After the Boston Marathon bombing, the motto “Boston Strong” caught on across the country as people used it to express support. Later, some Boston sports fans started applying it to hometown teams. When the Boston Bruins played Toronto’s Maple Leafs in May, “Toronto Stronger” signs popped up. That didn’t go over well. SHOW SOME RESPECT! hollered one Twitter user.
Now the Bruins are playing the Chicago Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Finals, a huge honking tweeting big deal, even NPR says so. (By the way, we speak of ice hockey.)
Such T-shirts are unacceptable to John L. Sullivan, the “Boston Strong Boy.”
Cubby Tees, which sells sports garments, designed “Chicago Stronger” shirts. They accompanied this with a haughty justification attacking the use of “Boston Strong” in sports. It starts “You may be strong, but we’re stronger,” and includes the lordly sentence “We love Boston and support/admire its people, but can’t stomach this use of the nation’s sympathy or believe that the homicidal lunacy of two disturbed locals has rendered its teams invincible.”
Did they really think that’d cool people out?
Cubby Tees described what followed as “bullying” and a “Twitter-lynching.” They withdrew the shirt and issued another statement. A longer, snarkier statement.
Some called the statement an apology. Or “kind of, but not really” an apology. Boston Magazine called it a “half-hearted” apology. Chicago Now called it a “poor excuse.” I would quote the poster on Barstool Sports Chicago who called it “hollow bullshit,” but they said some dumb ugly stuff too, so I won’t. Instead I’ll quote Bruins blog Days of Y’Orr saying it was “craptastic.” (And thank you, Kerry O’Malley, for calling this to our attention.
It’s 15 haughty, typo-spangled paragraphs adding up to 1,300 words of towering condescension. Too much to paste in, so I’ll summarize.
OUR CRITICS ARE STUPID – you fell for the “intertube’s click-generating outrage machine,” you didn’t grasp “the design’s satirical nature,” and you “lack an open mind, earnest desire for discourse or an ability to comprehend complex concepts like parody…let alone polysyllabic words.”
WE LOVE YA, BOSTON — “you’ll find no hate here,” “Our hearts go out to all of those touched by the 3 fatalities and 30 serious injuries,” and though you sent “vulgar slurs, violent threats, hypocritical arguments, and racist diatribes… we’re not surprised — you’re Boston, and that’s why we (try so hard to) love you.”
THE BOMBING WASN’T THAT BAD – “Boston was not in the crosshairs of a coordinated international attack, but witnessed a crime by two homocidal [sic] locals. Luckily more people were not killed or maimed,” “sighs of relief went to you from around the globe,” and “most every news cycle brings fresh stories of great loss [from elsewhere]” (they list 8 recent disasters with higher death tolls, plus “Chicago suffers 10 murders every week”)
YER MEAN TO US – “threats and insistence on censorship,” and “your emails that… tell us to f*#k ourselves and that you hope Chicago is bombed and that our legs are blown off.”
YER OBNOXIOUS – you turned the Marathon tragedy into “brand name, clothing line, defensive attitude, hashtag, trademark applications, concert and profiteers,” and we bet you didn’t bother to give blood, donate to the victim’s fund, sign up for next year’s marathon, and write a nasty note to or speak harshly to everyone who used “Boston Strong” in a tacky way before picking on us simple shirt designers.
In other words: You think you’re so special, but you’re not. Oh yeah? Well, you started it, and we were just making fun of you. So there.
What’s not to love?
It’s not an apology. It doesn’t pretend to be an apology. The closest thing to an apology is their wish that they had “expessed” themselves more clearly in the earlier statement. Know what, Cubby Tees? That would not have helped.
Here’s the thing. They have a sound point, buried under the fury. “Boston Strong” has nothing to do with sports. It’s silly and obnoxious to hijack the spirit and support of a city’s people responding to a horrible attack with bravery and intelligence – and apply that to team sports that happen to be based in that city. It’s been a long time since teams were composed of players who came up locally.
Many Bostonians agree. The Bruins fans I know don’t use the phrase to express their rabid support for the team. As they say on Days of Y’Orr, “It’s time to make a distinction… [between] “Boston Strong” and “Boston sports” because the two are not hand in hand unless we’re talking about a fucking marathon. Yes, it’s completely bullshit that the Boston Bruins sell a “Boston Strong” t-shirt, but at least they go to One Fund. It’s just like Chowdaheadz trying to trademark Boston Strong so they can sell t-shirts…. Leave that phrase alone. Leave it off of the ice.”
Leave it off the ice. That’s right. It’s not good to use “Boston Strong” for sports events. (For crying out loud, what if they lost ignominiously? Would that mean Boston wasn’t strong?) Just don’t.
But it’s not good to raise the ante and double up the dumb with “Chicago Stronger.” Not to mention pouring on the snark. Attacking the “Boston Strong” motto attacks those who use it in its real spirit, as well as those who’ve commandeered it for sports.
Should Cubby Tees apologize? (It is hard for me to contemplate this objectively, as there is a former Yankees fan stomping around the room, and while this person no longer roots for the Yankees, he still hates the Red Sox, and repudiates other Boston sports teams to boot. Sports is weird.)
Mostly SorryWatch stays out of saying who should apologize, because there are an approximately infinite number of people and entities in this world who should apologize for something. We stick to analyzing actual apologies or apology-like statements.
So this is from Chicago Now blogger Ted Gruber: “I want to apologize from the majority of Chicago people to the people of Boston, in which; we don’t like the shirt, we won’t buy the shirt and we don’t condone it.”
That’s nice.
