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Designer Tweets Egyptian Riots Due to His New Line Coming Out
Famous shoe designer Kenneth Cole stuck his fabulously shod foot into his mouth by tweeting, "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online..." After an uproar from people who don't think revolution jokes are funny, he issued the following tweet: "we weren't intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment."
Further news updates will follow at 5
People will always be idiots. If you go back and read the slashdot stories on 9/11/2001 there were morons who were posting "Someone set up us the bomb!"
I suppose this one is more newsworthy by the fact that he put his real name on it and it's unusually tacky for someone considered so professional.
Congratulations. By retweeting and posting news stories about this, you've given this designer guy undreamed of publicity. I'm sure he's gutted.
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
If he understood 'the sensitivity of this historic moment', he wouldn't have made the joke in the first place, what a dumbass!
Michael
http://s1.sfgame.us/index.php?rec=58163
-Insert obligatory insensitive clod joke here -
Boing Boing captures a great comeback at a Kenneth Cole store.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Heaven forbid anyone actually makes light of a situation. I'm sure it's no carnival being in Cairo right now, but if it were anyone other than a famous person making that comment, most other people would have simply laughed it away. Now we've got a guy who thought it would be opportune to make a joke (albeit a slightly off-color joke) backpedaling and issuing half-serious apologies.
Someone got butt-hurt about it and everyone dog piled Kenneth Cole. Get over it already!
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Jesus Christ, you guys are also late the party also, this was news yesterday.
I can't see why a fucking tweet about anything from a shoe salesman is so worthy being news for nerds.
Bottom line, there's absolutely no fuckin relevance of this story to slashdot. Stop trying to be so hip you fucking douchebags
Kenneth Cole is still going to sell his shoes and what-not to the people with money to burn; it's more fashionable to be seen in his clothes, regardless of his tactlessness. In some circles, his stock will likely now rise.
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I thought it was funny without making fun of the protesters or anyone involved. It's clear they weren't being serious....why so uptight planet earth?
Did anyone else read that tweet in an excruciatingly exaggerated swish accent?
"We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment."
No, I'm pretty sure that's not true. But that's fine guys, go on turning out Chinese sweatshop products anyway. I'm sure someone will be stupid enough to buy them.
I'm sure Cole knows all publicity is good publicity. It won't hurt sales one bit.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
We weren't intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment.... with new sales on our spring lineup! Just use code WARCRIME for an extra 2% off.
Schmuck, he knew what he was doing, it's called 'just spell my name right'
#KennyCole is irrelevant except in Egypt!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Check out their new PR page on twitter! http://twitter.com/KennethColePR
The problem isn't the joke. The problem is that he didn't wait for a sufficient period of time to make the joke. :-p
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I personally think its funny. In poor taste yes, but still funny.
While tasteless, in the end this company has always been activist and worked hard to raise money and awareness of important causes. Michael Musto says cut him a break and I think he's right: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/2011/02/kenneth_cole_ca.php
So how long before the Chris Crocker video?
LEAVE KENNETH COLE ALONE!
Rich, disconnected asshole makes bad joke about Egyptian uprising, realizes he made a mistake, and backtracks (poorly).
Move along, nothing to see here.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I can't see why a fucking tweet about anything from a shoe salesman is so worthy being news for nerds.
It's the Slashdot rule, if you tweet about it or put it on Facebook it becomes news for nerds automatically. That's for the same reasons laws are rewritten, patents are issued, anything that's "on the internet or "using a computer" gains a new life of its own, independent of any former incarnation.
Kenneth Cole shoes are the bomb!! I'd never fly anywhere without wearing a pair!"
- Richard Reid
I don't see this as someone making light of a bad situation. I see it more as an expression of capitalism -- 'Someone's gotta make money off this'.
With that in mind, there's a lot of analogues to Cantor and Seagal, who in 1994 launched the first mass Usenet spam. In hindsight it was surprising that nobody thought to do it before them. If you have a bunch of people talking in a public, unmoderated forum with a specific topic, why not (aside from good manners) drop advertisements on those people?
