Ugh.
Alberta premier Danielle Smith was photographed with a man wearing the T-shirt you see above. It was circulated on social media. Immediately, she was criticized intensely, and predictably, Smith immediately groveled. Her spokesperson said, “The premier didn’t read his shirt and obviously doesn’t agree with its message. She has always been clear that she supports the LGBTQ+ community and will continue our work to make sure they feel safe in our province.”
What’s going on here?
1. The guy, whoever he is, is a jerk. That’s not a T-shirt, it’s a protest sign, and intentionally confrontational. I have always agreed with the maxim that a person’s IQ is inversely related to the number of words on his or her T-shirt. This is a prime example.
2. Further proving that the T-shirt wearer is someone to be avoided: the back of it read, “Good people disobey bad laws.” No, in fact good people obey all laws, or if they want to engage in civil disobedience, violate the “bad law,” accept the consequences, and see how many people agree with them. Asserting that it is good to break laws you happen to think are “bad” is a recipe for societal chaos.
3. The premier lied, and obviously so. How could she miss all those words, unless she can’t read? The guy’s a walking billboard; you can’t stand next to someone like that and not appear to be endorsing his message.
4. Whoever drafted that statement should be fired. What is it that Smith doesn’t agree with? Should straight people be ashamed? It’s not the message that is objectionable but the in-your-face gesture. It’s like “It’s OK to be white”—the shirt’s purpose is to annoy and start an argument.
5. What does a T-shirt have to do with “feeling safe”? Safe from words? Should non-LGBTQ individuals feel “unsafe” when they see Pride parades, signs and slogans?
Ethics Alarms 
I think what is going on here is that we already have societal chaos. Laws have been selectively applied for decades. It’s cool for some people to prance around in public naked, expose themselves to children, urinate and defecate in public, jump borders, steal from social safety nets, burn cities down, attack people, steal, lie, bully, rig elections, shoot fentanyl in public and whatever else they want, but other people aren’t even allowed to say that those things are bad. What do you expect to happen? Eventually people start pushing back, and only then does anyone start crying societal chaos.
The societal chaos has been sanctioned and endorsed by governments on one side, and hyper-sensitively gasped at on another. We are way past societal chaos. It is moving into civil war territory, and no amount of pearl clutching is going to stop the process. The ruling elites need to check themselves before they wreck themselves.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable that one may not take the time to read every T-shirt in a crowd.
Eye contact, handshake, pose for camera, repeat. I don’t think we can function as a society constantly looking out for cheap gotcha photos. It was clearly a third party or confederate or took the photo above, as their eyes are pointed elsewhere (at an official photographer?). I’m sure the official photographer would not have released the photo.
That was my thought, too. At conventions, with long lines, photo ops with celebrities are
* walk up, maybe have time to say hi
* pose
* click
* get out.
If there was a line to meet the premier, she probably made eye contact and didn’t look at the citizen’s shirt. And he may or may not have intended it as a gotcha. Do we know what type of event this was? Would he have had a reasonable expectation of meeting his province’s premier when he got dressed that morning?
I think it’s simple: elected officials have to be more careful than that. I have sympathy for one who gets photographed with a stranger who turns out to be the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood. A photo with a gut wearing a Hitler mustache, and a red armband, not so much. I don’t see how anyone could ignore that T-shirt.
Given the professor fired: “Nah, Colleges Don’t Indoctrinate Students! It’s A Conspiracy Theory!” Brown Replies, “Hold My Beer!”
Given that anything said about anyone or any practice contrary to a monogamous heterosexual life producing children must elevate the practice to a social status above the heterosexual or the speaker will be cancelled.
This looks more and more like when under Jim Crow a white woman could interpret the eye contact of a black man negatively, report it to her husband and the black man would get lynched.
Honestly, I have no clue what you just said.
“I have always agreed with the maxim that a person’s IQ is inversely related to the number of words on his or her T-shirt.”
I have a lot of “show shirts” with entire cast (and sometimes crew) lists on the back. I hesitate to contemplate the implications…
(names don’t count)
I have more than a few niche historic t-shirts with chronologies, etc. on them as well. A lot of the shirts you can pick up at history-as-hobby events, airshows, etc., have stuff that’s pointed while stopping just shy of being too obnoxious.
