I heard an ad on the radio this afternoon for a Barack Obama version of the Chia Pet. At first I thought it was a joke, so I looked it up and sure enough, it’s an actual for seriously real product.
https://www.americanchia.com/flare/next
My first thought is that somebody’s going to complain about this being ‘racist’ in some way, and sure enough…
The grassy-headed figurine of President Obama was pulled from Walgreens shelves in Chicago and Tampa after some people called it racist and company brass decided the new collectible was wrong for their image.
Although I was right about someone complaining about it being ‘racist’, it’s more than just a little ridiculous to claim that it’s racist because the plants growing on the bust of the President look like an afro; I’d call a Chia bust of anyone — President or not — ‘ridiculous’ or ‘incredibly lame’ or ‘totally devoid of good taste”, but not ‘racist’. The sad thing is that the company producing these things is actually serious about these things, promoting the Obama Chia as part of a Proud To Be American Chia series, along with busts of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln & Lady Liberty.
Maybe the bigger problem is that there is actually a market for tripe like this.