Dear Douchebag,
I read with interest a news article about your company, Veteran Clothing, which markets its line of apparel to males aging from 16 to 24 by using military imagery such as the Purple Heart and the hand salute. While I applaud you for coming up with a new business in these hard economic times, I have to take exception to your choice of name and the symbols you use to make a buck.
Let’s be honest, no matter how much you protest, you are not a veteran of much else but flogging the dolphin to 30 second Internet videos, which, if word ever got out that you watched them, would get you shunned by a two dollar hooker the week before the welfare checks come out. You’re not old enough to be a veteran in your field, and you admit you’ve never put on a uniform. So drop the pretense that you can ethically use the symbols and terms you chose to market your sweatshop seconds, and be honest with the douchebags who put them on. Tell them that they are ignorant dummies, and the only reason they wear your dreck is so that they can impress their ignorant dumbass friends with how “hardcore” they are, and that you are more than happy to capitalize on that.
Besides the name you chose for your company and your products, there are two things that you do that catch in my craw like an inhaled dung beetle: the use of hand salutes in your advertising and the Purple Heart on your tee shirts.
The hand salute is used to express respect either from one professional to another or from a professional to an ideal such as the flag or the national anthem. If you’ve never been saluted or had one returned to you, you just cannot understand this concept fully. That is one of the reasons why when a civilian president, who has never served in the military, does such a horrible job returning salutes, it makes my teeth grind. The hand salute is one of the first things you are taught in the military and it is the last thing rendered unto you when you are buried. It is that important. Your use of some horse’s ass in baggy pants smacking himself in the forehead in a parody of what should be a respectful gesture highlights your lack of understanding of what you are doing.
The Purple Heart is an award given to recognize the pain and trauma that a servicemember goes through when they are injured in combat. It is the one award that no-one wants, but everyone respects. I have never been wounded, but I have worked with people who have been and are recovering. The pain and heartache they and their families go through is the reason we honor them, for they do it on our behalf. The person wearing a Purple Heart has literally shed their blood for you and me, and you using that symbol as a moneymaker disgusts me.
In closing, I hope that you find it in your heart to change your ways and your marketing. There are many things in American culture that you can mock and exploit to make money, so I’m sure that you will not have to tax yourself too badly. It’s a forlorn hope, but with asshats like you, that’s about all I have. Please don’t bother to pledge some pissant percentage of your profits to a veteran’s group. It’s too late for you to buy class.
Sincerely,
Daddy J. Bear
DaddyBear’s Den 
Stephen
/ August 29, 2012Well done, Sir. Well done.
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Old NFO
/ August 29, 2012Well done and concur!!!
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Auntie J
/ August 29, 2012I’ll let you write an open letter to my ex-sister-in-law, if you like, about her false claim of having earned a Purple Heart in a fake, 10-day-long emergency “tour” in Iraq, before she even graduated from AIT…which she later admitted in custody court was false. At least, the part about her earning a purple heart. (Unfortunately, while it’s on the court record, there’s no testimony proving that she made the claim, other than hearsay, even though my brother directly asked her where her Purple Heart was.) I have absolutely no reason to believe any of the rest of her story, and I’m pretty sure she flunked out of her first AIT (or nearly so), which is why she got sent for a different one.
She’s one of the people who makes the Army look bad. I find it really hard to be remotely proud of her service, especially since she used it to abandon her family.
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daddybear71
/ August 29, 2012Yeah, sounds like BS to me. And yeah, there are only a couple of reasons to be taken out of one school and put in another, and none of them are good.
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Auntie J
/ August 30, 2012It was so ludicrous that even to us non-military folks it was outrageous. I know she completed the first AIT, but the reasons why she just “couldn’t” get a stationing in that position were never the same twice and, while remotely believable, further events rendered her story totally unbelievable. (Someone who’s had that much training in Information Technologies should be familiar enough with Skype to not confuse it with Yahoo Messenger.) Since then, she’s proven that she’s totally unreliable, so I pretty much doubt everything she says.
She’s likely currently in contempt of the court order, since she appears to have changed duty stations and never bothered to tell us. Then again, her children are an afterthought. Hubby and I are even less so. I truly have no idea where she is. But since there’s no pressing court stuff, I’m just filing the information away for when we end up back there.
Of course, someone who had two complaints to the Inspector General’s office before finishing BCT and two AITs probably isn’t off to a stellar career in the military. (Although, right now, it keeps her out of my hair, which I appreciate.) She’s got another year and a half of active duty, plus two more inactive. Part of me really hopes she re-ups, while the rest of me worries about her comrades if she does.
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Auntie J
/ August 31, 2012The truly sad thing about her claims is how much the story she told lined up with how her younger brother REALLY died in action in Iraq. What greater insult could she give him? He EARNED his posthumous Bronze Star and Purple Heart. He earned his place in Arlington. Her actions and her lies make a mockery of his sacrifice. That angers me on his behalf. He’s a soldier I’m proud to call one of my own. Her? Not so much.
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Doodie
/ August 31, 2012Billy Truong and his clothing company members have been tromping around in Purple Heart shirts, saluting, and posing in “vet” shirts at military monuments. Most of us former military combat arms members have friends or teammates who’ve earned that purple heart. Some are not here with us today. Veteran Clothing company folks seem to think it means nothing
http://doodiepants.com/2012/08/31/veteran-clothing-poser-company/
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