I was browsing through my favorite blogs at 1:30 in the morning, and when I came to the Daily Kos front page I saw a photo of the new DKos tee-shirt now being offered for sale at the Daily Kos Online Store. For those of you who missed it, it looks like this:
This really caught my eye. I like the color scheme; the DKos orange is nicely understated on the grey, and the white lettering is very eye-catching. It's attractive and it's only $18.50. (But supplies are limited.)
I have one question though: Why is the guy holding up a large bloody knife?
Here is a close-up of that anonymous hero (aka "The Little Man"):
Is that the image we really want to project? We Kossacks are savage killers who will do anything for our warped vision of America? Isn't that what Republicans do?
I clicked over to the online store and found a second shirt with the same image, only this one has a more incriminating caption:
Oh great. Our hero is not just a killer now: He's part of a vast left-wing conspiracy of killers!
Yikes!
Now, before you start posting recipes (though I wouldn't mind having a good one for the boneless chicken breasts I have in the freezer that I really need to do something with): I know he isn't really holding a knife and that isn't real blood dripping off it. (Heh.) He is holding up the American flag. Here is the Daily Kos logo from which the image was taken (yes I know, you've all seen it a thousand times, but how many of you have looked at it? I mean, really looked at it?):
(Here is an older version of the banner, which is a little clearer):
(BTW, the image was apparently a royalty-free design that Kos got from some image warehouse. Who knew?)
It is perfectly obvious what The Little Man is holding. So what happened? (Or as we like to say in the blogosphere, with our studied, casual hyperventilation and our aren't-we-in-the-know abbreviations: WTF???)
A close look makes it obvious. For that second shirt (which I assume actually came first), the web address, dailykos.com, was superimposed on the image, cutting out part of the flagstaff (a rather important part too, if you ask me) so that The Little Man is actually holding up a sort of funky torch in a very stiff breeze:
Then they took the altered image and applied it to the new shirt, sans the address. Touch it up a bit, add some dripping blood, and voilà! the Bloody Knife:
Ah! No need to panic everyone, the mystery is solved.
One last question to be answered: Why did I spend half the night writing this frivolous diary when I should have been addressing something of greater moment like, "Hillary Clinton is Such a Liar!" or "John McCain is SUCH a LIAR!!!" or "Can You Believe What Liars They Are on Fox News???" or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obama"?
Could it be that I sense that people are already bored with this election and don't want to hear one more word about it? Could it be that I posted my last diary more than eight months ago and I'm sick to death of seeing it every time I open up my DKos page?
Or could it be that I see danger ahead, a rocky shore dimly looming in the fog? Maybe I see Bill O'Reilly gleefully waving this bloody shirt and shouting, "I knew it! These daily kozzz people are advocating killing and assassination and murder and terrorism! I just knew it!" Maybe I see hysterical, frothing-at-the-mouth wingnut bloggers, desperate to distract from the revelations that McCain's been in bed with doing business with lobbyists, seizing on this shirt to scare their mindless followers: "If you help elect a Democrat this fall, this rabid pack of radical liberals will come after you with knives drawn and butcher you like a hog! Yes sir, like a HOG! That shirt is the Mein Kampf of the radical MoveOn.org-George Soros-Clinton-Obama-fascist-communist-terrorist liberals! Just you watch, it will be World War II and 9/11 all over again!"
Naw. I'm just sick of seeing my old diary.
But the more I think about it, the more I really like this shirt....
Oh right, a poll: