I can easily lose a good hour or more scrolling through the Etsy app on my phone. Recently I’ve been perusing Rosenthal ceramics, particularly pieces by Bjørn Wiinblad. And my mother is getting ready to redo parts of her kitchen, so I’m having fun looking up cabinet knobs and drawer pulls I know she’d like. Miraculously, I buy very little despite favoriting a gazillion items. Still, Etsy has worked out the niche Kismet algorithm: vintage + quirky/whimsical + easily breakable. So I was seriously disappointed to hear this story of extremely poor taste from Etsy. Long Island, NY resident Amy Stabile shared with local news that an Etsy ad popped up while she was on Facebook. The ad was for a Garfield t-shirt, wherein the comic cat is in the shape of an airplane headed towards two towers of lasagna. The caption read, “9/11? Yeah! I’ll take 911 … orders of lasagna!” That’s revolting enough as far as I’m concerned, but making it worse is the fact that Stabile lost her father in the tragedy.
Amy Stabile told Fox 5 New York that she had been scrolling through Facebook when she saw an Etsy ad for T-shirts with a 9/11-themed design of Garfield and New York City’s World Trade Center Twin Towers.
The shirts depicted Garfield in the shape of an airplane flying into the character’s favorite food — lasagna — in the shape of the towers. The shirt read, “9/11? Yeah! I’ll take 911 … orders of lasagna!”
Nearly 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, after terrorists hijacked planes and flew them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
Stabile’s dad, Herman Broghammer, died in the attacks that day.
“I just couldn’t believe my eyes,” Stabile recalled to Fox 5 New York after seeing the shirts online. “Thousands of lives were murdered [in the 9/11 incident].”
“When I saw Garfield — I didn’t even understand how it goes together,” she continued. “There are so many things you could put on a T-shirt. Why this? You feel so crushed that someone, anyone, could think that the loss of these lives is funny.”
The seller of the T-shirts, NelliesNestStore, is based in Australia, though they ship out of North Carolina, Fox 5 New York reported.
The store’s profile reads, “Silly Merch for Silly Dudes” and boasts a five-star rating. The seller has since taken the T-shirts down from the website as of Saturday, March 22.
According to Etsy’s current policies, items that “promote, support or glorify hatred” or “violence” are prohibited from the site. A spokesperson for the company told Fox 5 New York that humor is subjective and that the platform did not plan to remove the items.
A spokesperson also told the outlet that it would take a closer look to make sure that the T-shirts depicting Garfield and 9/11 didn’t end up in ads.
Stabile, meanwhile, is calling for stricter policies on the market selling platform. She told Fox 5 New York: “Maybe it’s time to start creating policies where this goes against your company policies. You’re making money [off] terrorism. Where are these companies? Stand up for the families of 9/11 and do something about this.”
“At some point you want to say, ‘Have some humanity and think about how you’re making your money,’” she added.
I’m sorry, how on earth can Etsy claim that this t-shirt doesn’t glorify hatred and violence? We all know the act of terrorism the graphic is referencing. And then in order to pull the “humor is subjective” defense, the item in question has to actually be funny, which this tee most definitely is not. I understand free speech must be protected, but is this sad sack clothing company really the hill Etsy wants to die on? To be clear: in no way do I hold Garfield responsible! Clearly his good name and image have been usurped by bad faith actors, who methinks have probably heard from lawyers by now over an unlicensed usage of the famous feline. (Which is probably the real motivating factor behind them taking the shirt down off their Etsy page, let’s be real.) As of this writing, the store has only two t-shirts for sale, one of which says “I hate my wife.” So funny I forgot to laugh. And among the reviews for the store was one customer who wrote earlier this month, “I got fired from my job for wearing this.”
So a quick reminder to anyone uncertain: the only appropriate time to invoke 9/11 in a joke is NEVER. I don’t think Etsy fully gets it, though, based on their comment they’d make sure “T-shirts depicting Garfield and 9/11 didn’t end up in ads.” The ad part isn’t the issue!
Photos are screenshots from YouTube/Fox 5 NY