In fact, I brought this up with Jack last month, and a modified version of what I said was this:
As I may have mentioned elsewhere, I usually make a point of attending a World War II weekend that is put on every year the first weekend in June by a place called the Mid-Atlantic Air museum which is located in the city of Reading, Pennsylvania. As you might guess, most of it is the veterans, the reenactors and the World War II vintage vehicles, which includes a colorful air show. It also has a very large flea market attached to it, where you can buy all kinds of items from memorabilia to vintage clothing to weapons.
You can also buy novelty clothing, most of it having to do with aircraft or historical events. As you might guess, the lion’s share of the novelty clothing is geared towards America and Americans, although there are also substantial amounts of British oriented stuff since the Supermarine Spitfire and the Battle of Britain remain very popular themes with aviation enthusiasts. However, vying with the British for second place, the World War II German material is also very popular. You can buy novelty merchandise that features a portrait of field Marshal Rommel on the front and his history on the back, that features the various German armor units and vehicles, of which the Tiger tank is the most popular, and that features many of the Luftwaffe aces, complete with the squadron badge on the front of the shirt and the aircraft on the back, complete with the black and white crosses on the wings and the swastika on the tail, just as they would have appeared in life. There’s also one guy who sells shirts from all through history, including both sides of the Civil War.
Apparently, some folks have given some of the merchants grief about selling the World War II German merchandise, and the merchants have taken exception to this. One such merchant who trades under the name The Soldier and War Shop, apparently got fed up enough that he put up a display that showed several communist themed t-shirts, together with a sign which I can paraphrase as “I’m not going to distribute any of these shirts, but there are plenty of websites and stores where they are available, what is more I would not interfere with anyone else’s ability to distribute them. History is history. I’ve run into problems with people complaining about the German merchandise who say nothing at all about the Japanese, Soviet, or other causes. If you are not okay with that, no one is forcing you to shop here, but please don’t interfere with those who do.”
What do you think? Are there some causes so wrong and some history that’s just so icky that merchandise that features it should be banned? Should it be left up to the market? What does it say that an American market of air show goers (who are mostly white, I think I saw one black family the entire weekend) buys that kind of thing in sufficient numbers to keep it viable? If those of us whose hobby is military history decided to walk away from this particular kind of merchandise on our own, would we be weenies or would we just be decent people? Is it basically a question of the First amendment to just be allowed to print and sell whatever people will buy?
I know what I think, and that’s that the First Amendment says freedom of speech and freedom of the press and that includes the right and the ability to print and sell whatever people will buy. If we can’t silence rap music with offensive lyrics, we also can’t stop people from printing shirts that some might find offensive. It’s up to the market to decide what sells and what doesn’t. I myself own a couple of the Luftwaffe pilot shirts because the men and planes portrayed on them were not themselves enthusiastic Nazis and achieved some great things in the air. Generally though, when it comes to squadron and aircraft shirts I wear mostly American and British. Frankly, I think the P-51 mustang is a cooler plan than almost anything else that was fielded except for the Spitfire. It does feel a little weird wearing a shirt with a plain that has a swastika on the tail on it, but I don’t think wearing an image of a famous pilot’s plane is the same as wearing a Nazi flag or slogan.
The more important reason I don’t think things like this should be interfered with is that once you ban one thing because it’s offensive, you set a precedent for banning more and more things that people find offensive, and, as Justice Alito put it in the Bladensburg cross case, the standard of the offended observer is simply not a workable standard. Just something to think about.
Should non-LGBTQ individuals feel “unsafe” when they see Pride parades, signs and slogans?
Frankly, in a word, yes.
I guess in Jack’s eyes my “I will defend my rights against all enemies foreign and Democrat” tee shirt gives me cover as an obvious imbecile. Good to know.
(it’s only 9 words…)
That T-shirt had 14. The same principle applies to bumper-stickers. And baseball caps.
I commented on this as it was breaking on Twitter.
Also bears note that it wasn’t just Premier Notley. Pierre Poilievre, the conservative leader, was pictured with the same guy. Regardless, I think that “straight pride” is kind of like “it’s OK to be white”.
Why shouldn’t you be proud of being straight? I can think of reasonable reasons, like: “Because it’s not a big enough part of my identity that I think about it.” But there’s really no argument that straight pride is unlike any other kids of orientation related pride.
