Lisa Schiffren, at K-Lo’s House of Crazy, bent out of shape because illegal immigrant vendors won’t sell McCain paraphernalia:
As it happens, most of the counterfeit purses, sunglasses, and some other shlock are sold by West Africans, most of whom are here illegally. In recent days, around the city I have noticed a new addition to their wares: rows of baseball caps with an “Obama” logo. No McCain caps — ever. If you ask, they laugh in a none too friendly way. It’s not that I don’t get it. But you would think that some of these children of God would carry “McCain” caps or t-shirts, if not in recognition of his support for them, then merely because some people might buy them. Market principles dictate that. And you would be wrong.
Not only are they here illegally, but clearly they hate McCain and capitalism equally!
NRO, the nadir of modern conservative thought.
Seitz
What did she do, ask to see the green cards of each and every one of them? How does she know if they’re here legally? It’s not like they just walked across the border from West Africa.
Besides, I think these guys are more tuned into the dynamics of the market than Lisa “all inter-racial couples are communists” Schiffren. Hey, maybe they’d just sold out of all their McCain stuff **snicker**.
b-psycho
LOL…In light of this, it’s too bad Ron Paul pandered to the xenophobes, otherwise some of them could’ve been selling hats with his name on them — and still not McCain hats.
Side note: the “knockoffs” she refers to in many cases are quite identical, and we get a lot of stuff made in China already. Yet she barks because Bloomberg isn’t crushing these competitors. Guess that market is a little TOO free for her tastes…
rawshark
Chidren of God?! This lady’s whacked. She’s the one who used the term ‘job creators’ as though they were someone that we need to bow to.
zzyzx
I’m sure McCain gear will sell REALLY well in Manhattan. Sheesh.
dadanarchist
oh shit, it must be because most of the street vendors are also mooslims and they hate the freedom that mcsame represents….
cleek
they should’ve given this story to one of NRO’s many outspoken liberal writers. i just can’t stand Lisa Schiffren.
rawshark
She’s a neocon. If they say it it’s true.
John Cole
That is what is so unintentionally funny. Street vendors would sell you the shirt they are wearing if it made a buck. Clearly, the McCain shit WON’T sell, and Schiffren can’t even figure that out and instead assumes it is some slight.
Richardson
Market principle would also dictate selling high quality weed, which I suspect was K-Lo’s original reason for checking it all out in the first place.
I wonder if they still sell those “black Bart” t-shirts though?
rawshark
My bad, me read not good. K-Lo made the job creators remark not Lisa.
chopper
yeah, i see tons of obama stuff for sale on the sidewalks in nyc. no mccain stuff. gee, could it be that pretty much everyone in nyc thinks mccain is a choad? no, couldn’t be. it has to be the damn imigants.
market principles dictate that you don’t sell what doesn’t sell.
Calouste
Hey, even McCain never wears a McCain cap. He always wears a “Navy” cap, because he doesn’t want to remind us of his service and POW status.
rawshark
You think she can’t figure that out? Frankly the fact they might not sell sounds reality based. Why say that when you can imply a different reason? The reason people want to hear or just hear someone say. Sometimes you worry me. You’re like selectively perceptive.
Should Know Better
Hmm, if you really believe in the free market then shouldn’t it follow that if you see a trend where no one is selling a certain easily produced item, perhaps the market has spoken?
Halteclere
Funny how the people who always pay fealty to The Market consistently fail to recognize proof of the serious flaw in their utopian construct. I.e. money doesn’t trump everything.
CapMidnight
On the other hand, their bottles of SPF/911 sun-screen all have McCain logos
Punchy
2 points:
1) “children of God”? Waxjob Tecate Fulcrum? Seriously, what the hell does this mean? Shouldn’t that be “children of vaginas”, or at least “children of the corn”?
2) Has ANYONE EVER seen somebody actually wearing a McCane ball cap? Who dons this shizzle? Who?
Phoenix Woman
John, will it make you feel any better if I tell you that there’s a fighting chance that Ron Paul’s Target Center appearance (I originally thought he was at the Metrodome, but he’s not) may well outdraw The McCain Show at the Xcel in St. Paul?
The Target Center’s official capacity is 20,500 when set up for basketball. That’s 2,500 more than the Xcel’s official capacity, though Shania Twain allegedly got 20,000 into the Xcel back in ’03 (and probably pissed off the local fire marshalls doing it). Even if they use a standard concert configuration, Target still seats 19,500. (And consider that the Ron Paulites were originally supposed to meet at a much smaller venue on the University of Minnesota campus, but switched to the Target Center because of the enthusiastic response they were getting.)
Warren Terra
Maybe it’s just the choice of products. After all, some McCain-branded items certainly seem to be capable of exciting, ah, consumer interest
libarbarian
NO THISis the nadir of Conservative Thought:
“Now is the best time to pick a fight with Russia by helping Georgians kill Russians because It’s not like we occupy any foreign countries where they could do the same thing to us”
libarbarian
Sorry – you already posted on it. My bad.
Noah
Yeah well Barack Obama sleeps with a teddy bear and a night light!
Face
Speaking of brown skinned, hairy, exotic and frightening-looking creatures in our country, any word on whether those clowns actually found the real Bigfoot?
gil mann
She’s just referring to (taking a swipe at, rather) McCain’s line about how we should be humane when enforcing immigration laws because even illegal aliens are “children of God.”
That was before he got the nom, right? Seems like he’s gotten better at keeping his humanity to himself since then.
