Together We Thrive T-Shirts: Campaign Shirts?

Having found out from Michelle Malkin that the T-Shirts that were going to be given out prior to the Tucson Memorial Service titled, “Together We Thrive: Tucson & America” I immediately had some concerns about what to expect going into the service. At this point now I realize that I was a bit more skeptical going into the memorial, in large part because of my awareness of these shirts than I normally would have been.

After the memorial, I took to my blog to share my thoughts on the service and my observations… I found myself pointing to these shirts as having something to do with the overall tone of the service. I felt that it lacked the reverence that should be observed for a memorial to those who were killed and those who were injured at the hands of a madman. You can read my comments here.

In the days that followed, it must have struck some others as odd as well because Fox Nation started doing some digging into the shirts. Yesterday, Fox posted an article telling of what they had found out. Through the course of their inquiries, they spoke with a University Of Arizona spokeswoman who stated, “it was our idea to do the t-shirts“. She went on to state that there was no assistance from the White House on the shirts, either in planning or in paying. The estimated amount for the shirts was in the neighborhood of $60,000 and she said that the ordering of the shirts went through the UA Bookstore who then contracted with a vendor. Fox Nation followed up by contacting the vendor and this is where it has less to do with what is said as it is with what wasn’t said…

FoxNation.com spoke to representatives at University of Arizona BookStores who revealed the vendor they used….”Youth Monument,” a Los Angeles-based company specializing in “the hottest” college brands. “I don’t feel comfortable commenting on the story,” said Nick Ventura when contacted by FoxNation.com. Ventura called himself “a partner” at Youth Monument. When asked if the University of Arizona was a regular client and if there was any contact with the White House or any political group he responded “no comment.”

The apparent avoidance of any and all answers in this way of ambiguous denial feels like there is more to this story to come. Only time will tell, because for now Youth Movement isn’t.

Ok, so everyone(or almost everyone) in attendance gets a shirt. That should be the end of it, right? Not exactly…. As I posted this morning, KVOA in Arizona reports that you too can get a shirt now. In response to what appears to have been a growing demand for the shirts, the University of Arizona has decided to make more available. The only catch as of yesterday was that they hadn’t decided how to make them available yet, so in order to get them you must leave your contact info with the UA Office of Student Affairs.

 

In my post about the shirts suddenly becoming available, I point out some of my concerns and in particular how I feel that this is capitalism gone awry. I feel that there is some potential moral and/or ethical concerns regarding the sale of the shirts from a memorial service. In fact… when did shirts get used in conjunction with solemn events like a memorial service? Aren’t they usually reserved as memorabilia associated with upbeat events like sporting events, pep rallys, concerts, or even campaign events?

Well, I found myself inspired to do some homework. It felt like there were more pages to this book that had yet to be turned. I did the Google thing with any number of combinations of “Obama” and “Together We Thrive” and a few other options but after reviewing a couple of hundred page titles, the best I could find was a few reports on Obama suggesting that America and Ghana have similar paths in destiny and that “Together We Thrive” was the recurring theme there.

 This visit was in 2009 and you can read his remarks here or here if you wish.

However, some other folks have managed to hit upon the right combo of search terms… or maybe they went to his website first. Either way, someone has managed to scoop a bit of a connection into the “Together We Thrive” theme. It has always sounded like a campaign slogan to me(and apparently to Rush Limbaugh as well)… I just couldn’t tell if it was a new theme or a throwaway from the “Hope and Change” tour in 2008. SO here is what was discovered by better researchers than I…

Hopefully you will be able to read it as I didn’t expect it to be quite so small. If you are able to read it, you will see that it is a “blog post” on Organizing For America, also know as barackobama.com. The author is John Berry IV and the way that I read this article, it comes off like exactly the way I interpret the President’s agenda. There are lots of undertones that seem to depict class differences as if to perpetuate class warfare. In it, I see a lot of statements that sound an awful lot like calls for a socialist society as well. Mr. Berry even evokes the racial divide card with, ” It has become a part of the American Business model, whether it was indentured servants, slaves picking cotton, sharecroppers, the industrious people that built the railroads or todays migrant workers.” 

 I realize that this may be jumping a big chasm of ideas but I felt like there were a handful of points that were subtly thrown out there during the Memorial Service that echoed the racial divide and class divide in America. From the very beginning with the Yaqui speaker, who was NOT a spiritual advisor by his own admission, that took it upon himself to give his family history— he made sure to point out that he is from Mexican lineage which got many cat-calls and whoops from the crowd— in a state where the border debate is at a pinnacle within the nation.  The crowd reacted distinctly different between Republican Governor Jan Brewer and any of the Democrats that used the microphone to present their messages. There was also an inescapable air of political divide in the President’s statements as well. He used the time to discuss the opposing points between Democrats and Republicans, bring up  some Democratic talking points like gun control and mental health care, as well as to even work the word “vitriol” into his speech.

It is for all of those reasons just pointed out that these shirts felt more like campaign shirts than anything else. Was this a chance to exploit a crisis rather than let it go to waste? Did the slow response from President Obama permit a commercial branding of the Memorial Service become a subtle preliminary campaign opportunity? Is there any coincidence that the shirt color was blue and is the same color for the Democratic Party? Why not pink, fuchsia, or white? White seems like the most neutral of all options and goes well with memorializing the innocence of a 9 year old’s untimely passing.

There will undoubtedly be more digging into this. It felt too contrived for a service circus atmosphere to not expect more investigation into it.

**Added 1/14/11: Or you could just buy yourself one of these shirts…