BartBlog

March 1, 2008

Anti-Obama T-Shirt Sales Surge Online

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , , , — Volt @ 8:13 am

Alex Markels, US News and World Report, February 29, 2008

If you think the recent photo of Barack Obama wearing a turban – now appearing on the Internet near you – is a cheap shot, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Or, at least, you haven’t seen the arsenal of cheap shots now on display at CafePress.com, an online store that at last count featured more than 900 anti-Obama designs for sale on some 33,000 T-shirts and other tchotchkes.

Indeed, just as Matt Drudge posted the photo of Obama dressed in local garb during a visit to Somalia, which some have alleged was forwarded by the Clinton campaign, the same image – on more than a dozen T-shirts and sweatshirts – was selling on CafePress.com, along with a cornucopia of “Barack Obummer” campaign buttons and “Osama Obama” onesies.

Ranging from silly to downright offensive, the designs are created and uploaded by millions of would-be entrepreneurs, who then pick which products to emblazon them on and even set the price. “We have a review process that keeps out too much love or too much hate,” CafePress CEO Fred Durham says of the more than 250,000 designs displayed on the website at any given time.

Much like what sometimes happens on eBay, offensive stuff occasionally slips through the cracks, such as a recent T-shirt depicting Obama in a Nazi uniform alongside Adolf Hitler under a caption reading, “Don’t Be Fooled by Propaganda.”

Read More Here

Powered by WordPress