Page 6 - The Tofield Mercury, Wednesday, July 19, 2023
OPINION
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JOHN’S RANT T-shirt fiasco wasn’t even news
BY JOHN MATHER A funny thing happened when I was waiting in line at the AMA offices the other day. A fellow a couple of spots ahead of me turned and looked at me and asked, “Is that a Doobie Brothers t-shirt you’re wearing?” It was and he mentioned he had been talking to his wife the previous evening about the Doobie Brothers and thought it was a unique coincidence that the following day he should see a fellow wearing one from a concert in Calgary several years ago. I don’t make a habit of reading t-shirts or their messages, but sometimes some do stand out. I suppose people buy t-shirts for a variety of reasons. Some for comfort, some to remind them of places visited, others to make a statement, whether profound, political, depicting humour or just for the plain stupidity of the saying on the shirt. Years ago when working at one of Edmonton’s major papers the directive came down to reading the t-shirts before shooting pictures of the person wearing it doing an activity. If a person wore a t-shirt stating “F*CK all that’s missing is you!” then that person was
avoided like the plague. Now, that’s fine and dandy for us moral, astute journalists of yesterday. Today’s scribblers and photogs seem to thrive on finding people wearing stupid t-shirts, especially if they stand next to politicians they don’t like. Case in point Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre. The pair were flipping flapjacks at the Calgary Stampede while being photographed with all manner of bystanders. One such bystander wore a t-shirt proclaiming something like “Thank a straight person for your existence” followed by the line “straight pride.” Obviously the wearer was making a statement on where he stood on gender issues. But did Poilievre or Smith even notice the shirt this guy was wearing as photos were snapped away of them. Maybe yes, maybe no, but it quickly evolved into a wedge issue.
Smith and Poilievre support straight rights, headlines proclaimed across social media. Both politicians issued statements distancing themselves from the shirt wearer, indentified as one Eric Green. There were no pictures or mentions if this same fellow posed with Prime Minister Trudeau while at the same Stampede. Should Smith and Poilievre know better? Maybe, but then again were they even paying attention to some bystander posing next to them? Would it have been news if the
t-shirt wearer had a gay pride shirt on, or a Che Guevara shirt, or a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. Probably not because those statements seem to fit in more with the mainstream media’s agenda these days. There have been photos of NDP members next to people wearing statement t-shirts with nary a peep from the media. No this was a case of mainstream media and the woke left making hay out of nothing. And people wonder why there is no trust for what they produce anymore?
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