Nazis. I hate these guys.

Courtesy of Brian's website, we get news of Hitler Walkers. These are trendy-looking casual walking shoes that are storming their way through Korea. Sort of like a blitzkrieg.

Okay, bad joke, but I don't know what else to say. Naming a consumer item after one of the worst mass murderers in world history is so blatantly wrong that at first I thought there might be some mistake. Maybe they say 하틀러 instead of 히틀러, or maybe they were trying to Hangulize Heathrow and it got all mucked up (히드로).

But nope. They're really shoes named after Hitler, looking a bit like jackboots lite. And they're fashionable shoes named after Hitler, so it's only a matter of time before they invade other East Asian markets or, worse, they end up in a Korea soap opera for every sensitive person in North America to gawk at, mouths agape.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

In the weird fetish toward Nazi-era chic that weirdly pokes its head up from time to time in East Asia (it's also in Japan, Taiwan, Mongolia, and a few other places), there are okay references and definitely bad references.

An okay reference would be something like, say, naming a bar after a famous German general from World War II who wasn't actually a Nazi and was entangled in a plot to oust Hitler. A definitely bad reference would be naming a bar after Der Führer. A borderline but probably bad reference would be using Nazi-esque uniforms and what sounds like a speech by Hitler in the background audio of a cosmetics commercial with only a French painting of Liberté to balance out the imagery.

Calling your shoes Hitler is definitely bad. Bad enough that there should be a letter-writing campaign, phone calls, etc., etc., until the product is renamed or discontinued. I think Heathrow Walkers sounds quite nice.

And like LG when they had that whole fiasco with blackface, now that they know about the problem, there is no excuse for not doing something about it.

Ignorant OCers offended by swastikas

From the Los Angeles Times:

Controversy flared up at Pretend City, a children's museum in Irvine, when a few visitors recently complained about a Hindu swastika woven on a tapestry in one of the museum's exhibits.

The offended visitors apparently were unaware that the swastika is an old religious symbol in Hinduism and that members of many other cultures around the globe revere it, among them some Native Americans. The swastika, however, was co-opted by Nazi Germany as the centerpiece of the Third Reich's flag.

The tapestry is part of the museum's "Home" exhibit, which is displaying a Hindu family's belongings. The exhibit rotates every six months and takes cultural objects from local family homes and displays them to the public, allowing Orange County visitors to see how different families live.

And they live like frickin' Nazis!

Sadly, no, I'm not making this story up (I'd come up with a hella more creative name than "Pretend City"). They actually removed the offending swastika for a couple weeks while they figured out how to de-ignorantify the general public.

And I guess since we can't have Muslims setting up prayer centers in Lower Manhattan because it offends other people, I guess the Hindus are going to have to put away the swastikas that were co-opted by the Nazis. The Buddhists in America have already done so.

Hmm... maybe OC folks were offended by the hidden message that Republicans are a bunch of Nazis.