Strike Maine off the list of states that recognize same-sex marriage. Today, the political consultants that brought Proposition 8 to California (Schubert/Flint) had another success with Question 1 in Maine. Like its California counterpart, Question 1 overturned the previous rights of same-sex couples to marry.
Both initiatives were based on the premise that gay marriage is harmful to traditional marriage, with very similar websites highlighting the ill-effects that legal same-sex unions will have on this country’s children. Like the Protect Marriage site (California), the Stand for Marriage Maine site has a variety of video and calls-to-action focused on mobilizing supporters to rescue marriage from the calamitous harm that would befall society should homosexual unions be legally recognized.
One man, though, doesn’t think that Schubert/Flint is being effective enough. He too has a website with a variety of video and calls-to-action, all focused around protecting our country’s children and restoring traditional marriage.
That man is John Marcotte of Rescue Marriage, who was disappointed by Proposition 8 due to its inability to actually protect traditional marriage from anything but gay people. Marcotte notes that the true enemy of marriage is divorce, and therefore seeks to save the institution by outlawing divorce in the state of California.
Marcotte, of course, wasted no time in setting up a CafePress shop so that like-minded supporters can raise awareness of his worthy cause. In addition to the shop, Marcotte has also arranged a Wedding March on the Capitol, to be held in Sacramento on November 14, 2009.
Whether Marcotte will follow in the footsteps of Schubert/Flint and clone his pro-marriage initiative in Maine at some point is TBD.
Incidentally, the people of Maine did pass a medical marijuana bill along with Question 1. So if you’re gay and in Maine, you still can’t get married – but if this news sends you into uncontrollable depression, insomnia or premature glaucoma, you do have a new resource available to help numb the pain.
The Phillies may be down 2-3 in the World Series count, but Macy’s is apparently feeling optimistic. An ad congratulating the Phillies on back-to-back World Series wins ran in today’s Tegucigalpa Daily News (per the Macy’s Marketing Director) and, closer to home and perhaps of more interest to the locals, in the Philly Inquirer.
While Yanks fans derisively laugh at the baseball version of “Dewey Defeats Truman,” the question being asked by Philly Phans is why the ad is such a laughable concept. Sure, it ran early – but Philly residents will tell you that the Yanks don’t have this nailed down yet.
This week we’re thinking of groovy costumes one can assemble from the CafePress catalogue, and given the interest our design community has had in the H1N1 scare it seemed remiss to leave out such an easy costume. Swine Flu has garnered more designs than Bird Flu and Anthrax together, and brought to us the brand-new term “Hamthrax.”
See? Easy. A blue surgical mask is so much more comfortable and practical than that plastic Transformers mask you were thinking about anyway.
If you’re really feeling it, adding tourism-style accessories (camera around the neck, fanny pack, hat, tropical shirt over your swine flu T-shirt) will give you extra bonus points and a perfect excuse to carry around frosty beverages bedecked by umbrellas and fruit. Optional: portable blender to make one’s own frosty beverages throughout the evening. Bonus: carrying a portable blender is a really good way to make a lot of new friends.
With the Balloon Boy hoax having taken over the airwaves for a week, inspiring our design community to get busy making Balloon Boy T-shirts and such, it seems only fitting that The Great Balloon Boy Saga Hoax be our third Halloween costume suggestion this week.
There are a few variations of this costume, and all can involve a groovy T-shirt.
If you’re an overachiever and you have friends that want to be part of a group costume, you can easily outfit the Heene parents with some relevant T-shirts and have your other friends dress as the paparazzi. Or reporters. Or Wolf Blitzer.
Extra bonus points: build a cardboard TV screen frame and carry it around, posing with reporters behind it at random.
Extra extra bonus points: actually go out on the town with Wolf Blitzer.
Costume 2: The Balloon Boy Saga
Carrying around a mylar balloon and an empty box all night can be so cumbersome, and it takes away your drinking hand. With 6 simple T-shirts, you (or you and 5 friends) can be the balloon boy saga. Either line up together, or if you’re solo just layer them (it’s chilly on Halloween anyway – layers are good!) and then, at random, blow a whistle* to let people know that you’re about to dramatically re-enact the balloon boy hoax.
