From Flickr user "mikest," via SFSIst.
Actually, that’s not all. Here’s some more:
It took an article by Techyum’s own Violet Blue (over at her day job at ZDNet) to alert me to this uproariously clever prank played on Kenneth Cole in San Francisco, and the store manager’s snippy response. I’m sorry, could I love San Francisco any more?
The “controversy” (translation: public ridicule of a dumbass) stemmed from Kenneth Cole’s tweet that the uproar in Egypt was over Cole’s new collection. Hilarious!! People got pissed off at him. Hilariouser!
Cole quickly took the tweet down and apologized, but that’s not enough for some of you wacky San Fran pranksters, who apparently don’t believe that someone gets to spew insensitive self-serving shopping-crazed First World consumerist bullshit and then get a free pass. Hilariousest!!!
That’s why the above Tweet about Egypt from Kenneth Cole was duplicated and placed via decal onto the window of the San Francisco store. The SFIst article about it has some great shots of the unfortunate store staff (to whom my heart goes out, srsly) scraping the decals from the window.
Violet’s article, by the way, is about Groupon’s Superbowl ads, which have gotten some people almost as hot under the collar as the complete burning of a human body through a modest external ignition source. But it’s the comments that are about the damndest thing I’ve ever seen. Check out the extended flame war about whether or not there really has been genocide in Tibet or it’s just a fanatic anti-Chinese Pentagon plot.
I haven’t the foggiest idea if the people who post this crap whenever anything crops up about Tibet are actually paid agents of the Chinese government, or just Chinese chauvinists who resent being told the Chinese government isn’t 100% hunky-dory. Given the rabid, drooling-and-screaming timber of the comments, and everything I know about Chinese intelligence agencies, I’m leaning toward the former, but hey, what do I know?
And why the fuck would I care? Anyone who defends China’s conduct in Tibet oughta be ashamed of themselves, just like any American conservative who defends the fanatic weirdness of some specific whacked-out instances of the U.S.’s Cold War monkeying should get laughed at.
Regardless, the complaint is utterly bankrupt; the United States government now looooooooooooooooooooooves China, and complaining that the pro-Tibet lobby vastly outnumbers the pro-China lobby is quite possibly the most ludicrous assertion I’ve ever heard. Last time I checked, there were more than 1.3 billion people living in the PRC proper, of whom not quite 3 million live in Tibet. China has a trade relationship with virtually every country on Earth.
Ummmmmm…I’m sorry, how is the poor PRC being bullied by the Tibetans, again? Because of the lies of Pentagon Cold Warriors most of whom are dead by now? Wow. What a compelling argument for the angelic nature of the PRC government. Your wisdom set me as straight as a Tweet by Kenneth Cole!!!
As if that wasn’t enough, some commenter says of 1.2 million Native Americans who “may have died” in the U.S.’s westward expansion, “What’s the difference?” Awesome!!!! I wonder if Groupon can get me a discount on my train fare to Bergen-Belsen?