A man wearing a BDS t-shirt was recently kicked out of a Virgin Active gym in South Africa; apparently management received complaints from some members about the t-shirt’s message and the incident escalated to the point where the police were called and the man was escorted off the premises.
BDS stands for the British Deer Society but it’s not likely that Bambi would invoke this sort of response; no – in this context – BDS also stands for “Boycott Divestment and Sanctions”, a Palestinian solidarity movement, with the caption “From the coast of Cape Town to the coast of Gaza in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli apartheid.” A bit of a mouthful but there you have it. As well as all that, the t-shirt had something about Chris Hani on it and the Young Communist League. And of course it was red – and most likely made in China.
Twitter and other social media platforms are now ablaze with moral indignation over this man’s treatment at the hands of Virgin, described by a fellow sympathiser as “as part of a nefarious system of white ownership and commercial relations that keeps the majority disenfranchised, and keeps the structurally perverse system intact.”
Say what? I could digress into what this idiot is talking about but that’s for another soundbyte. Let’s stick with Mr T.
What puzzles me is what exactly was Mr T’s intention? To work out or to make a political statement in this bastion of whiteness and privilege – or maybe it was both?
If it was to work out it seems like a rather odd choice of attire. I’m into Nike Dry Fit myself; cotton t-shirts don’t really do the job when I am sweating buckets under the bench press. Chicks don’t dig saddlebags; and let’s face it in a gym like Virgin, people like to sweat while still looking cool. Wearing an ill-fitting t-shirt with some random political statement on it, just isn’t going to cut the mustard.
So if it wasn’t to go and train then maybe it was purely political. Mr T did a pretty rubbish job of this as well. He should have chained himself to the lat pull down machine and started singing the Palestinian national anthem or reciting the constitution of the Young Communist League but by all accounts he was bundled out of the club without any resistance. I mean what sort of protester is this guy? Chris Hani as ex leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe (the armed wing of the ANC) would be turning in his grave. Even in death he certainly wouldn’t want to be associated with this palooka by having his face plastered all over Mr T's t-shirt!
And why choose a gym of all places? Maybe lots of Jews go there – or Woolworths shoppers? BDS has tried to get people to boycott Woolies because they import products from the lapdog of the Great Satan.
Or maybe Mr T wanted to kill two birds with one stone; an afternoon of passive protest combined with knocking out a few sets in his local gym. Fair enough. If he wants to sweat into Chris Hani who are we to tell him otherwise.
“Sorry – do you mind spotting me on the shoulder press; and by the way have you heard about what is happening to the poor Palestinians at the hands of the evil Zionist occupier?”
Personally I don’t give a rats what Mr T wears at the gym – and frankly nor should anyone else. If it was bothering members that much, a proper beefcake should have had a quiet word with Mr T about where a dumbbell might get inserted the next time he wore that tee and that would have been the end of it. Instead management played right into Mr T’s hands – and made it even worse by calling the police!
The whole incident feels very B-grade, but given the power of social media, Mr T succeeded in sucking a very recognizable brand into a battle it could not possibly win. And so the groveling apology followed and no doubt Mr T’s membership was elevated to lifetime platinum status with a special proviso that he can wear whatever he likes when he comes to the gym, including crappy red t-shirts with crappy political slogans on them.
Good on you Mr T, you’re an example to us all. Next stop – Nkandla!
Out.