I wonder how this would fly if they wore them going through security at an airport?
At least nine Detroit area high school juniors are in trouble for wearing sweat shirts bearing a design that evokes the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.
Dearborn Public Schools spokesman David Mustonen has told The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press that the shirts the boys wore to Edsel Ford High School on Monday are “offensive” and in “poor taste.”
The boys are Arab-American, as are about half the school’s 1,700 students. They belong to the 2011 class. On the shirts, the number 11 resembles two buildings, with the school’s “Thunderbird” mascot flying toward them.
They’re kids just now going into puberty.
Send them home to change shirts. End of story.
Watched this story on what passes for news channels these days and never was it mentioned that the youths were Arab-American.
Should have known when they didn’t parade out any white kids in handcuffs.
@#1 If they were random kids, you’d be right. But we need to start using intelligence in war against Islamic extremists. Someone printed these with intent. Someone bought these with intent. Those people do not have loving or even friendly attitude toward this country. Perfect example of the “entry point” for FBI to go up and down chain within families, friends and manufacturers of these. In detail. We should not bother about kids so much but names ad pictures of their parents, people who designed the shirts and people who printed them should be on evening news.
We need to put the full resources of law enforcement and our vast mercenary network to the task of tracking down and bringing to justice these t-shirt wearers and producers. They are terrorising my feelings and my sense of style, and it’s not like we have anything better to do.
Someone printed these with intent. Someone bought these with intent. Those people do not have loving or even friendly attitude toward this country.
So a message about how we won’t be brought down using the world trade center is not loving of friendly? It seems the opposite to me. It seems like an inspirational message bout how no matter what you do to us you won’t destroy us.
The fact is that these kids were 7-8 when 9/11 happened. They have lived half their life in the shadow of that event. To them it is the distant past and making some joke about it is no different to them than someone making a joke shirt about Pearl Harbor.
#3 When I saw the shirt, I interpreted as a more positive message as in “you can’t bring down Americans” by taking down our buildings.
Still, the 9-11 tragedy should not be commercialized.
Speaking of outrage, how much happened with the placing a box of World Trade Center victims memorial cards in between a box of Topps NHL hockey cards and a box of Fleer Ultra baseball cards happened?
“The Sand People are easily startled but they’ll soon be back, and in greater numbers”
http://entertonement.com/clips/yqndvpjqnv–Star-Wars-Episode-IV-A-New-Hope-Mark-Hamill-Kenny-Baker-R2-D2-The-Sand-People-are-easily-startled-but-they%27ll-soon-be-back-and-in-greater-numbers
Quick…. Tell the GESTPOlice:
This shirt is a barcode..
It has a message to the…(insert evildooer here)
L@@k hard… Now, you see it too, right, right?
Danger, Danger… Will Robertson
I tend to agree with those who think this was more of a positive message. It was my first impression. But it’s all in the interpretation….and either way…there is still that nagging issue of free speech.
I’m with you guys here, I saw that shirt and saw a POSITIVE pro-American slogan…you “can’t bring us down” means you can’t destroy America or it’s spirit just by taking down a building.
Are you saying by “you can’t bring us down” that was supposed to refer to the TERRORISTS? The tee-shirt was saying the terrorist won’t be brought down by attacking buildings…or something. That doesn’t make sense…
Regardless, just don’t make ANY references to terrorism (pro/con either side) when going through an airport…lesson learned.
A lot of people here seem to think this is much ado about nothing.
You have short memories.
If you try real hard you may be able to remember a little incident at Fort Hood in November. Turns out that Major Nidal Malik Hasan had been spouting off about The Great Satan for most of his military career. Many people reported his comments and behavior as suspicious. Unfortunately military leadership was paralyzed with the fear of appearing politically incorrect and they promoted him rather than investigate him.
I will not be at all surprised if one of these “innocent youths” makes the national news again some day.
#12, you might want to check your facts, and scour your post for hints of racism.
FWIW Hasan was pissed off at his employer not the American Way of Life.
I saw the shirt as positive and uplifting as well.
I have a feeling this was more of a racist attack on the Arab kids. looking at other news sources the complainers were the parents of “other” children. I’m just speculating… but considering recent events and redneck reactions….
Wait a second. WTF kind of demographics are going on in Dearborn, Michigan that 1/2 of a school of 1700 is arab-american? Well, what do you know.. (Quoth Wikipedia, cause it is never wrong)
“Dearborn’s population includes 30,000 Arab Americans. It has the largest proportion of Arab Americans for a city of its size (about 100,000).[9] The first Arabs who immigrated here in the early to mid-1900s to work in the automotive industry were chiefly Lebanese Christians. Since then, Arab immigrants from Yemen, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories, most of whom are Muslim, have joined them. Lebanese Americans are still the most numerous group. The city is also the location of the Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in North America,[10] and the Dearborn Mosque. The Arab American population has settled primarily on the city’s eastern side, though in recent years it has expanded west.”
Learn something new every day. But I agree that these shirts were using September 11th as an inspiration, not to mock or ridicule.
The disease is spreading right in the heart of our own country.
I suppose the phrase “Remember the Alamo” is in bad taste too.