Bulworth
I suspect that the “children of God” who might otherwise consider supporting McCain would be less inclined to do so on the basis of the crowd with which McCain is affiliated. That is, on the basis of McCain having “friends” like NRO and Schiffren.
Bulworth
Is it just me or does Schiffren sound, uh, bitter?
Geeno
Is that job creators or Job creators? There seems to be suffering all around than jobs.
Guav
It’s easy to point out many extremely logical reasons that “illegal West African” street vendors don’t sell McCain merchandise—”ever”—other than chalk it up to political considerations.
But it’s not really necessary, since the basis of the accusation is plainly false. I have seen McCain merchandise being sold on the same tables as Obama merchandise, tables manned by very dark “West Africans” who might even be illegal. In fact, I just saw a slew of McCain buttons on a table on the corner of 28th & 7th yesterday.
PGE
I, for one, am glad that I can turn to the NRO for economic experts like her to tell us that “the market dictates” that a vendor should carry every item that could conceivable sell, no matter how small the market. I’m not an economist, so I’d never have guessed. In my ignorance, I’d have thought that there would be some relationship between the cost of carrying inventory and the expectation of making a sale. But I was stupid enough to think that lowering taxes on the wealthy would lower tax revenue. I guess the lesson is that I should stop thinking about things altogether, and just accept the wisdom of experts like Schiffren.
Common Sense
Right. Because the people buying that schlock are all Manhattanites. Thats why I (heart) NY is still in stock.
If fat Midwesterners getting their tour of baseball stadiums out of the way (gotta see Yankee Stadium. This is the last year!) aren’t buying McCain junk, who is?
The Thinking Man's Mel Torme
So, the next time I’m in town, can I buy a McCain™ cattle prod to help clear the area of mouth-breathing great-plains knuckleheads who clog up the top of the escalator at the WTC PATH station?
KRK
It’s making me crazy that I can’t find it, but I swear Instaputz or somebody not too long ago had a quote from K-Lo about how jaunty and daring she felt walking down the street in NYC in her McCain cap — and she was sure that the strange looks she got were because of her boldness and not…you know…anything else.
Did I just imagine that?
PHC
I know that saying K-Lo is wrong is like reminding people that water is wet, but she’s factually wrong in her attempt to portray the supposed fecklessness of liberal NYC in cracking down on the horrible, nasty vendors. The city goes after them routinely – there’s even a special task force dedicated to it. They’ve shut down whole stretches of chinatown and go out regularly to check permits, measure stands to see if they conform to the size and location requirements, etc. City intervention is a fact of life for the vendors, for better and for worse, if for no other reason than that it tends to be one of the Community Boards’ high priorities.
In other words, K-Lo, hoping to score cheap points about the failure of liberal-moderate government, exposes her gross ignorance on yet another issue. Big surprise.
Oh, and the market in Manhattan will not bear the sale of any McCain paraphanalia. I mean, really.
jake
And they leer in a manner most sinister and mutter of the slave markets of their homeland where many a milk-white maid has been sold into a life of dishonor.
Christ.
Dork
Finished it for ya
Jay B.
NRO, the nadir of modern conservative thought.
Hardly. What’s really fucking scary is that they represent the pinnacle.
OriGuy
So a pharmacist in North Dakota doesn’t have to sell the morning-after pill to a rape victim, but a street vendor in Harlem ought to carry McCain T-shirts?
Brother Flaming Taser of Warm Reason
When you think about it couldn’t McCain gear be effective birth control? I mean, personally, I wouldn’t want to sleep with anyone that proud to support Ol’ wrinkly nutsack.
oh really
Funny, I wasn’t aware there was any such thing as conservative thought.
Notorious P.A.T.
LO freakin’ L. I’m shocked–shocked!–that West Africans so overwhelmingly support Obama!
“You would think the market would blah blah blah”. Maybe an idiot would, but someone who knows the “free market” is a farce this is no surprise.
The Moar You Know
I DON’T UNDERSTAND THE LANGUAGE GIBBERISH THE FAT LADY IS TALKING AT ME AND I THINK SHE MAY WANT TO EAT ME. I WILL SMILE AT HER AND LAUGH AND CONSIGN MY SOUL TO GOD. I NEVER WANTED TO DIE IN AN ALIEN LAND AS SOME LADYS DINNER
Because even illegal alien West African scary brown dark Mooslims put their communist liebrul ideology over money!
Jesus Christ, where do idiots like this come from? These street vendor guys would sell you one of their own kidneys for five hundred bucks – if there’s no McCain merch being pimped (and I really doubt that’s the case, wingnuts have been known to lie every now and then) then it’s because it doesn’t sell.
Notorious P.A.T.
I believe in bigfoot. On Discovery channel (I think it was) I saw a special where experts in various fields examined the evidence and their results were either “inconclusive” or “I’d wager my professional standing on this being proof of Bigfoot”.
trizzlor
Because the NYC fashion industry is REALLY suffering these days.
Crust
I live in New York City too. The weird thing is that while I haven’t seen pro-McCain swag for sale, I do see anti-Obama stuff (e.g. black t-shirts saying “NOBAMA: Keep the Change”). On the flip side, while there are heaps and heaps of pro-Obama stuff, I don’t see any anti-McCain stuff. It’s all about Obama, pro and con. I suspect the vendors know where the market is. McCain “supporters” aren’t that pro-McCain, more anti-Obama…