One Shirt – Oops

I'm not sure I would have heard about the eye-wateringly offensive T-shirt design offered by IndyCar, if Rachel Maddow hadn't covered it on Monday night.

IndyCar, which runs the Indianapolis 500 race, will be putting on a road race in Washington, D.C., near the end of August. The event is meant to be the final, grand moment of Donald Trump's glorious vision for this country's 250th anniversary. Cage matches, concerts with no one to sing at them, and yes, cars racing through city streets at inappropriate speeds, making it unusable for the people who live there: that's what this country is all about.

Anyway.

The shirt – only available in ivory – looked like this:

And it said those words. 

Here's MotorTrend's write up of the debacle. From what I can tell, knock-offs of the shirt are available for sale on line, so unfortunately anyone who wants to own the libs can still get one.

Aside from the egregious headline, I wanted to talk about the illustration. Possibly a person immersed in IndyCar culture would not see it this way, but contrast that inhumane, Boba Fett-like figure with what the real Lincoln figure looks like:

The person who created this illustration — or the people who were art-directing them — made choices about what to change from the original. They wanted to modify parts of it to look "Indy" and be what they considered clever, but still have it be recognizable as the Lincoln statue. 

Personally, I didn't understand it as referring to the Lincoln Memorial statue when I first saw the shirt on Maddow's show because the figure is so transformed, it thought it was some kind of pilot in a science fiction show. The arms of the chair were not enough of a signifier for me to get the reference right away. In addition to the space-suit-like clothing and the helmet, the figure's body arrangement is part of the reason.

These are small things, but the way the Indy figure's hands and legs are portrayed diverge from the original: both hands are draped, while one of Lincoln's lightly grasps the chair arm and the other rests in a loose fist; the Indy figure's legs are splayed open as wide as they can go within the space, with feet even — something any woman will recognize as manspreading — in contrast with Lincoln's legs, which are parallel to his body, right foot farther forward. 

Generally, the Indy figure appears to be leaning back in the chair more than Lincoln is, possibly a reference to acceleration, but that reinforces my association with science fiction pilots. (The vertical red stripes may also be feeding my association with rockets taking off.) 

And I keep thinking about the feet. Because they are closest to the viewer, they're prominent. Lincoln is wearing boots so simple you almost don't notice them, and his trousers drape over the tops to obscure them further. The pants of the Indy figure, on the other hand, rise high above his ankles and make his much more detailed shoes prominent in the illustration. Which seems strange. (Maybe there was supposed to be an accelerator pedal under the right foot at some point.)

One final point: in addition to the possibly unconscious offensiveness of the headline, the very idea of replacing Abraham Lincoln with an IndyCar driver is offensive on its own. Have you been to the Lincoln Memorial? If there are any secular churches in this country, that is one of them. The thought of replacing him with something as trivial as a race car driver makes me angry, even without the headline. 

Altogether, this design is a perfect fit for the Trump regime. It: 

• shows no respect for anything about the good parts of this country or its history, 
• is unconscious of obvious racism at best or sends out racist messages at worst (take your pick, maybe some of each in this case for the different decision-makers), and 
• is embarrassing to everyone associated with it, except any die-hard believers who want to double down on the racist message.