Several weeks ago, an e-mail blast from "Chelsea Clinton" went out touting "Project T-Shirt, a contest to design the next great T-shirt for my mom's campaign." Of course, we at Off The Bus (OTB) somehow missed the last great T-shirt for Chelsea's mom's campaign, but, in our own defense, HuffPost has been really busy covering her mom's boxing glove beat.
But the Clinton campaign is about so much more than boxing gloves, apparently. "Chelsea" says, "I've seen a lot of homemade signs, buttons, and shirts on the campaign trail, and I think we need to harness that great creative energy for our campaign." Although sometimes they substitute a suspicious uniformity in lettering and paint color when there's a shortage of native creativity.
Hence, this exciting T-shirt contest, which frankly, is probably much more exciting than the actual nomination contest, at this point.
Goaded by our fearless leaders, Amanda Michel and John Tomasic, we here at OTB turned our crack analysis skills and great creative energy to this task. Scott Bellows immediately suggested this image which, I think, would look best centered in a tie-dye motif.
Leonce Gaiter noted "Poor thing. I hope [Chelsea] never saw this, and wonder whose idea it was to make her sound 12. If she did see this, I hope she has no career ambitions in advertising or political consulting."
Of course, no 28-year-old hedge fund manager would target her compatriots by writing, "So please put on your thinking caps, get those creative juices flowing, and visit our Project T-Shirt website." That sounds more like something Miss Nancy would have told preschoolers on Romper Room, right before saying "Do Bee a Hillary Donor."
Because on top of being a clumsy attempt to capture the 20-something (aka Obama) demographic, this whole T-shirt scam is a kludgy attempt to raise money. Quoth the-staffer-pretending-to-be-Chelsea, "and we'll offer the best shirt for sale in the official campaign store, raising money to help my mom win!"
Well, we at OTB had several ideas of our own as to what exactly those shirts should say. Recognizing that kooky preachers are timeless, and timeless T-shirts lines are kooky, Chris Nelson weighed in with: "Two Wrights Make A Wrong" and "I ran a clean campaign and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"
Other OTB ideas included: "My Pantsuit is At the Cleaners," "Moms For Hillary: Because I SAID So!" and, certain to be a campus pleaser, "Will Vote for Beer!"
Three weeks had passed since the contest announcement, and the inevitability of Obama had become more and more apparent, when "Chelsea" blasted a second e-mail announcing the finalist entries in the contest. Apparently there were THOUSANDS of entries, but "Chelsea" waded through them all. "It wasn't easy to narrow it down, but we've chosen five we think are particularly great, and now we need your help in making our final decision. Please vote for your favorite design -- the winning shirt will go on sale in our online campaign store."
Ah yes, the store, where for $40 you can own this freaky poster which features Hillary as Chairman Mao.
Sadly, nothing even close to our wonderful suggestions made the finals. But you can learn so much about the psyche of the campaign by seeing the ones that did. This shirt reminds some people of her first major life failure due to the hubris of inevitability. This shirt turns being too dumb to know better into a virtue, which used to be exclusively a Bush thing. This one unfortunately reminds everyone that her campaign is an empty pantsuit. And this Warhol paean, perhaps the most unfortunate, is weirdly evocative of either yet another self-destructive blonde or yet another dead communist revolutionary.
What all of this indicates is that the Clinton campaign is blissfully ignorant of how poorly they sometimes come across. They seem to have a tin ear about what will play with anyone outside of their comfort zone. They also seem to be blissfully ignorant that the end is nigh. Assuming a week's worth of voting, the T-shirt winner should become available for purchase right about the time the superdelegates make Hillary the nomination loser.
Chelsea's next contest: guess how many marked-down T-shirt sales it will take to pay off Mark Penn et al for coming up with dumb ideas like this.
obama '08
Kinda scary looking.
rude pig she is. In the genes I guess.
https://www.stonehousedigital.com/stores/upperplayground/category/Posters+%26+Prints/details/UP91208PT/sss/3939391
The caption on the T-shirt could read:
He didn't inhale... but doobee a Hillary Donor!
If the Clinton events are anything like other political events I've been to , the signs are not homemade, but made by campaign workers to look homemade.
It's not the first time
That I've had the sense that something's wrong
But I'm old enough to know
That things don't always work out like they should
I know you're tryin' hard
To break it gently to me, now
But there's no easy way
To tell it like it is, so baby...
I don't want to hear any more
You don't need to tell me it's over
I've been here before
I've seen that look before
I know it well; it comes as no surprise
You've been avoiding me
But now you want to talk it over
Before you take my hand
And tell me softly in a whisper
There's no need to explain
I've read the book; I know how this all ends
I don't want to hear any more
You don't need to tell me it's over
I've been here before
I won't ask you to stay
I won't stand in your way
Look me right in the eyes
Let me walk away with my head high
If there's some other guy
I don't need to know why
But I don't want to hear any more
You don't need to tell me it's over
I've been here before
I won't ask you to stay
I won't stand in your way
And I don't want to hear any more
No, no, baby
I don't want to hear any more
"I Paid Off Hillary Clinton's $12,000,000 Campaign Debt and All I Got Was This Lousy Tshirt"
Maybe you're on to something.
thanks for the funny article and I saw the Mao poster the other day at some rally and was shocked that ANY campaign would want that within 500 miles of their candidate.
But yeah ... I noticed it was a total rip off of the Obama poster also.
http://www.uttyler.edu/cowan/evita.html
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002NWS78/ref=nosim?tag=divathesite-20&link_code=as3&creativeASIN=B0002NWS78&creative=373489&camp=211189