What you’ll need:
A collection of T-shirts (below is a suggested narrative, but you have lots to choose from)
*a whistle (but only if you want to call attention to periodic, dramatic re-enactments)
Sarah Palin inspired T-shirt designers like no other Vice Presidential candidate ever has, with Sarah Palin T-shirts and other groovy gifts numbering over 1 million.
Perhaps our fondest memory of Sarah Palin is the Great Moose Bag Sighting, which led some folks to design rebuttal bags on behalf of the moose and moved us to recommend a Sarah Palin costume for Halloween. Since we’re recommending random Halloween costumes this week (yesterday’s suggestion: be the “Saw” franchise), today we’ll revisit last year’s Palin plan with some slight alterations.
How to be Sarah Palin for Halloween this year:
Swap out the business suit for a snow-machine suit (easily obtainable on the cheap at larger thrift shops) and stuff your pockets full of dollar bills. Don’t forget your moose bag and your glasses, though.
Mock up a few fake copies of “Going Rogue” to hand out to screaming fans, and bring a pen to sign them. (Yep, we make books. No, we are not advocating trademark infringement. Call the book whatever you’d like, or just carry Dr. Seuss’s “My Book About Me” for kicks.)
Engage friends to be your screaming literary fans. It’s an easy costume for them; we have tons of flair that they can wear to express their love for all things Palin (read: you).
Just don’t forget your lipstick. Extra bonus points to anyone who brings their pit bull and lipstick – but unless the lipstick is bacon-flavored, please do keep it off your dog. (And if you find bacon-flavored lipstick, please let us know. That would be a find.)
Obama gave a speech back in February wherein he laid out plans to cap the pay and bonuses of executives working for companies who received taxpayer-funded federal bailout money, noting that such executives could still receive compensation (like options) tied to the long-term health of the company. The move was in response to events like the AIG fiasco that occurred after the first round of Bush bailout money.
This week, the Federal Reserve “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg – hired to oversee the companies who took the bailout money – issued a set of guidelines (The White House likes the term “formula” and “guidelines” better than “pay cap”) aimed to limit the pay at 7 firms who received the most bailout money. The White House ordered what’s being described as “drastic” pay cuts for 175 top executives at these companies, which are: AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, GM, Chrysler, and the financing departments of the two automakers. However, it’s worth noting that the guidelines don’t specifically prohibit multi-million dollar paychecks or substantial deferred compensation.
Said Obama in a speech, “I’ve always believed that our system of free enterprise works best when it rewards hard work. But it does offend our values when executives of big financial firms — firms that are struggling — pay themselves huge bonuses even as they continue to rely on taxpayer assistance to stay afloat.”
The Fed also noted that it would begin reviewing compensation practices at some our largest largest financial firms. In its guidelines the Fed stated, “Banking organizations too often rewarded employees for increasing the firm’s revenue or short-term profit without adequate recognition of the risks the employees’ activities posed to the firm.”
The Fed also noted that the hope is for other banking institutions to adopt the “pay cut model” in an effort to focus on long-term profitability and stability, rather than short-term cash.
The Astro Boy movie opens in theaters this Friday – and if you enjoy animated features, space stories or classic good vs. evil tales, this is a good weekend movie for ya.
If you’re wondering what one wears to the opening weekend of a futuristic animated feature, look no further: official Astro Boy T-shirts and other groovy gear is available in the Astro Boy shop.
Remember, it’s always cold in movie theaters and it’s flu season. So bundle up in a hip Astro Boy sweatshirt, stuff yourself full of popcorn and enjoy!
It sounded too farfetched to be true – and it was.
Falcon Heene, better known as “Balloon Boy,” wasn’t in a large, shiny mushroom-shaped balloon floating about his Colorado neighborhood. And he wasn’t hiding in a box in the attic Tom Sawyer-style due to an honest 6-year-old’s fear of reprisal, either.
As he put it to Wolf Blitzer when asked why he didn’t come out during a massive, publicized hunt for him, “we did it for the show.”
Whoops.
