Todd Goldman
Encyclopedia
Todd Harris Goldman is an American entrepreneur
and the founder of David and Goliath, a merchandise company that produces clothing, poster
s and other merchandise featuring a variety of slogans based on older designs. According to the Wall Street Journal, the sales volume of David and Goliath was 90 million USD
in 2004. Goldman came under fire in 2004 and 2008 for controversial slogans, and in 2007 for plagiarism.
where he graduated with a degree in accounting. He then worked as a CPA
and found out he hated it and after a friend introduced him to the apparel industry Goldman decided to give it a shot.
, Florida
. Primarily a clothing company, D&G also produces sleepwear with various designs, books, bags, and other accessories. Goldman achieved some notoriety for printing merchandise containing "boy-bashing" slogans, including "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!
", "Boys are smelly", "Boys have cooties", etc. These are featured on t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other accessories. In 2004, Goldman was criticized for the slogans.
In 2005 Goldman authored a book entitled Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks at Them! (ISBN 0-7611-3593-6) which was also translated into Russian. Goldman released a Boys Are Stupid - The Game based on his artwork by the same name. Goldman also released Stupidopoly, a trading game. Also in 2005, Todd Goldman started selling art in the Jack Gallery.
In 2007, Goldman was accused of plagiarism. In June 2007 Goldman began working with FOX on a show entitled The Uglies, about the ugliest family in the world. Goldman released Girls Are Weirdos But They Smell Pretty in fall of 2007. In 2008, Goldman teamed up with Ashton Kutcher
and Kutcher's production partner Jason Goldberg
to design an animated original series as seen through the eyes of a group of teenage girls called BLAHgirls.com. In 2008, Goldman was criticized by feminist groups for a shirt alluding to rape.
On July 11, 2008, he opened his own gallery, Pop-Factory. Since the gallery's opening Goldman has sold paintings to Jessica Simpson
, Rhianna
, Paul McCartney
, John Goodman
and the Wayans Brothers (Marlon, Shawn and Keenen Ivory). Jessica Simpson
spent $1000 on a framed lithograph reading, "You say I'm a bitch like it's a bad thing." Rhianna
spent $35,000 in a single trip to the Jack Gallery in LA on February 17, 2009. One of the paintings she purchased said, "Fat kids are harder to kidnap." A painting which Goldman says is him making fun of society's obsession with being thin. Tori Spelling
gave her son, Liam, a copy of Goldman's Girls are Weirdos but They Smell Pretty book. Goldman plans to release two children's books in 2009 with Random House Publishing – The Zoo I Drew and Animal Soup.
based radio host and men's rights activist Glenn Sacks
initiated a campaign against the "Boys are Stupid..." T-shirts claiming that they were part of a general societal mood that stigmatized and victimized boys. The campaign led to the line of shirts being pulled from several thousand retailers across the United States in 2005, including Dapy, K-Mart, Disney Store
, and Nordstrom
. Masculist groups claimed that the shirts support anti-male sentiments
. Others wrote that they encourage children to become participants in the battle of the sexes
. Goldman was named as number 97 on Bernard Goldberg
's 2005 list of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America
. Goldberg also criticized Goldman's slogans for being part of what he called a boy-bashing craze, in which the makers of related products do not realize (or do not care) that young men have higher rates of depression
and suicide
than young girls in America. Goldman responded to the criticism, stating that he "hopes to be ranked higher next year."
by webcartoonist
Dave "Shmorky" Kelly, in a post on the Something Awful
forums, saying that Goldman's piece "Dear God Make Everyone Die" was traced
directly from a 2001 Purple Pussy comic by Kelly. Mike Tyndall maintains a page which summarizes the original Something Awful
thread, at which dozens of images are compared, with the claim that Goldman plagiarized many artists.
