing some of their shirts. Clowns wearing their most offensive clown shirts. And their less-offensive site, TorsoPants.com, gave me gifts to hand out to musician friends with "Accordion Hero", "Harp Hero" and "Kazoo Hero" labels on them. And they made fun of some of the worst traits in political correctness.

Specifically, the tendency of people who harbor strong racism in their opinions and speech who thought, somehow, the fact that they voted for Barack Obama mitigated their commentary about black people in general. The one shirt I loved was simply Obama's face with "We Cool Now?" underneath it. That, more than anything, is a commentary on hundreds of thousands of white Americans who sincerely believed that paying lip service to the issues of race in America solves the problem - or that listening to hiphop somehow branches across the spheres of prejudice and fear against The Others.

George W. Bush is possibly the best example of that kind of ditzy racism. Without actually saying anything, Bush's attitudes, policies, and behavior towards people of color in the past eight years was anything but equal. And while many people of all colors harbor a xenophobia towards The Others, I still believe the worst kind is the racism that exists alongside a friendly, cheerful demeanor of pretend acceptance masquerading as diversity and tolerance.

Honestly, that's why I couldn't handle half of my college university's diversity trainings and seminars that we were forced to attend. 95% of those, in my opinion, were classes and trainings that separated the gulf of the American experience between the colors of our skins and encouraged those separations.

I love Blue Scholars - a local Seattle socially-conscious hiphop group. I love their music and message. I've heard Notorious BIG once. He was a crappy artist with no message other than "I am a man with attitude." The difference for me was always listening to the words and lyrics and poetry of the artist. And yet Blue Scholars, a musically-sweet group with lyricism and positive social message that crosses gender, politic, and racial lines, is overshadowed by the industry of rap and hiphop that promotes and glorifies xenophobia, racism, misogyny and personal responsibility over social justice and personal change.

I'm generalizing here, but rap artists who talk about money, cars, women, drugs, and being a thug have traditionally sold much better than the artists who talk about wanting to improve the lives of the people in their communities and get ahead. Maybe it's because of the standard thing that happens in most poor communities - I can't go home to a small town I spent a lot of time in without affecting a slight drawl and drop articles from my sentences - even though that small town is in the foothills of Oregon. Perhaps that's what made middle America love George W. Bush - he talked like he was a redneck from a small town in Texas instead of what he was - the scion of a Maine political family whose net worth was based primarily on foreign, not domestic oil.

I still love Avenue Q's song "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist", because the truth of that song is inherent in every day life. People truly are racist not because they judge on the actions of someone else, but because they assume patterns of behavior. I played basketball and soccer at Green Lake in Seattle many times, and I was always bemused by the concentration of ethnicity at the basketball court and the soccer field. And there were days where playing basketball or soccer felt like I was an albino at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. But the reverse was true - if you went two hundred yards up the road to the fields of kids playing on the swingset, it was almost like a period in the middle of a single sheet of white paper.

Anyway, the proprietor of T-Shirt Hell is closing its doors not because the site is losing money, even though that's the first reason I'd predict. One of the key indicators of an economic downturn in America is that men stop buying underwear for themselves, and that reason is fairly simple - for most men, underwear is an item of neccessity, not vanity, and the running joke that men will wear a pair of boxers until the elastic has entirely ripped from the waistband is not entirely untrue, whereas women's fashions tend to reduce the amount of material and increase the price during economic recessions. T-shirts targeted at the male demographic with disposable income aren't likely to sell well, especially at $25 with shipping and tax included.

What the guy who runs T-Shirt Hell says killed his drive for business was the harassment of other people and the threats made against his company and his employees. I don't doubt it. There are thousands of ordinary people who cheerfully convert themselves into flaming jerks on the Internet with the simple addition of complete anonyminity. But that's an easy shift. Most flaming jerks on the Internet don't take the time or energy to do anything about their cause du jour. And simple security alone will usually take care of the most random jerks who mostly just feel like a site that offends them is the place to vent all of their life frustrations.

But frankly, I'd say the economic downturn is real, and that whatever you want to attribute the loss to, it's possible.

One of the things that I've found so interesting about the election of Barack Obama is not the color of his skin, but rather his attitude towards the years ahead. Bush was a party animal in office - spending huge amounts of money and living lavishly, running up the nation's credit cards and willing to bankrupt the country to accomplish what he wanted to do. He failed, but not before the explosion of cash hurt the entire country. Obama's way forward is blue collar - the kind of spending that gets a loan to expand a family business so they can do more work, not to get a loan so the business can get the latest gadgets and go to conventions.

And let's face it, the Bush years were perfect years for the tongue-in-cheek and satirical. With the departure of 43, it's entirely possible that the business, built on the perfect storm of political ill will, satire, fiscally liberal spending and fake affluence Bush and Company created, the fact that Obama steps in just as the Bush Party's check comes in makes so many people realize that the years ahead aren't going to be the years of bacchanaliaic revelry that Bush promoted in America. Obama's plans are, in all seriousness, to roll up the sleeves and get to work, and to do that work well, a drastic counterpoint to Bush's economic policies that could be best summed up by "Money For Nothing and Your Chicks for Free".

It isn't lightly ironic that in the decades of the hard-living, hard-spending, fiscally diarrhetical policies of both Reagan and the two Bush administrations the same difference between Notorious BIG's music glorifying Thug Life and the Blue Scholars' message of social advancement for the disadvantaged come into play. Both Notorious BIG and the Bush administrations popularized at times when the idea to spend money to enrich one's own personal life at all costs, to protect a lifestyle was more important than enriching one's living environment. And the popularity of the Blue Scholars also marked a shift in the attitudes - their rise and art coming to play as a reaction against the lawlessness of the early years.

Anyway. On some level I'm sad to see T-Shirt Hell go away, but on another level, I'm glad to see it go. It means that there's a time to play games and a time to get serious about what you're going to do to move forward. If I don't have to wear a shirt and tie into the office and can save money by wearing plain black t-shirts, jeans, white socks and a pair of slipon shoes, that's an awesome thing for me. At the same time, I'll also focus less on what I'm wearing than the things I need to do to get my work done.

Times are tough, but when times are tough, the trappings of society fall away and the people who remember that men don't buy underwear during recessions are the ones who make it through. Those who reach to get quick - like Bernie Maddoff and the administration whose removal of regulation made his Ponzi scheme possible - are those who fall into the dust. In some ways, I think T-Shirt Hell is just fading away into a more responsible printing and clothing manufacturer - the front of the store merely closing once the joke shirt stock goes away. In eight years, I doubt anyone will remember them.