When the mighty fall low, the low make T-shirts

(Photo: greenbaby)

These days, no sooner does a sex scandal splatter all over the tabloids' front pages than Internet entrepreneurs get to work churning out the memorabilia. (To wit: A quick search on Google already unearths nearly 2,000 Eliot Spitzer–inspired "Client 9" products.)

Political analyst Jon Delano says scandal-skewering activewear is just an extension of an age-old American pastime—the smear campaign. "It's as American as apple pie," he says. It goes back to Grover Cleveland. When old "Uncle Jumbo" was running for president in 1884, his opponents accused him of having a child out of wedlock, cooking up this little ditty: "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha." Too bad the age of mass production hadn't dawned yet. "That would fit perfectly on a T-shirt," says Delano.

Professor Peter Manning, author of the essay "What Is a T-shirt? Codes, Chronotypes, and Everyday Objects," says gossip sheet–inspired political wear is the result of perceived isolation—a society of strangers looking to connect. "Those things help to set an identity fairly quickly. It's a call for a response," he says.

So, if these tees are just a cottony cry for attention, why do political sex scandals inspire such manufacturing mania? Are folks out to make a buck or a statement? Radar talked to some of the more recent pioneers of the fabric frontier about why they chose to let their fibers do the talking.

The Scandal: Just in case you've been dozing under a rock these past few months, Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York—prosecutor of prostitution—was recently caught doing business with practitioners of the world's oldest profession. He has since resigned.

The Story: Radio host and Emmy-winning actor Jay Thomas (who also played the Easter Bunny in both The Santa Clause 2 and 3) was on the air when the news about Spitzer broke. He had a T-shirt out within 24 hours. Thomas isn't sure if he was the first to coin the slogan. "Do I think it was a genius idea that no one could have thought of?" he says. "No, I've never had a great idea in my life. I'm actually proud of the fact that any idiot can think of the same shit that I think of. Makes me one of the people."

The Politics: "Getting caught is really the biggest sin the United States," says Thomas. "As soon as somebody is self-righteous about something, it seems like they're up to something. Client #9 stands for abject stupidity. You just see Client #9 and you shake your head and you go, 'How stupid can somebody be?'"

The Future: Thomas is ready to franchise this baby. After the other clients come to light, each one will have a T-shirt—all the way up through Client #20.

The Scandal: Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, fell prey to the technological paper trail when their racy text messages were discovered.

The Story: It's a regular Horatio Alger tale full of ingenuity and bootstrappery. When the Detroit-based Ohm Creative Group found out about the charges against Kilpatrick, they had a revelation, says co-owner Jesse Cory. "Why not put Kwame's mugshot on a mug?" And hell, why not churn out some T-shirts too? From there, their business, kwamemugshot.com, was born. And apparently it's booming. "We've made good friends with the post office," says Cory. "Our postal guy comes in every day with a big warm smile."

The Politics: For Cory and Co., it's less about politics than business. "What we are is a marketing and PR firm. We create the item and then we create the buzz around the item. His defiance to step down really makes the demand higher for things that are related to this issue. So, it's kind of that posturing that he's been doing that's really made this an epidemic."

The Scandal: Senator Larry Craig (allegedly) tried to have a toe-tapping good time with an undercover cop in a Minneapolis airport bathroom.

The Story: Holly Hertzel of Scarebaby Design is a full-time T-shirt maker who recently quit her job to run her online store. She's constantly trolling the Web for scandals, so the day the "wide stance" statement came out she was all over that mess. Unfortunately, the shirts haven't exactly been flying off the virtual shelves; Hertzel has only sold about 50 so far. "It's a scandal that doesn't lend itself to too much jollity, I think," she says. "Because it's just kind of pathetic."

The Politics: Hertzel is all about making a statement with her tees. "He was such a hypocrite and he seems to be in such denial about his homosexuality," she says. "And I think, in the 21st century, those people need to be called out. They need to be exposed."

The Scandal: President Clinton had intern Monica do more than make coffee. The perpetual backwash from this affair continues to flood the media due to Mrs. Clinton's race for office.

The Story: Mike Church (aka King Dude), shock-jock radio host and Republican, was counting down his "Top 25 Liberals Say the Most Damned Dumbass Things" when he hit Hillary Clinton's famous assertion that the Lewinsky scandal was a vast right wing conspiracy. "If you buy the T-shirt you're telling the world that you're a founding member of the vast right wing conspiracy," King says.

The Politics: Church's tee has more to do with Clinton's contentions than her husband's libido. "The vast right wing conspiracy does not exist," he says. "So, just like her ducking sniper fire was a big indication of her imaginication—as Popeye would say—so was the vast right conspiracy. So, the whole thing was a joke."