Twitter is now where Usenet was in 1994 -- lots of people, talking in public, unmoderated 'hash tag' discussion threads. Of course people are going to spam those threads with ads. There will be outrage over it, but if it proves profitable it'll become more prevalent. Spam could potentially flood the signal out of some long-standing hash tag discussions. If that happens, Twitter will go the way of Usenet.
Kenneth Cole is just the first person in Twitter's upcoming Eternal September. Don't hate him, he or someone like him was fated to appear eventually.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I'm always amused at stories about "uproar" in the "twitterverse" over inane things like this. So a bunch of people sitting at their computers got pissed that someone was sullying up their clean hashtags? And then tweeted back that they were mad? It makes me want to start tagging all my shit with #cairo just to piss them off, too. Puhlease. Maybe instead of getting pissed at a twitter posting you should get out and be proactive at stopping injustices rather than bitching about it on the internet.
Well, one of his ad slogans is "Make the Most of Wearing Times." I guess commercially exploiting them counts.
This is no worse than using footage of the Hindenberg disaster to get people to hurry up to your Lay-Z-Boy sale, or whatever. It's an advertising classic. What Cole did was audacious and edgy in the standards of the fashion world, which always has been and always will be in its own separate culture (unless we take some socialist supremacist stride to level them out in which case it would be the death of fashion). It's what's called artistic license. And in the case of the high fashion world you don't merely apply license to individual acts, you apply it to the entire lifestyle and to complete persons and their lives. Which is to say that you don't judge Cole's statement by ethics, you judge it by taste.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
He could have made a rape joke.
The more amusing footnotes to this story are the #kennethcoletweets tweets that everyone is making up now:
http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23kennethcoletweets
@KennethColePR: "People from New Orleans are flooding into Kenneth Cole stores!" #KennethColeTweets
@KennethColePR: Jeffrey Dahmer would have eaten up our spring collection! #KennethColeTweets
And many more...
Two hypothetical 9/11inspried scenarios:
1) 3000 people die at the hands of random extremists and nobody makes any jokes.
2) 3000 people die at the hands of random extremists and someone references AYBABTU.
I like the second scenario better. I probably won't laugh if I know a victim, but other people's laughter doesn't hurt me.
Not laughing at tragedy doesn't make it less tragic. Laughing is one of the ways people cope. There is no harm in growing a thicker skin. We can still have feelings and care about life without revering life. Death happens.
Life is for the living. Cry until you laugh, laugh until you can't breath then sleep it off and move on.
The media is hyper-jacking Egypt at us 24/7. It is giving us a lot of sound and fury, but not much of real substance. The journos crave Egypt-related stories to feed the firestorm. Kenneth Cole is tuned into the vibe and feeds the hungry journos. And the rest is history.
"Even Jared Loughner is impressed by how crazy our new fall line is!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
http://twitpic.com/3widwp
Do you think for a second it is their for any reason but humor?
Do you really think he is trying to get rioters to purchase his goods during the uproar?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You make a joke about it, fine. The important thing is that people will know what is happening or has happened. Thanks to him millions more know about it. Now, I will continue making coarse jokes about old german lamp shades and pesticides, becuase no matter how old and tasteless the jokes are, the message is still important.
Tasteless, offensive and even agressive and outright illegal can still be funny, even if only to a few people. The fact that some laugh doesn't magically make it not offensive to many others. On the contrary, it adds to the offense. I'm sure Sarah Palin and many others might have considered it quite funny to add gun sights to some congressional districts on a map and make lots of gun jokes in politics. That didn't make any of it a non-offense to many others. And in fact, dangerous, even if that very gunman who actually shot never did see the map or hear the comments, many others might have. Jokes are funny, but that doesn't mean they are comments that have no consequences. If you are smart, you take advantage of the fact that you can make jokes and have an audience, and invent jokes that promote good ideas, rather than fooligh or agressive ideas. And you realize that every single time you speak you are promoting ideas.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
What? Too soon?
a mirror. Do you see yourself?
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And by commenting on the posting you've given designer dude even more undreamed of publicity. (Psst. Hurry mod me up!)
<rick romero>
idiot found using twitter, news at 11:00
</rick romero>