Much whingeing and harrumphing this week when some bright bulb got it into his head that Armani, yes that Armani, was pissing on the glorious Republic of Indonesia because one of their t-shirts bears a logo passing similar to the Garuda/eagle icon that serves as the coat of arms attached to the declaration of national principles known as Pancasila (itself a subject for another day).
Leading national daily Kompas directed the government to sue, the now ubiquitous Facebook site petition was created and rather telling the mob of drooling nationalist slap-heads to get a life, Justice Minister Patrialis Akbar waded in claiming possible copyright infringements.
Which is a funny thing for the top lawman to say because if anyone is cruising for a legal bruising it would seem to be the artists that created Indonesia's coat of arms in the first place.
Why they didn’t settle on an image of Vishu’s kick-ass winged chimera in the first place is a bit of a mystery. Instead, the official story is that the Pancasila image was inspired by the Javan hawk, one of the rarest birds on earth according to the Malaysia-based TRAFFIC, a wildlife group that monitors the trade in wild plants and animals. As far as I can tell, the RI Garuda resembles that noble raptor about as much as my hairy green behind. But if one were to troll through the ranks of heraldry one might conclude that the image is the unnatural product of a drunken coupling between a two-headed Russian eagle and Moldovan canary.
The (s)wanky Dago tailors apologized to any offence caused, yanked the t-shirt from the website and everyone has gone back to sleep. But I for one am waiting for Reds to sue RI for stealing their Imperial eagle's love child.
No comments:
Post a Comment