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Joe, can the political rhetoric please.
Personally, I am much more concerend with the sweatshops most of Walmarts items are made in; than a potential Nazi symbol being printed on a few shirts. As a point of intrest both the deaths head, and the swastika were in use well before the Nazi's corrupted them.
I think they can probably crawl out from under whatever hail of opprobrium that results by claiming that it's an ass-backwards tribute to Sky Captain And The World of Tomorrow.
Only I doubt they've watched the movie either.
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\"Hail of opprobrium\"?
Holy thesaurus, Batman!\"
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I wholeheartedly agree with Daytonna.
Can it.
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Oh, quit whining. I thought JoeMomma's comment was funny.
And while it's obviously an accident, it's not just a death's head. It's an extremely specific one.
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I third the motion.
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Well, and I'm saying this as a registered Democrat, I think Joe's rhetoric wasn't really appropriate for this either. I honestly get tired with the overused \"So and so is just like the Nazis\" stuff from any viewpoint.
...well, unless you're calling Walmart Nazis - that's just funny. Although, really, they're much more like the Borg. :P
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wal mart has a responsibility to make sure this kind of thing doesn't end up on the shelves in the first place, not just a responsibility to have quick damage control. i can only imagine grandpa joe, ww2 vet walking around through walmart and seeing this shirt, having a heart attack from a scary flashback.
and you people are way too sensitive.
can it be? can of campbell's soup? candy cane?
At Target (sometime in the past 2 years) they were selling \"retro\" olympic style track suits with different countries represented like \"Italia,\" etc.
One of the countries? The USSR. Yeah, Stalin-chic didn't seem to raise concerns. Unlike our little \"skull design\" problem here, there wasn't any possibility it was a mistake.
Of course, blog-world was in its infancy, but if I see a bunch of USSR clothes for sale again, I'll raise the issue to my favorite gripe sites.
Well, the difference is that the USSR had multiple leaders, and not all of them evil. Stalin was a jackass, but contrast him to Gorbachev.
Nazis on the other hand have no \"bright side\" - so, again, I see a bit of a difference.
I find Daytonna's comfort with Nazi memorabilia to be a typical manifestation of the anti-semitism so ubiquitous & not so latent among the current generation of PC liberals.
First: Stalin was not a jackass. he was a megalomaniac who \"eliminated\" millions of his own citizens and stomped on other eastern europeans.
Second:As for anti-semitic PC liberals: Every jerk i have heard braying that Jews own the banks & run the media could be described thus: pimple-brain, blow-hard, pusswad high school flunky.These bullies worship Mr. viagra-dick oxycontin butthole and scream like a baby with a fudgy diaper when the tables are turned.
Third: \"Being PC\" is what a moron yells when told to shut their festering gob of bigotry.
Come on, we know there are certain images stores have to keep. this was just something that fell through the cracks. most people don't know about images. You could the bikes clothing is bad, but you will be wrong. Japan has an symbol that looks just like the Swastika, however it means good like. Thanks for the time
The shirt is probably a reference to the war boardgame \"Squad Leader\" which came out in 1978. This wargame, consisting of a board and cardboard tokens covers World War II, including such scenarios as the battle for Stalingrad where the Nazi's battled the Russian forces.
The game, in an attempt to be historically accurate, may use certain symbols such as the skull symbol pictured on the t-shirt. The shirt may have been originally manufactured for wargame fans since Squad Leader\" is viewed by many to be a classic wargame.
The buyer of the shirts probably thought it was just a generic skull and probably did not recognize the relationship with Nazi's. I certainly would not have known about the relationship without reading about it online.
See the link below:
All of you are very quick to say that we need to remove this shirt from stores. On what basis? That it is unamerican? You find it disgusting? It comes from WWII? So what? What gives any of us the right to say what can and can't be sold? What happened to \"freedom of expression\"? It doesn't say that you have the freedom to express what is socially acceptable. It says that you have the right to express anything your litle heart desires. Also, for some of us, this type of symbolism is our birthright. It is a facet of our personal history. I say none of you have a right to deny these images to anyone.
@Daytonna: Exactly, The swastika Is and has been a Buddhist symbol for thousands of years. And the Deaths Head was originally used by The Queens Royal Lancers (British army)
Good god, that's disgusting. I'm really glad I never shop at walmart. Might be an honest mistake but still scary.
Perhaps they were looking forward to another Republican controlled Congress? I've heard many mentions that the US is following the pattern of pre-WW2 Germany.