Urban Outfitters, are you fucking kidding me?
A fake vintage Kent State sweatshirt in a blood-spatter
design?
What’s next?
Columbine baseball caps with bullet holes? Maybe Sandy Hook backpacks complete with
dead child doll? And when’s the UC Santa
Barbara version available?
I was around at the time of Kent State. I watched the images play out across my
black-and-white TV screen and felt the horror of seeing the U.S. government
turn its guns on children. I feel the shock and pain of it to this day.
But you know, I have to thank you. Just when I was afraid that I’d become numb
to the ugliness of the world, that I’d lost my humanity and with it my ability to feel outrage anymore, you come along with your insensitivity to
the countless families who have lost loved ones to hideous, senseless gun
violence and show me that I am still capable of feeling shock and disgust.
Whether perpetrated by mental deviants who walk among us or by those charged with serving and protecting, the National Guardsmen who fired on and killed those four innocent students at Kent State in 1970 and the police responsible for the murder of Michael Brown, such tragedies should be marked with tears, not souvenirs.
And to the dirtbags who actually bought this
sweatshirt? Are you fucking kidding
me?!
Update: Urban Outfitters has issued this
statement: "It was never our
intention to allude to the tragic events that took place at Kent State in 1970
and we are extremely saddened that this item was perceived as such … There is
no blood on this shirt nor has this item been altered in any way. The red stains
are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from
natural wear and fray."
Yeah. I buy
that…
