As many of you have probably already heard Abercrombie & Fitch has created a t-shirt that says "West Virginia: It's All Relative," obviously pointing out that we all marry our relatives, an unfounded sterotype that West Virginians are forced to defend against again and again. I just feel so disgusted that a national clothing chain like Abercrombie would stoop so low, if the shirt said something dereogatory about African-Americans it would be pulled immediatly just like the Asian t's were pulled a while back. Just my opinion, what yours.

Agree whole heartedly. Again,some one trying to bash "hill billies",thinking that we'll just not "get it" because we're stupid. This just falls into my catagory of people thinking that their crap don't stink and they're SO much better than other lowly peasants. And you can bet that "the boys" in the production meeting about the t-shirts and mottos,were just having a grand old time thinking up these things.Pathetic!

This topic was already posted by Greedy...

A&F at it again


I read somewhere that in defense of the t-shirts, people at Abercombie said they had ones for other states as well. I've heard of two others and they weren't nasty like the W.V. one. One was a pink tshirt with the state of California and it read "cuties come from Cali". Californians get to be cute and West Virginians get to be incestuous.

WVDragonLady your post was pure evil (posts:666).Had to pass on it.j/k

I thought the New Hampshire one was pretty funny...

I have seen alot worse on shirts.Anyways it's just a shirt and I wound let it go if I was from WV.I think Arkanas or Tennessee or whatever state had the most BillyBob's would have fit better than WV.

And for your answer:Nobody will win

Why should we, as West Virginians, just have to deal with it? Nobody told the Asian race to just deal with it when Abercrombie made shirts that are stereotypical of Asians.

I didn't tell you to deal with it.

I just said that if I (I meaning me GreedyXJ) was from WV it wouldn't bother me.

You can have a million man march on DC for all I care.

Its a joke...I love the NH one!...But it is taken from that list that was circulating a few years ago on the internet...about new state lines...
Rhode Island--We're not an island!
West Virginia--15 million people, 15 last names...
I forget some of the others, but they were just tongue in cheek...no one really feels that way!

I should've clarified my post, I had seen on tv an anchorwomen interview Gov Wise who told him that he and West Virginia should just deal with it. Sorry I guess I should have said that.

no problem...wasn't sure now I can say "I see said the blind man"

You'd be surprised Tx, you'll go somewhere and say your from W Va and people laugh and say, "You actually have teeth?" Then they ask you if you or anyone in your family mines coal, and if everyone really is poor and inbred. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.

That's because they and their state isn't being bashed.
It's still very ignorant of "educated" people. You can bet if they had a "cute" or "joking" saying on a shirt about blacks they'd have a law suit on them faster than they could take a breath!

666 is JUST A NUMBER.999 is JUST A NUMBER.

Exactly! Abercrombie is doing the same thing to us as they did to the Asians, and it's not right.

Hey everyone has to be known for something! Personally I think it makes it a bigger issue when the Governor gets involved. Kinda makes it look like he's got nothing better to do and by making a stink about makes him look kind of defensive. Although I'm sure that might get him a couple more votes in the next election " Gov sticks up for state". What do you think it will take to erase that picture of your state from peoples minds? Seems to me that unfortunately that will always be the perception of most of the people who don't live there.

Texas - Calling all wackos for some down home old fashioned religious cult fun! Yee haw!

Nah-they all live in Montana...
I remember when I first moved to Texas--people from my old home state asked if everyone really drove a truck? Of course not--and others thought we all lived like that dumb show Dallas--or the slew of other moronic shows in the late 70's...but of course we didn't...

Why is that perception there? Just because West Virginia is a poor state doesn't make us inbred and stupid. We wouldn't be poor if our Gov/people would actually adopt some pro business laws.

Hmm, living in a mansion and driving a truck just doesn't seemed to be the same thing as inbreeding and bad oral hygene.

The same thing of being nuts, doesn't equate with inbreeding.

Naw! My excuse for being nuts is hormonal! It's called MENOPAUSE!!

Try to change the state motto--Wonderful & wild?? Sounds like a badly made video...how about WV--beautiful...I don't know--but your state is gorgeous--the only thing I do not like is if you are in the holler areas do not run out of gas--it is a ways to the next station...

You could go back to the old state motto of "Almost Heaven," or you can go with the state's official motto of Montani Semper Liberi (Mountaineers are Always Free).

Wednesday, April 7, 2004 Posted: 9:21 AM EDT (1321 GMT) on CNN

SHERMAN, Texas (AP) -- A jailed man accused of killing and cutting out the hearts of his son, estranged wife and her daughter plucked out his own eye and then quoted from the Bible, officials said Tuesday.

Andre L. Thomas was in a county jail cell Friday night when he tore his eye out of its socket with his hands, said Grayson County Sheriff Keith Gary.

Thomas, 21, then quoted the verse Mark 9:47: "And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell."

Thomas was taken to a hospital and the eyeball was put on ice, but it could not be reattached. He is now being held in restraints at the jail, the sheriff said.

Thomas is accused in the March 26 stabbing deaths of his 4-year-old son, his 20-year-old estranged wife and her 1-year-old daughter. All the victims' hearts were cut out; two were found at Andre Thomas' house. He turned himself in and was charged with one count of capital murder.

A judge ruled Monday that Thomas will be evaluated by a mental health professional.



Friday, April 9, 2004 Posted: 8:03 AM EDT (1203 GMT) on CNN

TYLER, Texas (AP) -- A woman who killed her two sons and injured a third said she refused anti-psychotic medication after her arrest -- until her oldest son failed to rise from the dead on his ninth birthday as she'd expected.

Deanna Laney, 39, also said she felt embroiled in spiritual warfare, considered killing herself after her arrest and worried how her surviving son would cope, according to a transcript of a pretrial psychiatric interview obtained by The Dallas Morning News for a report in Friday editions.

Laney was found innocent by reason of insanity Saturday in the deaths of 8-year-old Joshua and 6-year-old Luke, and the beating of Aaron, now 2. Aaron's eyesight is impaired, and doctors say he will never live independently.

The jury found Laney suffered from a severe mental illness that caused her not to know right from wrong -- the standard in Texas for insanity -- when she bashed her sons' heads with rocks last Mother's Day weekend.

In the transcript of an interview in December with prosecution psychiatrist Park Dietz, Laney said she refused medication until after Joshua's birthday in late July. She told another psychiatrist she smelled sulfur in her cell and thought it was a sign the devil was near.

Laney said she didn't mention that earlier because she thought everything happening to her "was spiritual warfare, and I didn't think he would understand any of it," the newspaper reported.

"I didn't want to kill my kids at all. I felt I like I had no choice," she said in the transcript. "Because God told me to do that, and I was taught you obey God."

Laney said after taking the medication, she wasn't so sure the beatings were God's will. "I started realizing that he wouldn't do something like that," she said.

Some people are just nuts, and it seems like most of them lie out west.