NASCAR Boy

There’s this kid in my class whose entire wardrobe seems to consist of Republican party t-shirts and caps. He wears a minimum of three items with prominent GOP logos every single day. Truth be told, he looks like a NASCAR driver sponsored by the GOP. And the very sight of him annoys me.

A friend of mine has a wardrobe consisting almost entirely of t-shirts with sarcastic/snarky slogans on them. Personally, I think most of them are pretty funny, but if I’m entirely honest, I can see how some people might find them off-putting. Nonetheless, I’m not in any way annoyed by them. So at first, I wrote my annoyance with NASCAR boy off as disagreement with his political viewpoint. But the more I see him, the more I think it’s the heinousness of his appearance that bothers me. If he were wearing “Hillary 08!” or “Dean for Party Chair!” or “No Blood For Oil!”, I would be equally annoyed. (Note—I don’t necessarily agree with any of those statements, but they were the most obviously DNC t-shirt slogans I could think of on short notice.) I think it’s the combination of the perpetually smug expression on his face and the obnoxiousness of the logos (not the message, the logos themselves) that sets my teeth on edge. Mostly the smirk.

Does this make me a hypocrite? I would never walk up to him and say “Your shirt is stupid. You shouldn’t wear it.” anymore than I would walk up to Eep and tell him that I think a certain shirt isn’t funny (and no, Eep, I don’t have a specific one in mind, but it’s within the realm of possibility that you own at least one that doesn’t strike me as funny). If he likes it, that’s all that really matters, right? It’s not like they’re offensive. So long as there’s no particular hate expressed in the logos, the choice of whether or not to wear a logo falls under the category of “freedom of choice”. Has my opinion of the GOP sunk so low that I equate the mere display of a Republican Convention 2004 t-shirt with an expression of hate? I’ve always thought of myself as being more open-minded than that.