It would seem that Heene’s parents staged the stunt to improve their chances of appearing on more reality TV, having already appeared twice on “Wife Swap” and having recently been turned down by TLC on a pitch for their own reality series.
Indeed, if you managed to miss the near-constant coverage of Balloon Boy, here’s a collection of T-shirts that pretty much gives you the entire story. Save yourself some time and let the T-shirts do the talking:
UPDATE 10/23: After Balloon Boy’s dad insisted on record that it wasn’t a hoax, Balloon Boy’s mom admitted that it was a hoax.
UPDATE, part DEUX (10/27): the Heene family is now calling for a “criminal action” against the Sheriff in the case, who they claim has violated their rights by speaking publicly about an “alleged child welfare investigation.”
Such is the argument made by the folks over at Rescue Marriage, who have authored the 2010 California Marriage Protection Act. Inspired by the passage of California’s Proposition 8, which was promoted and funded by the Protect Marriage camp to “restore marriage and protect California children,” Rescue Marriage founder John Marcotte realized that truly protecting marriage meant going well beyond limiting its legal status to heterosexuals.
Marcotte sees the primary threat to marriage as the dissolution thereof, and therefore seeks to protect the sanctity of marriage by outlawing divorce in the state of California.
To help get the word out, Marcotte started the Rescue Marriage T-shirt shop so that supporters can show the world that they truly stand behind government-mandated marriage protection.
We spoke with Marcotte, and asked him whether or not he thought this bill would pass. His answer: “Proposition 8 passed on the grounds that it protects traditional marriage and our children, so I don’t see any reason that this bill – which truly protects marriage by preventing its demise – wouldn’t pass. I mean, if all the people who voted for Proposition 8 don’t vote for this, they’d be hypocrites. You don’t think that California voters are hypocrites, do you?”
The Rescue Marriage camp has organized a Wedding March on the Capitol to be held on November 14th, 2009. The march invites all of us to “Participate in democracy the American way: by shouting angrily, using inflammatory rhetoric and memorizing jingoistic slogans to chant or misspell on signs.”
Whether the people of California will take this next step in preserving traditional marriage has yet to be seen. Some residents have expressed that banning divorce infringes on their civil rights; to those people, Marcotte says, “Sometimes other people have to give up their rights in order to protect my idea of traditional marriage.”
UPDATE: Rescue Marriage has a new Public Service Announcement to explain the issue:
Obama’s surprise Nobel Peace Prize win last week created an unprecedented uproar of conflicting popular opinion, and the designs keep coming in as the debate over the award continues.
As the Nobel committee staunchly stands behind their decision, public opinion flares wildly on both sides. To date the CafePress community has brought about 7,000 Obama Nobel Peace Prize products to life – 57% supporting and 43% opposing the prize.
Perhaps more significant, though, is the foresight of the CafePress community. The Obama/peace theme isn’t a new one ’round these parts; we saw this trend from the get-go when Obama merchandise started to hit the catalogue. Since early 2008, customers have flocked to merchandise featuring the iconic Obama “O” transformed into a peace sign, as well as with the similar messages of “hope” and “change.” With over 180,000 Obama/Peace products made before the award, the feeling that Obama would be the President to leave a legacy of peace speaks loud and clear on the T-shirts. This flavor of candidate messaging was a new one; a search for peace-related President George W. Bush merchandise turns up 375,000 products, mostly displaying ironic messages of war and impeachment.
As the battle of public opinion rages on, we’ll continue to see folks inserting themselves into the social consciousness of this historical moment (and others to come) by making bolder, louder statements via the almighty T-shirt.
Strike Maine off the list of states that recognize same-sex marriage. Today, the political consultants that brought Proposition 8 to California (Schubert/Flint) had another success with Question 1 in Maine. Like its California counterpart, Question 1 overturned the previous rights of same-sex couples to marry.
That man is John Marcotte of Rescue Marriage, who was disappointed by Proposition 8 due to its inability to actually protect traditional marriage from anything but gay people. Marcotte notes that the true enemy of marriage is divorce, and therefore seeks to save the institution by outlawing divorce in the state of California.
Whether Marcotte will follow in the footsteps of Schubert/Flint and clone his pro-marriage initiative in Maine at some point is TBD.
