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| Buy several! Give 'em to your friends! |
--Lead-in to story discussed below
How long did you think it would take American merchants to figure out a way to make money off the killing of bin Laden? If you guessed less than 24 hours, advance to Go and collect $200. This article appeared in USA Today this morning under the headline "Marketers act fast." Between midnight on Sunday and mid-afternoon on Monday literally thousands of people posted Osama-death product ideas on such sites as Zazzle.com and CafePress.com where they could perhaps earn royalties if some company picked up their idea and used it for a consumer product. Executives at both these places say they haven't seen such an outpouring in a long time. This is even bigger than the capture of Saddam Hussein!
Divided into roughly four categories--patriotism, military support, celebration, "justice is served"--you can get T-shirts, buttons, coffee mugs, caps, bumper stickers, neckties, a phone case for your iPhone at $51.40, and, but of course(!), a T-shirt for your dog. One of the marketeers explains that they've always reflected popular culture. "What's more important than personal expression?" (Oh, gee, I don't know. How about civility or taste or virtue?)
I'll let the psychologists explain this. "People wear these things or buy these things in order to inflict the final indignity on bin Laden, says one. "And $25 isn't a lot to pay to gain entry in the national act of ridicule." And while they do their explaining and read their tea leaves, I'll just be disgusted and embarrassed yet again by the accident of my birth to be identified with these idiots.
*Tell me the truth: did you have to look up "tchotchkes"?
4 comments:
capitalism is so cute! oi!
Ain't it, though . . .
Thank heavens! At first glance, I thought that T-shirt was an American gun-toting stick figure that had just shot a stick figure Uncle Sam!
If you look closely, there's the beard and what resembles a top hat.
You know, if the mission had not gone off, they could have sold those T-shirts to Al Qaida for them to sell!
Win-Win!
montag is right! i told you capitalism was cute!
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