Nike Yanks Bloody “Boston Massacre” Shirts After Deadly Bombings

Written By S. Samuel

Mega sports retailer Nike has reportedly decided to pull back after releasing a slew of New York Yankees/Boston Red Sox-themed "Boston Massacre" t-shirts just a week after the city suffered multiple bombing attacks.

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Details of Nike’s swift decision surfaced online Monday (April 22).

Nike has pulled a sports T-shirt emblazoned with the bloodied words “Boston Massacre” in the wake of last Monday’s marathon bombings. A spokesman for Nike told ABC News the retailer has now pulled all of the “Boston Massacre” shirts from their outlet stores, as well as from large online retailers like Fanatics Inc. (ABC News)

Despite the initial negative perception, Nike released the shirts as a playful sports reference in relation to the Yankees and Red Sox iconic rivalry.

The sweeps came to be known colloquially among fans of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry as the first and second “Boston massacres.” But in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings which killed three and left scores maimed and injured, the shirt could be deemed offensive. It’s not the first time Nike has felt the need to pull a product in the wake of a tragedy. In February the retailer pulled an ad featuring Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius with the caption “I am the bullet in the chamber,” after he was charged with shooting to death girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. (ABC News)

The Boston bombings sparked anger out of Atlanta rapper T.I. after media outlets tried to present one of the suspects’ interest in hip-hop as a negative factor.

T.I. is pissed … telling TMZ he has no connection to the hip hop website frequented by dead Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev … a site that prominently featured the rapper’s mug. T.I. had no idea his pictures were posted — he’d never even HEARD of Real-HipHop.com — and he’s upset that the hip hop genre is now connected to the bombers. “Hip hop narrates the activity and conditions of our culture,” he tells us. “It doesn’t create them.” T.I. is frustrated: “Hip hop ain’t never been about hurting innocent people,” T.I. said. He feels Boston “was a horrible tragedy and my prayers go out to the families involved.” (TMZ)

Immediately following last week’s attacks, outspoken New York rapper Talib Kweli spoke to SOHH with his take.

“First off, it’s a tragedy. There was an eight-year-old boy who was one of the two people killed amongst the 150 or so injured and it’s just a shame to see something like that. The Howard Zinn quote [I posted on Twitter] speaks to the loss of innocent life and how much of a shame it is. It’s important to note that the quote I quoted from Howard Zinn was not in criticizing some Middle East terrorism situation, it was him criticizing our own government, the United States government. We bomb innocent people, we kill innocent people all the time. As a matter of fact, just yesterday the United States, we had a bomb that killed 20 people at a wedding in Afghanistan. This wasn’t a military thing. This was a mistake and we killed 20 innocent people. You never see stories like that on the news. 37 innocent people were killed in Iraq yesterday. We can’t place the blame directly on the United States but we certainly got involved in Iraqi conflict.” (SOHH)

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Written by S. Samuel

Steven Samuel is the co-founder of SOHH.com.

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