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The CEO who insults the Irish and laughs all the way to the bank

Urban Outfitter billionaire has also upset Blacks, Jews, and Christians

NIALL O'DOWD,

IrishCentral Founder

Published Wednesday, March 7, 2012, 7:13 AM

Updated Monday, March 12, 2012, 11:39 AM

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Richard Hayne, the President of Urban Outfitters Inc

Photo by Forbes

Richard Hayne, 64, the bad hair day man in the photo with this article hardly looks like a fashion maven.

Yet he is the founder of Urban Outfitters, the Philadelphia-based hip clothing store chain with over 300 outlets, including two in Ireland, which has incensed Irish Americans with its blatant Irish St Patrick’s Day shirts and merchandise.

The shirts and caps show stick figure Irish drunks vomiting shamrocks, among other depictions.
He is worth $1.8 billion, making him one of the wealthiest men in America, named on the Forbes global billionaire list in 2011.

He is also a man who has made his fortune in some cases from clothes mocking different ethnic groups.

He is a supporter of right wing-presidential candidate Rick Santorum and is a former hippy who opposed the Vietnam War but underwent a political transformation.

He has insulted African-Americans by distributing a game called Ghettopoly, a ghetto version of Monopoly.

He has incensed Jews with T-shirts that depict young Jewish girls surrounded by and grabbing dollar bills.

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He just recently upset American Indians by taking the trademark Navajo and using it without permission, and Christian groups by distributing a game called “Jesus Dress Up.”

Irish Congressional leaders, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and the Irish Anti Defamation Federation group have all criticized Urban Outfitters but the company has refused to respond to queries, even from ABC Television, Washington Post, Fox News, and others.

Hayne is the former left-wing hippy who opposed the Vietnam War and is now a hard right-wing figure who has funded Pennsylvania presidential contender Rick Santorum and has been accused of being anti-Gay by among others, singer Miley Cyrus of all people.

In the Ghettopoly game which his company distributed, instead of building houses and hotels, property owners could build crack houses and projects. The seven game pieces include a pimp, a ho, a 40 oz, a machine gun, a marijuana leaf, a crack rock, and a basketball. The game was denounced as racist and offensive by the NAACP.

In 2003, Jewish groups were incensed when a T-shirt was released with the phrase "Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl" surrounded by dollar signs. It was condemned by the Anti Defamation League. The ADL later expressed "outrage and disgust" at other incidents of insensitivity.

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seanomelb | Mar 08, 2012, 06:31 PM EST

Mccolgan using illogical words to justify his illogical position.

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like2tweet | Mar 08, 2012, 07:28 AM EST

D truth rent a spellcheck please

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Timmos | Mar 08, 2012, 01:14 AM EST

Its annoying, but I can't be too upset with him, as your typical Wal-Mart sells pretty much the same crap. Its everywhere, not just Urban Outfitters.

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dtruth | Mar 07, 2012, 11:42 PM EST

this article drags dirt from the remotest locations in order to successlessly trying to belittle someone who hirish irish live forms and spools cash into irish tax accounts. face it, that is the perception of the world and people that come to ireland and buy his shirts do agree as it seems. He is still gentle in not exposing the high grade of unwarranted self importance, uselessness as human beings as well as of work delivered by the irish. All this is only matched with the inhonesty and simoultanious incababilty for clever lies of the irish. To be honest, in after 2 years in ireland i feel that like half of the citizens must be inbreds and that i have not yet seen a 2nd workd country that far up north in europe. you should be gratious that someone still thinks and pays money for and on you.

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galway2001 | Mar 07, 2012, 08:26 PM EST

He's certainly not a conservative,he's a liberal idiot anyone that was against the war is blubbering idiot,no matter how you look at it.So please don't advertise him as a conservative just because he's a pal of santorum.he's a disgusting liberal a pot head

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rpmschevy | Mar 07, 2012, 07:53 PM EST

Love you all attacking this guy/company. I wonder how much design work he does? Yes the company appears to be totally classless, and maybe he is, but how about you all go after your kids, or your neighbors kids, etc. No DEMAND for the product, no profits. Teach responsibility and respect and we would not have this garbage on the streets. Just read in Thailand that kids are dressing and imitating Hitler and the SS. Why? "Because it is cool". Urban Outfitters is just supplying what the "classless 99% someone else pay for my education, my drugs, my contraceptives" youth are buying. Personally I never heard of this company until Naill gave it so much free advertising, with pictures.

