Only so much as ALL birds look like planes. It’s a thunderbird. You see the lightning bolt, right?
It’s clearly a reference to 9/11, for the reasons listed in the quote.
That said, I think it’s just a bunch of teenagers doing something tacky and perhaps trying to be controversial. When I was in high school in Pennsylvania, my friends thought it was funny to joke about Bud Dwyer’s suicide on live TV, and watch it on tape over and over.
Race has nothing to do with this incident. It’s not newsworthy.
What’s the difference between Bud Dwyer and Bud Light?
Bud Light has a head on it.
I dispute that it’s a thunderbird. Even allowing that it’s a bird in the first place (and since when do you see birds that look like that?), that’s clearly a lightning bolt, not thunder. And anyway, lightning bolts don’t look like that, they look more like this.
Or, wait, do you mean to suggest that the pictograph is a combination of abstracted symbols intended to represent a different idea? According to this thread, that’s nonsense.
too soon
I’m here to nitpick. Arabic is a language. The people are Arab.
According to the article aren’t these people actually American?
Only if the “us” of the shirt quote means Islamic extremists / Jihadists can I see the image and message as offensive. Otherwise it’s a patriotic statement… isn’t it?
I think the thought process on those offended goes like: “You can’t keep us down” + 9/11 + Arab wearers = “We evil Muslims won’t be kept down; next time, we’ll kill lots more Americans!”
Oy.
Here’s a photo of Edsel Ford High. Doesn’t look like an 11 to me.
- Not offended.
- The design clearly is meant to represent the towers. Anyone who denies that is being purposefully obtuse.
- I don’t see it as mockery in any way. I see it as kids using a symbol of catastrophic damage that happened in their lifetime as a way to say that they are young and strong and moving on with their futures, and that no one will stop them.
It’s offensive … duh.
The way I see it, it’s my FUCKING JOB as a middle-aged DAD to get OFFENDED over offensive stuff that the DAMN KIDS do.
Because what’s the point of being a DAMN KID if the more responsible members of society don’t slap you down from time to time?
DAMN DISRESPECTFUL KIDS! Confiscate their shirts and send 'em home for a couple of days. Otherwise what are they going to talk about at their 20-year-reunion?
Ditto. It’s not offensive and there’s no news story here. But there is no way I believe some people in this thread who say it’s not supposed to represent the Twin Towers. That’s just being willfully obtuse.
After all, faces don’t look like this, and the colors are all wrong, so clearly that is not supposed to represent a person.
I’m having a hard time understanding how this would be offensive. Sounds to me like the kids thought they were being patriotic. I think “out of context” is a better term here than “offensive.”
It’s good that this terribly important story came to light while we still have plenty of time to solve the problem of how to numerically represent the year that will come after 2010. Obviously, any depiction of the number ‘eleven’ will have to be stricken from all languages and alphabets in perpetuity, because the imagery is just too painful.
[Nigel Tufnel]This one goes to… twelve.[/NT]
The most offensive interpretation of the shirt I can give is this: High school is a bitch. For the most part, it is the students (class of '11) against the administration (represented by the eagle). But we, the class of 2011, are still standing, we’re about to graduate, and this damn school can’t bring us down.
I think people are missing that angle when they say that the bird is out of place or that it undermines the message.
That is, of course, if it has a message. Frankly, I don’t think high schoolers think that hard. It was probably meant to be some meaningless, vaguely patriotic mumbo jumbo along the lines of “these colors don’t run”.
I don’t deny September 11th had some place in the message, it’s just debatable what message was intended. Either way, I don’t see how you can construe it to be offensive. Not newsworthy, of course. And the kids’ races definitely have nothing to do with anything.
DrCube just said what I was trying to say much more eloquently.
The real travesty here is how the Graphic Arts department at Edsel Ford high failed these students so miserably. They need to revisit Tippy 101.
I stand with Cenk of The Young Turks on this one.
This video bring in a few facts not mentioned in the thread so far.
I like their videos.