Oh sure, they’ll say that “straight pride” is a response to pride, and the intention is bad. Who cares? I mean, there’s a chance (a small one, I admit, but a chance, nonetheless) that they’re just wrong and this person has wrapped himself up in his straight identity so hard he feels the need to plaster it on his shirt, and I’m also absolutely positive that a non-zero amount of people wear pride gear to annoy normies. And what does his pride take away from you?
I have significantly more of an issue with the back of the shirt, and think that it’s particularly stupid for a legislator to be seen in any way as supporting that message… But really, I’m less sure that she saw the back of that shirt than I am that she saw the front, and I’m not convinced of that either.
The root question in these situations is whether turnabout is or is not fair play. It sure as hell is hard to resist these days.
I mean, there was a season where a not-insignificant number of aboriginal activists wore shirts that said “Got Land? Thank an Indian”. I found those annoying and historically questionable, but not offensive. I didn’t crumple into a useless puddle of raw nerves for an afternoon. I just moved on.
It would be so cool if people developed skin. Not “thicker skin”, although that would be great as well. Just like…. a base coat of skin. Literally any dermis. A not-zero amount of epineurium. Something to keep the wind off their axons, because their dendrites are showing.
I wonder what kind of messages the Founding Fathers (commoners too) put on their t-shirts?
I’m sorry but I disagree with you on just about every point you make. For starters, I find no issue with what this man did, or the message of his r-shirt. I mean if the left feels compelled to bombarde us with their messaging, I see no harm in pushing back especially when simply stating factual things. As for the governor/premier, it’s plausible she did not read or pay attendance to the man’s shirt. I’m sure she shook hands and took pictures with a lot of people and it’s very likely she was not intently assessing everyone she did that with. The only issue I have with this whole story is her apologizing. What the hell is “hateful” about that message that warranted an apology. The reason the left keeps winning is before we (most people) are just too nice and accommodating, which allows the left to constantly re-define what is socially acceptable (and thus lowering the bar on what constitutes “hate” and/or “hate speech”).
Don’t be sorry. Nevertheless, I consider that T-shirt close to “fighting words,” and the excuse that if one side is obnoxious in its advocacy it justified reaction in kind doesn’t fly ethically. (Check the rationalizations list). You really believe she shook hands with someone wearing that shirt and didn’t notice what was written on it? Wow.
Once she appeared to endorse the message by taking the photo, she was in ethics zugzwang. That what happens when you are a leader and you don’t take care and pay attention to what you are doing.
I think you’re right in that politicians should take more care in looking at what their photo op buddies are wearing, but there’s a time-honored tradition of people asking for pictures with shirt messages that candidates wouldn’t endorse.
And I mean… the cherrypicking Twitter does is Olympics level. The exact same weekend this happened, at the exact same event, Justin Trudeau signed a Nazi flag worn by a troll.
https://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2017/09/07/justin-trudeaus-neo-nazi-run-in-highlights-security-risk/
Sorry, not the same weekend. That was six years ago. The internet has a weird habit of recycling old news for whataboutism. Funny thing: I was right about it being the same event. Both were at the Calgary Stampede.
So same event… six years apart, I understand why the media isn’t running with it.
Still, I don’t think Trudeau supports Nazis.
I’ve been caught by the old news story trap a few times.
This is probably one of those no-win situations for Ms. Smith. My guess is that she read the t-shirt…everyone reads t-shirts. It’s an odd thing for me that women so often wear shirts with slogans and funnies on them, because I’m always afraid that I’ll be accused of looking at a woman’s anatomy when all I want to do is read her shirt. A note to the ladies: I don’t care about your boobs, but if you don’t want me reading your chest, don’t put words there!! Sorry, I digress…
Ms. Smith was probably surrounded by people with cameras, filming her movements and interactions. If she takes a photo with the guy, the letter community is triggered and mad at her. If she had refused, THAT would have been recorded and posted as well, with the claim that Ms. Smith possesses an anti-straight bent or was pandering to the letter community, triggering and angering the non-letter community.
Humble Talent’s comment above was pretty good. Too many people have skin that is whisper-thin at best. I’m not always going to cater to your social/political/religious whims…and you won’t always cater to mine.
Toughen up and live with it…and let’s be cordial with each other anyway.
Too much common sense there Joel. Prepare to be cancelled.