I cannot understand how somebody could be so stupid as to put out a shirt to the general public as the Under Amour company did this week (see below.) Call a spade a spade, this was a moronic move.
Under Armour removed the shirt, but somehow I wish we could sentence those responsible to a couple hundred hours of reading up on World War II history.
Iwo Jima isn’t really a great basis for a lame visual joke about basketball to sell shirts.The iconic photo of four U.S. Marines and one Navy Corpsman raising the flag over Iwo Jima is in the news again, over a half century later. This photo was actually of the second flag raised on the island, and for years one of the men was misidentified and Marine Harlon Block did not get the credit he deserved. Block and two of the other men in the photo were killed in the next two days. Whatever the controversies around the photo, it has come to symbolize the sacrifices made there. There were over 20,000 U.S. casualties and almost 20,000 Japanese deaths on Iwo Jima. That is an overwhelming number of damaged lives, grieving families and friends, and a horrifying event. Mocking the flag raising isn’t a great way to sell shirts.
The company’s shirts supposedly help you when you are sweating, they might be needing that function this week.
There are many articles around but the UPI piece is pretty good.
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