Nope. That headline doesn’t have a word or two missing from it. That, quite literally, happened. The Queensland Election campaign is barely a day old, and already its rearing its head as a farcical spectacle.
In Brisbane earlier today, a man was arrested by Queensland Police and taken into custody, after he wore a shirt and stood near some volunteers campaigning in the street for the incumbent Liberal National Party.
The shirt was emblazoned with the slogan “I’m With Stupid” and accompanied by a finger pointing right, inferring that the person standing next to the wearer of the shirt is, in fact, stupid; an epithet in circulation for indeterminate decades whose instances of legitimate offence can still be counted on one hand.
This guy got arrested for waving at cars with a “I’m with stupid tshirt.” Qld can do better than Newman #qldvotes pic.twitter.com/o9wTQTbz5X
— Luke Hilakari (@lhilakari) January 8, 2015
The man behind the offending fabric, Iain Fogerty – who runs a parody Campbell Newman Twitter account under the handle @Can_do_Campbell – was confronted by a police contingent that reportedly included three patrol cars and a divvy van, arrested, charged with public nuisance, and subsequently bailed to appear at Brisbane Magistrates Court on February 4th.
Public nuisance. For wearing an “I’m With Stupid” shirt near some political campaigners.
Yep.
QLD Labor senator Claire Moore slammed the police’s response, “Rather than telling the bloke to just move on, they arrest him. I have been campaigning for more years than I care to recall and I have never seen anything like this before.“
Fogerty, for his part, seems to be treating the whole situation with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Currently ironing my best plain white shirt.
— Not Strong Campbell (@Can_do_Campbell) January 8, 2015
Still, this has got to one of the first times someone’s been hauled off from Fortitude Valley for having a shirt on, and not the opposite.
Photo: Nine News Brisbane via Twitter.
via The Guardian.
