the new crop of "those shirts" are in!

as i've said, this blog will not endorse a candidate, nor will it play partisan politics. that said, what the hell is going on at everyone's favorite "screw you, i want you to hate me" apparel superstore, ThoseShirts.com?

i'm not criticizing them for being "conservative" or hating "liberals" (whatever those terms mean in this election cycle). i'm just literally confused as to what some of their newer shirts are going for.

see, back in the day, you had easy ones, like this old chestnut:


okay, makes sense—guns are good, the sixties were bad. message conveyed. mission accomplished.

and you had the more openly partisan ones, like this classic:


now we're talking! sure, it's partisan, but more importantly, it's totally over the top. solid-gold ThoseShirts.com greatness.

but these days, we're getting into kind of a weird area.

first off, you've got these weird, delusional shirts that don't really mean anything. there's not one, but two shirts that endorse reagan for president in '08. here's one:


wait... what? is that supposed to be an attack on the democrats? how would that even work? if anything, the garment comes across as an attack on the republicans, for straying from their roots! since when has there been such nuance at ThoseShirts.com?

then we get into the obama ones, which just don't really make much sense.

first off, we have one that is childish, but not in the tried-and-true ThoseShirts.com brand of childishness. see for yourself:

yeah! fuck B.O.! body odor sucks so fucking hard! oh wait, you meant barack obama. okay. so, uh, fuck him! yeah! he represents... the FBI? or you work for the FBI, and you hate obama? what? where's the "hillary is a communist" rhetoric? you're just going to say "fuck him"? hell, this shirt doesn't even call barack a liberal! and in the brief time it takes for a passer-by to see you and judge your choice of shirt, he or she will be left baffled, thinking you have a mis-printed "FEMALE BODY INSPECTOR" tee. sub-par, at best, ThoseShirts.com.

but this one... uh... well:

um... what? i'm literally in the dark about this one. can someone explain it to me? he's a wimp, just like mickey mouse? i'm sure there's some political reference point here that i'm missing. i'm literally asking for your help. point it out to me.

and, moving away from the election, we get a shirt that is deceptively classical in its form:

okay, so on first glance, you think "alright, a vintage ThoseShirts.com winner! it takes something that liberals hate, something that's totally violent, and says that it's a good thing!" but would you really rather be torturing someone? i mean, brandishing a gun, sure, that's something people will respect you for, and they'll say "you are doing your patriotic duty" (i'm serious). but just saying "i would like to torture someone"—does that really convey a message that you want to send? there's nothing inherently manly or conservative about torture, is there? it has its defenders and detractors, but who says "it's awesome! i want to do it!" and is respected by anyone?

then again, i guess i should expect that last one from the people who brought you this old-school beauty, which still brings a swelling to my bosom:

god bless something.