Hot Dog Shop's Suggestive Shirts Have Customers Clutching Their Pearls

When did New Jersey get so damn uptight? I grew up there, and finishing school, it was not. Last year though, puritanical Jerseyians got all hot and bothered over an ice cream parlor's cartoon cow logo. Now comes news that some residents just cannot handle a hot dog shop's suggestive employee T-shirts. Cue the Helen Lovejoy scream, please.

CBS New York reports the shirts came to light when Weenies hot dog shop opened a second location in tony Madison, New Jersey. The shirts in question—which read "Weenies: Grab Yours Here" with a downward-pointing arrow—have some residents up in arms.

"Well, Madison is a family town," one Facebook commenter posted on a photo Weenies shared of its shirts.

"[The shirts] really are not nice," Madison resident Gloryann Torres told CBS New York. "They're asking for trouble."

In case you forgot, these shirts are making a joke about weenies.

I really hope I am sensitive to issues of unwanted touching or inappropriate contact, but these T-shirts are 4th-grade-level humor that really needn't offend adults. "Weenie" in this context may as well be booger or fart, honestly. (I can't believe I'm thinking this hard about a weenie shirt, but isn't the weenie in question the shirt-wearer's weenie? One is grabbing one's own weenie, right? Anyway, it's probably beside the point because... weenie shirts.)

Outrage is not an exhaustible resource—I feel like I've been in a state of frustrated anger for years now—but everyone must choose their battles. Are hot-dog-joke shirts the hill you want to die on, Madison, New Jersey?

I bring this "controversy" to our attention not just for eye-rolling purposes, but also because I will take any chance I can to spread the word about New Jersey's deep-fried weenie heritage. Yes, the dogs in question at Weenies are a pork-beef blend in natural casings, six to a pound, deep-fried.