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MCCOLGAN1492 | Mar 07, 2012, 05:43 PM EST

seanomelb! what the hell was that, Irish Ebonics? Haynes doesn't have time to reflect on your "Poitical Dogma", he is busy counting cash and bangin his kids Irish Nannies!!!

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canadianirish | Mar 07, 2012, 05:14 PM EST

So he's a former hippie is he now...must be all that dope he smoked(smokes) and drugs that've scrambled his brain.

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seanomelb | Mar 07, 2012, 04:37 PM EST

mccolgan1492!! its about time you left the dark ages and entered the 21st. century. Old Sarge spitting his Foxspeak and defending the indefensible. Haynes is a typical class deserter with no real political dogma,the moron.

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justhimself | Mar 07, 2012, 04:16 PM EST

I never heard of the joker till now, God taking notice of his insults gets him loads of free advertising. Ignoring the joker would work better, and let any idiot we see wearing the stuff get a peice of our mind.

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citizen69 | Mar 07, 2012, 03:10 PM EST

Seriously, what the big idea in picking on Urban Outfitters on this? This kind of merchandise can found everywhere around St. Patrick's day... not least in Irish tourist stores! Who do you think is buying these items? That's right, Irish Americans!

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MarybethC.P. | Mar 07, 2012, 12:35 PM EST

While I agree with Murph46 about boycotting stores like Urban Outfitters and Spencer's Gifts, this wonderful Irish invention of the boycott may not be as effective against large corporations with profits to burn. Jamie LM notes "the market" for these degrading products, but the market is always driven by expensive advertising, a kind of sure-bet brainwashing of the American public. We must, as an Irish-American community, stand up to these wealthy forces by demonstrating on the sites of retails stores, handing out literature while holding posters naming our legitimate gripes, and we must write letters of protest voicing our disgust to the heads of such corporations and the media. We had excellent success through these methods back in the 1980's with Hallmark Card stores. Hallmark was intelligent enough to NOT alienate the huge market of Irish-Americans during St. Patrick's Month, nor did Hallmark wish to appear as demeaning an ethnic group in this patchwork quilt that makes the U.S.A. such a fascinating nation. It's been quite awhile, therefore, since we've seen cards in its stores that suggest the only way to celebrate Ireland is with alcohol consumption. It takes work to "educate" corporate America - so let's get to it!

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CitizenWhy | Mar 07, 2012, 12:19 PM EST

Hard right? That means half the complainers here will stop complaining about their compadre.

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DaithiSuibhne | Mar 07, 2012, 12:09 PM EST

I can see that this 'Faceless Corporation' does, in fact,have a face (I'll reserve my opinion of it), anyway we all know that 'Corporations' don't give a damn about who they offend as long as it fills their pockets with coins, the best we can do is NOT purchase these offensive items and hope, for the best, their pockets remain empty.

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Woodkern | Mar 07, 2012, 12:00 PM EST

1.) C’mon! We only know about this because it was a slow news week at Irish Central. Apparently, they couldn’t find a tenth-generation “Irish” American who was run over by a bus in some suburb of Milwaukee. 2.) The product is way too stupid and witless to be in any way “offensive”. 3.) Who do really think buys and wears this crap? (Hint: The answer is neither Puerto Ricans in El Barrio nor Satmar Chassidic Jews in Williamsburg. If you still haven’t guessed, just watch what pours out of Penn Station on March 17th. Only this time, given that the event in question is neither a hockey match not a Metallica concert at Madison Square Garden, they will actually step off the premises, later to regal their even less venturesome neighbors with epic tales of their heroic exploits in “da City”.) 4.) As a New Yorker, I am much more offended by those who come here to ENACT the scenes portrayed on these t-shirts than by mere silkscreeninging. They will ruin a completely good Saturday in March and I will need to step over their aftermath on my way to church on Sunday morning. Damn it, we LIVE here! 5.) If I were in anyway Irish, I would be enraged that these idiots behave like this because they think it the “Irish” thing to do, and that because they think that they’re somehow “Irish” themselves. (Forget the Parade on Fifth Avenue. You really ought to conduct vociferous demonstrations outside of Fox News studios on Six Avenue every time Bill O’Reilly refers to himself as an “Irish guy” and make it clear that Levittown is not in Ireland. This is one major advantage that Ireland has over this country!) 6.) Urbans Outfitters are making underwear for jackasses. I suppose that we should be grateful for this initiative to induce them to wear underwear.

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