Fox News T-Shirt Spoof
Kervo
location: Sterling, VA
listening to: Spotify
registered: 2001.02.19
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Except for Mike Luckovich cartoons, I haven't laughed so much reading the op-ed pages in the local news in a while.Check out the website at http://www.agitproperties.com/. They now have an "Important Legal Disclaimer" posted.Fox trots out lawyer over T-shirt spoofery
John Kelso - Austin American-Statesman
Thursday, July 10, 2003I'm not surprised that the people at Fox News don't have much of a sense of humor. After all, it would be hard to hear the punchlines over all that shouting.Three Austin, Texas, guys have gotten a cease-and-desist letter from Fox News because of a couple of satirical T-shirts they're marketing.One says, ''Fair and Balanced: Faux News Channel: We Distort --- You Comply.''''But our really big seller is our Bill O'Reilly Hitler Youth shirt,'' said Richard Luckett, one of the three partners in agitproperties.com (and former merchandising manager for guitar great Stevie Ray Vaughan).The front of that shirt shows a uniformed Aryan lad carrying what resembles a Fox News banner, along with the message ''Fair and Balanced: O'Reilly Youth.'' O'Reilly, in case you've been too busy watching people eating insects on Fox's other programming, is an overbearing commentator who falls somewhere to the right of Vlad the Impaler.These shirts weren't selling all that great until Christopher Silvestri, senior media counsel for Fox News, wrote a letter to agitproperties.com telling them to knock it off: ''We demand that you immediately cease displaying and selling merchandise on the Web site,'' the letter says.Silvestri wrote that the Web site ''may confuse consumers.'' Hey, anybody who is too stupid to be tipped off by the use of the word ''Faux'' on a joke Fox News shirt is probably too stupid to put one on without directions, OK?One thing you can say is that the Fox News letter was great for the economy --- or at least for agitproperties.com's economy. After the letter appeared, the flap got mentioned on Keith Olbermann's ''Countdown'' on MSNBC. The tiff was also featured in an article in the online magazine Salon.com.''Even in a down economy, there are some business models that still work --- selling T-shirts comparing Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly to Hitler, for example,'' the Salon.com article noted.Because of the publicity, now it's all these guys can do to keep up with the T-shirt orders that they fill out in a cluttered garage in a small house in South Austin. Luckett says since Fox wrote to complain, the Web site has gone from about 300 hits a day to 41,000.''I was just getting ready to look for a job when this hit,'' said Rick Elms, a former bartender and one of Luckett's partners.Perhaps the most amusing part of Silvestri's letter is the part where he complains about a lack of taste. ''Furthermore, the T-shirt 'O'Reilly Youth Tee' . . . shows incredibly poor taste on your part,'' Silvestri writes.''Isn't that ironic coming from the same network responsible for such benchmarks of good taste as 'Temptation Island 3' and 'Joe Millionaire'?'' Luckett asked. ''That's one of the main things these . . . Republicans don't understand,'' he said. ''After all, that's what this country was founded on: dissent. We told King George, 'We dissent.' ''Speaking of dissent, I should mention that the ''Generalissimo El Busho'' coffee mugs are in the works.By the way, Luckett says that the New York Civil Liberties Union has volunteered to take the case, should Fox decide to declare legal war in South Austin. Don't expect these guys to go quietly, however.''This is already a case of them trying to shut us up,'' said Luckett, who thinks O'Reilly is ''just a finger-wagging sanctimonious cable Nazi, with a capital N. They figure they can spend 37 cents on a stamp and make three guys in an Austin garage roll over.''Perhaps for the first time in recorded history, Fox News isn't running its mouth. ''We don't comment on pending legal matters,'' said Robert Zimmerman, a Fox spokesman.So they've got plenty of guts when it comes to bombing Iraq. But when they catch a little flak out of South Austin, they ain't so gutsy after all.John Kelso is a columnist for the Austin American-Statesman.
K
Kervo
(view)
Except for Mike Luckovich cartoons, I haven't laughed so much reading the op-ed pages in the local news in a while.Check out the website at http://www.agitproperties.com/. They now have an "Important Legal Disclaimer" posted.Fox trots out lawyer over T-shirt spoofery
John Kelso - Austin American-Statesman
Thursday, July 10, 2003I'm not surprised that the people at Fox News don't have much of a sense of humor. After all, it would be hard to hear the punchlines over all that shouting.Three Austin, Texas, guys have gotten a cease-and-desist letter from Fox News because of a couple of satirical T-shirts they're marketing.One says, ''Fair and Balanced: Faux News Channel: We Distort --- You Comply.''''But our really big seller is our Bill O'Reilly Hitler Youth shirt,'' said Richard Luckett, one of the three partners in agitproperties.com (and former merchandising manager for guitar great Stevie Ray Vaughan).The front of that shirt shows a uniformed Aryan lad carrying what resembles a Fox News banner, along with the message ''Fair and Balanced: O'Reilly Youth.'' O'Reilly, in case you've been too busy watching people eating insects on Fox's other programming, is an overbearing commentator who falls somewhere to the right of Vlad the Impaler.These shirts weren't selling all that great until Christopher Silvestri, senior media counsel for Fox News, wrote a letter to agitproperties.com telling them to knock it off: ''We demand that you immediately cease displaying and selling merchandise on the Web site,'' the letter says.Silvestri wrote that the Web site ''may confuse consumers.'' Hey, anybody who is too stupid to be tipped off by the use of the word ''Faux'' on a joke Fox News shirt is probably too stupid to put one on without directions, OK?One thing you can say is that the Fox News letter was great for the economy --- or at least for agitproperties.com's economy. After the letter appeared, the flap got mentioned on Keith Olbermann's ''Countdown'' on MSNBC. The tiff was also featured in an article in the online magazine Salon.com.''Even in a down economy, there are some business models that still work --- selling T-shirts comparing Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly to Hitler, for example,'' the Salon.com article noted.Because of the publicity, now it's all these guys can do to keep up with the T-shirt orders that they fill out in a cluttered garage in a small house in South Austin. Luckett says since Fox wrote to complain, the Web site has gone from about 300 hits a day to 41,000.''I was just getting ready to look for a job when this hit,'' said Rick Elms, a former bartender and one of Luckett's partners.Perhaps the most amusing part of Silvestri's letter is the part where he complains about a lack of taste. ''Furthermore, the T-shirt 'O'Reilly Youth Tee' . . . shows incredibly poor taste on your part,'' Silvestri writes.''Isn't that ironic coming from the same network responsible for such benchmarks of good taste as 'Temptation Island 3' and 'Joe Millionaire'?'' Luckett asked. ''That's one of the main things these . . . Republicans don't understand,'' he said. ''After all, that's what this country was founded on: dissent. We told King George, 'We dissent.' ''Speaking of dissent, I should mention that the ''Generalissimo El Busho'' coffee mugs are in the works.By the way, Luckett says that the New York Civil Liberties Union has volunteered to take the case, should Fox decide to declare legal war in South Austin. Don't expect these guys to go quietly, however.''This is already a case of them trying to shut us up,'' said Luckett, who thinks O'Reilly is ''just a finger-wagging sanctimonious cable Nazi, with a capital N. They figure they can spend 37 cents on a stamp and make three guys in an Austin garage roll over.''Perhaps for the first time in recorded history, Fox News isn't running its mouth. ''We don't comment on pending legal matters,'' said Robert Zimmerman, a Fox spokesman.So they've got plenty of guts when it comes to bombing Iraq. But when they catch a little flak out of South Austin, they ain't so gutsy after all.John Kelso is a columnist for the Austin American-Statesman.
