Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Laugh It Off, Julius and the ultimate t-shirt

So the folks at Laugh It Off, creators of controversial t-shirts that regularly get them in a spot of bother, found themselves deep in the brown stuff this morning. And so I was tasked to write about it.
The team had come up with a new t-shirt design to poke fun at - wait for it - yes - you guessed it - everyone's favourite buffoon - Julius Malema. Only they did it a bit wrong. So the idea, as their man Ruan explained to me, was to highlight the fact the Julius had made some monumentally (aren't they all?) stupid remarks about hermaphrodites during the recent Caster Semenya gender testing debacle. So they took a painting of naked Saartjie Baartman, added a set of manly dangly bits to the crotch area and then posted Julius's smiling face on it. I have to say, it did not make for a pretty t-shirt.
Now, while I understand that the idea behind the design was not intended to offend, the end product was quite awful, and attracted howls of disapproval from all over. Deservedly so. Particularly from their own fans.
I called Julius to get his comment on the matter and find out what he thought about the t-shirt design. He did not pick up and his voice mail told me that his inbox was too full to take anymore messages. So I left a message with sidekick Floyd. They haven't come back to me.
But the guys at Laugh It Off seem to be a bunch of sports. They pulled down the offending image and put a new one up. Still with Julius's head on Saartjie's cropped-off body. Stubborn indeed.
Check this out:

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