The Malaise Shirt.

After the success of the Checkers shirt and the Nixon Pardon Speech shirt, Whiggy Tease Nation breathlessly awaited the next TV speech item to hit their favorite on-line store. Will it be Eisenhower “Military Industrial Complex” speech? Or maybe Al Gore’s sloppy kiss at the 2000 convention?

No. We would never lie to you. It’s time for Jimmy Carter.

“Ooh, you mean the Cardigan Sweater speech?”

No, we’re saving that for the winter. It’s all about timing. See, that is why we are millionaire businessmen and you are not.

Today, we’re rolling out a shirt celebrating the 20th Anniversary of The Malaise Speech. Here it is…

It’s the perfect gift for your friends who are still mad at Jimmy Carter. Do you like it? Did you notice it’s on a 1970’s television set? See, that is the Attention to Detail that you would expect at Whiggy Tease.

Of course, there’s one problem. Carter never actually used the word “malaise” in his speech.


It kind of reminds us of the scene from The Fugitive. Tommy Lee Jones spends two hours of the movie chasing Harrison Ford around. Trapped, Ford says to him “I didn’t kill my wife,” to which Jones replies “I don’t care.”

That’s basically what American told Carter on Election Day in 1980.

Carter’s campaign didn’t adequately address the Malaise Issue, but if they had offered a rebuttal, it probably would have looked like this…

Yes, Carter had a campaign poster that looked pretty much like this. Same color, same inspiring photograph, similar late 70’s/early 80’s font. Again, it’s the Attention to Detail.

We don’t have a crisis of confidence. We here at Whiggy Tease Planet Headquarters are confident you’ll drop a bundle in our newly opened Jimmy Carter Store.

What to wear to the high school reunion.

It all started, as these things tend to do, with a little joke.

My Twenty Year High School Reunion was coming up, and I jokingly suggested on the Facebook that the theme of the reunion should be “From Kittens to Cougars.” As most of my status updates on Facebook are, I expected this comment to be ignored.

But the comments started rolling in.

“LOL.”

“ROFL.”

“PMPL.”

The comments evolved into a discussion. “Dude,” my fellow classmates said, “you should make t-shirts.” People even threatened to buy them.

Not knowing anything about selling t-shirts for a profit, I laughed and went on with my life. This was a few months ago.

Fast forward to today, and I find myself running a “wildly successful” t-shirt business called Whiggy Tease. It deals mostly with political and history stuff, but sometimes it wanders off topic. I’m on my way to earning my first million, you know.

So, the refrain began again. “Dude,” they sang, “you should make ‘From Kittens to Cougars’ shirts for the reunion.”

There’s only so much high school related peer pressure that one person can take, so…

Here it is. The unofficial theme of the Solon High Class of 1989 Twenty Year reunion has a shirt. A whole line of shirts, actually.

I have a semi-serious commitment from a classmate to buy one. If she, or anyone, orders it before this Saturday, they’ll get it in time for reunion weekend. Perhaps it’s not formal enough to wear to the big event on Saturday 7/25, but it’s good enough to wear to the bowling alley event the eve of the reunion, don’t ya think?

So we’ll see how this goes. Perhaps I’ll start making shirts for other high school reunions. You know Chagrin Falls is up for it. Maybe I’ll even start doing this for big high schools across the country.

Maybe I'll be a millionaire by our 35th year reunion.

Fat. Phat. Fatt.

As the sun rose on Whiggy Tease Nation this morning, many of you awoke and asked the following question: What the hell is this new Whiggy product line about?

Let us tell you.

In doing research on the U.S. Presidential election of 1908 – because nothing sells more than Decision 1908 swag – we came upon not once but twice a banner advertising something called the “Dayton Ohio Fatt Men’s Taft Club.”

Of course, we were delighted. So delighted, in fact, we designed an entire line around the banner design. What you see is basically what the banner looked like.

The Fatt Men's Taft Club - it’s so strange and awesome on different levels.

First is the spelling of FATT. It’s not the 1908 version of the 2005 word “PHAT.” A little research shows that it is an anagram of TAFT. Which in convenient, as President William Howard Taft was quite big. This only would have worked better if his last name would have been Seebo, you know what we’re saying?

Or Bardtfoul.

Perhaps even more awesome is the willingness of Taft’s supporters to make fun of their candidate’s girth while making fun of their own. You don’t see that in today’s politics. We mean, there is no “Springfield Illinois Men Incapable of Speaking without a Teleprompter Obama Club,” nor is there an “Eagle River Alaska Women who Love Stripper Shoes Palin Club.”

We’re not suggesting there should be, mind you.

We are suggesting that you get your credit cards out and start shopping, because you want to look nice on your first day of school. Plus, we want to be millionaires, as we have plans for the money already.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part.

Whiggy Tease is mostly about the history and the politics, but sometimes we wander into Misc. Nonsense either to pay the bills or amuse ourselves. So, having said that, here’s a little something for our sports fans friends in Cleveland:

Anyone who’s been a Cleveland sports fan for more than fifteen minutes gets this. It’s appropriate now that the Indians have packed it in for the season and we haven’t played the All Star game yet.

It will be our pleasure to delete this link once the Browns, Indians, or most likely the Cavaliers win a championship.

There’s a whole line of this at our Whiggy Tease store. Shop today. And if you’re not from Cleveland, buy some more of the James K. Polk stuff.

If there’s a demand, we’ll make a version of this sports shirt for our friends in Seattle. And if the Ghost of Tim Russert instructs us to do so, there will be a version for folks from Buffalo.