Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Red Shirt Friday

I've been checking around, and there are a LOT of causes out there in the Wide Wonderful World of the Internet which encourage you to wear a Red Shirt on Friday.

Snopes reports a general email effort to get you to wear a red shirt on Friday to "support the troops".

Angelfire reports an effort from September 6, 2004, to wear red in order to support apartheid in hawaill (identify Native Hawaiians).

The American Heart Association wanted you to wear red to emphasize the heart disease risk for women.
(Community Dispatch wanted you to wear a red dress on February 4, 2004, for the same reason. I probably wouldn't have have gone for this, even if I had known about it at the time, 'cause I don't have the legs for it. Their red pin looks kinda swanky, though, and Laura Bush was kicking off American Heart Month .... Saint Mary's Hospital in Michigan was also pounding the drums)
Even the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians bought into this.
The University of Southern Mississippi thought this was a great idea, and mentioned that Daryl Hannah was the national spokeswoman for the campaign. I always liked Daryl Hanna, except for the Clan of the Cavebear thingie. But that's just me. I never liked movie dialogue that consists primarily of "OOG" and "Og" and "Whatever happened to foreplay, you Neanderthal!" I get too much of that in my personal life.

Some peacenik org wants Redshirt Friday (May 21, 2004) to encourage bringing our troops home. No word here on whether they should leave in the middle of a battle, but I'm sure their heart is in the right place.
In 2003, "Breaking the Chain" had the same idea, in support of the Special Forces Administration.

On the other hand, somebody nicknamed Sultan In the Spriit of Cyrus the Great wants us to wear red on Friday "... until we have peace in Iran...". I can get behind that.

The Witherspoon Society ("for progressive presbyterians") thinks this would be a good idea to protest the current Norweigan government's policies. This was a device used in 1940 to protest the German occupation of Norway.

Whew! That's a lot of links, and a lot of research behind it.

But most of the causes are a little dated, and I figure that the basic premise is up for grabs. So here's MY suggestion for Red Shirt Friday:

I live in Oregon ... generally acknowledged to be a "Blue State" because the socialist welfare people (who knew they voted?) folks in the major metropolitan areas, and the towns with big socialist universities (including Corvallis, home of Oregon State University, where I live and work) voted DemocRat in the last election.

Don't you think it would be appropriate to register a quiet protes once a week?

I do.

Here's the concept:
Whether you live in a Blue State or not, if you voted against the DemocRat/Socialist ticket in either of the last two Presidential Elections, or in the 2002 elections for U.S. Senator ... wear something red on Friday.

It doesn't have to be a shirt. It's enough to prominently display something Red on Fridays.

That will tell your friends and co-workers that you don't agree with their Liberal DemocRat views, that you DO support a more conservative approach to government, and that HEY! They voted for the wrong guys!

This is a lot easier than hanging a sticker that says "THANK ME, I VOTED FOR BUSH!" on the bumper of your Porsche.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Then there's the man who made the red shirt famous in the mid-1800's; Garibaldi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Garibaldi

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