Nike Selling Tasteless Shirts After Tragedy

Yahoo ran a rather disgusting article about Nike recently selling t-shirts in their stores that read Boston Massacre. According to the article, the shirt is meant to reference the rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees baseball teams. However, the article referred to our nation as being “hypersensitive, easily-offended crybabies” and added that “your grandkids will be wearing 9/11-inspired gear that’s really going to tick you off.” What are they trying to get at? Why insult people while trying to inform them of a poor judgement call made by Nike? I find it even more disturbing that most of the comments after the article agree with the author. In all honesty, I loose complete faith in people when I read such tasteless comments. What has happened to everyone, does no one understand how horrific the events in Boston were, how they completely change our way of life and the life of those effected? Obviously I have an issue with Nike continuing to sell these t-shirts after the horrific Boston Marathon tragedy – it’s just despicable. Thankfully Eric Stangel, a producer on the David Letterman show, saw how offensive the t-shirt was and recommenced that employees take them down. The employee’s response was that they do remove the shirts, but they just somehow keep finding them on the shelves. Maybe Nike just likes the publicity they are going to receive for having these shirts on the shelves. Recently they ran an ad with Tiger Woods, the now infamous golfer for all the wrong reasons, which said “Winning takes care of everything.” Which I’m sure is a reference to how Woods overcame a crippling career scandal by being an exceptional golfer again. They also had to pull another ad featuring Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius, who was accused in February of murdering his girlfriend, with the caption “I am the bullet in the chamber.” I just hope Nike makes the right choice and removes the highly offensive t-shirts out of respect to those lost and the injured.