What if a shirt had the phrase “Remember 9/11”? Or “Never Forget 9/11”?
Americans are psychologically messed up.
#13 – When exactly will it stop being racist to focus suspicion on Muslims? How many people have to die before we drop political correctness for safety?
The one thing just about every terrorist attack for the last 20 years (spare me the Timothy McVeigh argument) worldwide has in common is that they were committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. These people have been Arab, they have been black and they have been white but they have ALL been Muslim.
But still, we spend billions paying for brainless TSA drones to seize nail clippers from little old ladies from Pasadena. Meanwhile the TSA lets a passenger whose last security check was in Fucking LAGOS NIGERIA to breeze right into the country?
Screw it, lets just destroy the domestic airline business. It’s better than making a single human anywhere feel insulted.
In my neck of the woods the topic would have been settled in the parking lot before school in the form of a severe ass whooping. I’m not saying it would be right, just what would happen.
Talk about knee-JERK reactions!
I seem to recall that BEFORE 9-11 the big topic was all about freedom of expression and flag burning. Now that it’s post 9-11, anything and I mean ANYTHING in poor taste is now somehow a security problem or “terrorist” in nature. But what we’re REALLY talking about here is CENSORSHIP!
Doesn’t anyone THINK anymore?
When exactly will it stop being racist to focus suspicion on Muslims?
So how do we tell who is a Muslim and who isn’t? We could just ask I guess but if some terrorist is honest enough to say “yes I”m a Muslim” then we can just ask everyone “are you a terrorist?” and do away with all this theatrical security
#16 I agree. Fear combined with racism is a bad combo. The current state of affairs is a legacy of the Cheney administration.
Similar issue with blacks in the 60’s. Fear and racism. It will take a leader like Obama to turn this unproductive and dangerous mentality around. Such as John and Robert Kennedy did in the in the 60’s.
What if the kids had not been arab-AMERICAN. No I did not misspell it.
How is that offensive? I read it as positive. I guess it depends on whom you assume the “us” refers to. I assume it means Americans.
Someone else must think it refers to mass-murdering homicidal muslim fanatics. How? I have no friggen idea.
They knew exactly what they were doing when they printed them and when they wore them. They got attention just like they wanted. Everybody loves their righteous indignation and these people are used to baiting to get it. They constantly fight in their culture and as consequence find the american sheep (see constantly butt-hurt liberal) as an easy mark for screwin with and even lawsuits constantly crying discrimination. As #2 said, if they were white kids they would have been paraded out in hand cuffs. They are little scumbags that are going to grow into big america hating scumbags.
#18 bdgbill
Right now. Muslim is not a race it is a belief system. If that belief system includes attacking others then profile away.
If their (Nigerian Banker) father tells you he is scared they are going to do something violent feel free to profile them and not give them a visa too. Again not racist.
However do not turn your fear and paranoia on a whole group of people because of their genes and do not make enemies out of those that previously weren’t.
#25 the haunted sheep
I do not believe that and if it did happen it would be unconstitutional. There is no crime here. F**k them if they meant to be insulting but insulting is not a crime.
Everybody loves their righteous indignation
does that include people who write things like “these people”
They are little scumbags that are going to grow into big america hating scumbags.
Just as long as they love america they can be scumbags i guess…
how is this offensive? in any sense
its not different than any other hockwear that was sold and passed around with the towers on em after the event.
i personally dont see how it could misinterpreted by anyone other than someone looking for something to misread
regardless of the skin color – i’d bet the same thing would happen if some asian kids wore a t-shirt with “you’ll never sink us” or “never forget” with a graphic of “pearl harbour” with battle ships on it..
wtf happened to free speech? – this isnt promoting hate – heck this can be read as a positive influence.
#18,
The one thing just about every terrorist attack for the last 20 years (spare me the Timothy McVeigh argument) worldwide has in common is that they were committed by Muslims in the name of Islam.
Ok, I guess you never heard of Bosnia. Oopps, they were Muslims being slaughtered so it doesn’t count.
Kosovo? Naaa. The Serbs were only protecting their sacred land from the Muslim interlopers who lived there for four centuries.
Gaza? Nope, again, dropping bombs into school yards and apartment buildings only counts when they do it to us, otherwise it is “a security measure”.
And I guess Blackwater machine gunning Iraqi civilians didn’t happen.
Or American planes dropping bombs on wedding parties. (Or allied troops)
Or Italian agents killed at American checkpoints on their way to the airport, with a recently released journalist, because they “looked suspicious”.
Or Iraqi families being systemically slaughtered after their 14 y/o daughter was brutally raped.
Ya, those damn Muslims. Why do they hate us?
Our system had the usual no offensive language, drugs, alcohol, explicit pictures, whatever on cloths policy.
We keep some extra freshly washed shirts on hand for situations like this so they don’t even have to go home or at most they could call someone to bring them a different shirt and they could change in the bathroom or something.
We used to have a sixth grade student that came to school in a mini skirt that broke the dress code and a change of skirt in her little sister’s back pack any time she had a substitute teacher. If a regular staffer didn’t notice and send her to change she knew she was going to get caught on the first rotation.
Dealing with this kind of crap is standard operating procedure. You don’t even bother to think about it any more much less get upset.