My Battle Not To Be A Tool

Shakespeare called it 'bending with the removers to remove'. I call it being a tool. I saw a friend on FB doing the thing that people are doing, where they get these shirts and post themselves wearing said shirts, with their statuses set to "Do I Look Illegal?" The masses did it for May Day, except that a lot of people didn't get their be-sloganed shirts fast enough so they're still doing it. (I guess it was originally just White T-Shirt Day, because everyone has one of those, but now there's a niche market based around tools like me who need white t-shirts with slogans.)

The reason I say I'm a tool is that as soon as I saw the dang t-shirt I thought I needed one. Let's be clear: I wouldn't have thought I needed one before I married somebody from El Salvador. I don't have to have a shirt, button, bracelet, ribbon for every cause that makes the news. Still, I was fully prepared to drop fifteen bucks on that thing. When I saw that the proceeds would go toward the production of videos and other materials that would expose the various evils of the racist conspiracy going on in Arizona, and (just as importantly) that they would charge me $4 shipping, I went browsing elsewhere on the internet for 'Do I Look Illegal' shirts.

I figure this simple act made me more tooly, on a logarithmic scale, because then I became a whited sepulchre in this movement. (Ha! Whited!) I would wear its rallying cry but I preferred to give my money to somebody with a purely capitalist agenda who is probably screening all their shirts in China.

Then I started thinking to myself how conflicted my feelings are about the immigration situation. While I would rather wear a t-shirt made by the left than the right when it comes down to it, wouldn't wearing this shirt be overstating my feelings a little? Why am I spending all this time sifting through sites for the most appealing design? Won't this t-shirt frenzy fizzle before long anyway?

My battle ended thus: I accept that I am a tool. To redeem myself a little, I choose not to get a t-shirt of any design from any peddler. I have decided that if one is going to emblazon one's torso with 'Do I Look Illegal?', one ought to be comfortable putting one's money into anti-Arizona propaganda. I don't know how many of the masses of original 'Do I Look Illegal?' t-shirt wearers would be tooly in my estimation, but now that I've seen all the knock-off shirts I know that there must be plenty of tools like me out there. There's a horde of mercenary graphic designers all over the southwest banking on it.