Some of you might have noticed we had an article in the Newspaper of the Twin Cities today about pre-printed Vikings NFC champions shirts being sent to Haiti since, you know, they won't be needed here. The story aggravated Twitter pal and WCCO's own Jason DeRusha for professional reasons; it also angered reader Spence (not the same Spence from this incident, at least we don't think so, but still a strange coincidence) for other reasons: How does your scrawlings on the unmarketable rags merit publishing? he wrote, along with some other unprintable and unflattering words. He suggested there is plenty of suitable employment in suburban fast food restaurants for us. Reader Peter, meanwhile, had this take: Sending the faux Viking gear to the needy in Haiti? Haven't these people suffered enough? I know that many of these people are desperate, but shouldn't there be a limit to the indignity?
While we maintain there was at least some news value (in both offbeat and serious ways) to the story, and we also think Peter was mostly joking and understands there is a desperate need for a lot of things in a lot of countries, we will say this about the whole thing: looking at the picture of the T-shirt sent by the folks at World Vision (the humanitarian group that does the collection and distribution) was, well, just a little painful.
Does it cheer you up that most people we've shown the shirt picture to agree that the design is kind of hideous? And that we really caught a break because those things won't be all around town? Yeah, didn't think so.
