March 24, 2013 7:53 AM

Greetings from Portland: Where the uptight, humorless, and self-righteous carry the day

THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD

(apologies to Keith Olbermann)

Mike Golub

The Portland Thorns are attempting to go where two other women’s professional teams in the city have failed to go before: financial sustainability. The team is off to a good start, selling 6,500 season tickets — a number believed to be far greater than any of the other seven teams in the National Women’s Soccer League. But profitability is hardly assured, Thorns officials say. So that may help explain their swift reaction Friday, removing a hot-selling T-shirt from the team’s store and website in response to criticism that the saying — “Feelin’ Thorny?” — is offensive. Their action came about 24 hours after the first complaint was posted on Facebook…. “A great majority of fans find it funny and in the spirit it was created,” as a “funny, playful twist on our name,” said Mike Golub, chief operating officer of the Portland Timbers, who is serving in the same role with the Thorns — both are owned by Merritt Paulson…. Half of the Thorns merchandise sales Thursday at the Adidas Timbers Team Store in Jeld-Wen Field were of the T-shirt, though he declined to provide numbers. However, “There is a group of people who don’t like it,” and team officials decided to respect those sentiments and stop sales of the T-shirts, he said.

I know; Berkeley-on-the-Willamette has a well-deserved reputation for taking political correctness to ever greater and more ridiculous lengths- but this is just plain silly….

Perhaps I should have titled this post “Gutless and built to stay that way.” I was stunned by Golub’s decision to cave to a small minority of uptight, humorless, self-righteous types who fail to see the humor in the “Feelin’ Thorny?” t-shirts. Judging by the comments on the Thorns’ Facebook page, I’m not the only one upset by Golub’s decision to stop selling the t-shirt.

Let me see if I have this straight. A Thorns employee comes up with a clever slogan almost guaranteed to sell a lot of t-shirts and generate some much-needed attention (and income) for the newest addition to Portland’s professional sports landscape. The t-shirt sells remarkably well, comprising fully 50% of the Thorns merchandise sold at the team store. Then, a small number of people post complaints on the Thorns’ Facebook page and suddenly, Golub is scrambling to appease the humorless, uptight, and self-righteous folks who chose to look past the intent and take offense?

Way to show some courage, eh, Mike? A small minority makes a fuss, and suddenly the team caves to them. That the shirt’s slogan was both clever AND popular seems to make little difference. “Oh, heavens no; we don’t want to offend people.” Right; evidently you want to be so thoroughly vanilla and noncontroversial that no one could possibly take offense.

The Facebook comments against the “Feelin’ Thorny?” shirt run the gamut from the just plain silly and barely coherent:

Regarding the “Feelin’ Thorny” shirt: Merritt Paulson’s tweeted, pathetic, joking, condescending, non mea culpa about offering a Timbers shirt that says, “Got Wood?” completely misses the point. Why? Because men haven’t been systematically oppressed for thousands of years and are in a position of privilege. We’re very difficult to victimize because we’re kings of the freaking world. It’s very easy to take a joke at your expense in stride and laugh along with it when you essentially have nothing at stake, even more so when it refers to your anatomy, gender, or sexuality in an empowering rather than demeaning way.

….to the just plain self-righteous and narrow-minded:

The Feeling Thorny shirts are horrible. Would you want YOUR elementary or middle school or middle school daughter to wear that? There are so many more empowering quotes with the word Thorn in them. Find one.

…and the ridiculously narrow-minded:

Please replace the goofy “Feelin’ Thorny” shirt with “She Flies With Her Own Wings,” or something that is actually clever and not potentially demeaning to the players and fans. I get that this was an unintentional oversight and poor judgment and not everyone will take offense, but Portland can do better. Have some class.

Look, I understand that some of y’all can’t see the humor in the slogan and that some are even offended by it (I know; I don’t get it, either). There’s a very simple solution available to you: DON’T BUY A “FEELIN’ THORNY?” T-SHIRT.” It’s a free country, and all are entitled to their opinion, but not to the point where your (pronounced minority) opinion is accepted and used to deny the rest of us something humorous and harmless.

Jeebus, get over yourselves already. Y’all really need to lighten up…or at the very least give some thought to deploying your considerable humorless self-righteousness against a cause that actually matters.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on March 24, 2013 7:53 AM.

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