Chickenshirt, Or You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile

Not one, but two tales of tees from around the world.

First, Nigeria is hoping a new patriotic slogan emblazoned on T-shirts (and baseball caps) can restore self-confidence and overturn its battered reputation. Because pride doesn't come form inside.

Africa's most populous nation is known for corruption, is poor despite decades of oil production and is increasingly used as a drug transit route and for e-mail scams and online fraud. But now, under the slogan "Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation," Nigeria hopes to eschew that image and "entrench a culture of moral re-armament".

"At international airports, in trains, in shopping malls, and almost everywhere, every Nigerian is a marked person," says Dora Akunyili, information minister and - get this - self-styled chief image maker, at the launch of the re-branding campaign this week.

"We are pulled aside for questioning. We are seen as potential drug pushers or fraudsters. We are unfortunately denied the benefit of the doubt," she said. And then I got 15 emails asking me to help a Nigerian prince recover their wealth, and all I needed to do was give them my bank account number.

Troublesome is that Nigerians wear their country's reputation for mayhem and chaos as a mark of pride. They say if you can survive Nigeria, you can survive anywhere. And I think they're gonna wear that before a shirt...

And in Israel, soldiers are wearing t-shirts with a pregnant woman in the cross-hairs of a rifle and the slogan "1 Shot, 2 Kills". And yes, you can expect Palestinians to retaliate...and not be wearing more shirts.

"The smaller they are, the harder it is" says another shirt showing a child in a gun sight. Soldiers wore the shirts to mark the end of basic training and other military courses. The military condemned the soldiers involved, and it was not immediately clear how many wore the shirts. They were not manufactured or sanctioned by the military, and it was not clear how widely they were distributed.

The shirts "are not in accordance with IDF values and are simply tasteless," the military said in a statement. "This type of humor is unbecoming and should be condemned." The army said it would not tolerate such behavior and would take disciplinary action against the soldiers involved.

Reports stated the five shirts were made at the unit level — perhaps for small numbers of troops, perhaps several dozen, at a time, and they were worn by an unknown number of enlisted men in different units. The Tel Aviv factory that made many of the shirts, Adiv, refused to comment. Few people in the Palestinian territories appeared to be aware of the T-shirts, but Hamas said it "reflects the brutal mentality among the Zionist soldiers and the Zionist society". Yes, the kind, peace loving and gentle Hamas. Not the one who's media consistently glorify attacks on Israelis. Or the one who's cartoons in Palestinian newspapers frequently use classic anti-Semitic images of Jews as hook-nosed, black-hatted, wily and unscrupulous characters out to rule the world and oppress Arabs. Could it even be them with other Palestinian militant groups who fire rockets from heavily populated areas at Israel?

The more you think about it, perhaps a shirt's not such a big deal. And believe it, there was a Chickenshirt at the Fallbrook Mall. Custom made tees? Shit yes!