Shirts: A Responsibility Shirked

Truth is beautiful and an ideal towards which we should aspire, but there can undoubtedly be too much of it at the same time. I never have been eager for my illusions about the contents of a hot dog to be dispelled, and I feel much the worse for having learned here in California about all the places I go to which expose me to carcinogens. Knowing the truth or not knowing, I do the same things, so the truth really ruins a a good thing.

This is so also with the messages communicated to us via the medium of t-shirts (which are these days of paramount importance as newspapers wane). They often convey to us hilarious jokes, but the shirt and its joke do not and cannot exist in a vacuum. They both can only exist in relation to their wearer, who can easily ruin the joke by their appearance or behavior. I have seen this happen all too many times, and it really gives me pause when I consider wearing such a shirt.

Take the person who I saw wearing a shirt which told a joke at whose core was the condition of being crazy. I would not now be able to exactly relate the joke, but suffice it to say that it would have been adequately effective. I say 'would have been' because as it was the joke fell woefully flat. It fell flat precisely because it was all too true: the person inside the shirt on which it was written was clearly deranged. They say 'it's funny because it's true', but jokes may fail because they are true as well. It's too bad.

I now make a suggestion despite being of the firm belief that there may be such a thing as too much government and too much regulation. I suggest that there could be a place in government for some manner of office governing the appropriateness of jokes and other messages for the people who wish to wear them. Only if the pairing of person and shirt is deemed correct by some panel or czar would purchase be approved and wearer allowed to roam the streets unpunished. I allow that this policy may be ahead of its time, but I am prepared to wait out society and be vindicated some day down the line.