On May 3, 2007, Goldman's publicity agent announced that Goldman (who initially dismissed the controversy as "false accusations and blogging" in the contact with the media) and Kelly had reached a settlement: Goldman would pay Kelly the money he earned from the paintings and Kelly would drop the case. Goldman's art dealer said that several art galleries
stopped showing Goldman's work and the wholesalers who buy Goldman's posters canceled their orders and asked for refunds for unsold stock. "I lost the three biggest poster distributors in America," his art dealer, Jack Solomon, said. Goldman later reported that the poster distributors came back.
In an interview with Sense
magazine, Goldman said, "I guess what happened was this: I have a whole design team that works back in Florida creating t-shirts for me. And then I take some of these images and make paintings out of them. If we do 50 t-shirts a month we probably create over 300 images to narrow down to those 50. Listen, I couldn't paint in my lifetime the amount of stuff that we've done. I thought that image was created internally within 'David and Goliath'. I guess the original idea came from that Kelly guy which one of my artists had seen. We changed it to "Please God Make All my Friends Fat," because the Die wouldn't sell on t-shirts. But I thought it'd make a great painting. So I painted two images from it. 5 months later it was hanging in this gallery and someone saw it and started this whole Internet thing. When I found out it wasn't our image, I apologized to the guy and gave him the full proceeds for the sale of the paintings. They sold for $10,000. So I didn't profit from him. There was no lawsuit from it. But then a whole can of worms opens up and suddenly I'm knocking off everyone apparently."
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
and the founder of David and Goliath, a merchandise company that produces clothing, poster
Poster
A poster is any piece of printed paper designed to be attached to a wall or vertical surface. Typically posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and informative. Posters may be...
s and other merchandise featuring a variety of slogans based on older designs. According to the Wall Street Journal, the sales volume of David and Goliath was 90 million USD
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
in 2004. Goldman came under fire in 2004 and 2008 for controversial slogans, and in 2007 for plagiarism.
Early life
Goldman began painting in high school, and he attended art school. Instead, Goldman attended the University of FloridaUniversity of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
where he graduated with a degree in accounting. He then worked as a CPA
Certified Public Accountant
Certified Public Accountant is the statutory title of qualified accountants in the United States who have passed the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination and have met additional state education and experience requirements for certification as a CPA...
and found out he hated it and after a friend introduced him to the apparel industry Goldman decided to give it a shot.
Launch of company
Goldman borrowed money from his father in order to launch David and Goliath, his clothing company. Goldman launched D&G in 2000, in ClearwaterClearwater, Florida
Clearwater is a city located in Pinellas County, Florida, US, nearly due west of Tampa and northwest of St. Petersburg. In the west of Clearwater lies the Gulf of Mexico and in the east lies Tampa Bay. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 108,787. It is the county seat of...
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
. Primarily a clothing company, D&G also produces sleepwear with various designs, books, bags, and other accessories. Goldman achieved some notoriety for printing merchandise containing "boy-bashing" slogans, including "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!
Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!
"Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!" is a slogan on a T-shirt by Florida clothing company David and Goliath. The slogan is printed next to a cartoon image of a boy running away from five stones flying in his direction...
", "Boys are smelly", "Boys have cooties", etc. These are featured on t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other accessories. In 2004, Goldman was criticized for the slogans.
In 2005 Goldman authored a book entitled Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks at Them! (ISBN 0-7611-3593-6) which was also translated into Russian. Goldman released a Boys Are Stupid - The Game based on his artwork by the same name. Goldman also released Stupidopoly, a trading game. Also in 2005, Todd Goldman started selling art in the Jack Gallery.
In 2007, Goldman was accused of plagiarism. In June 2007 Goldman began working with FOX on a show entitled The Uglies, about the ugliest family in the world. Goldman released Girls Are Weirdos But They Smell Pretty in fall of 2007. In 2008, Goldman teamed up with Ashton Kutcher
Ashton Kutcher
Christopher Ashton Kutcher , best known as Ashton Kutcher, is an American actor, producer, former fashion model and comedian, best known for his portrayal of Michael Kelso in the Fox sitcom That '70s Show...
and Kutcher's production partner Jason Goldberg
Jason Goldberg
Jason Goldberg is an American film and television producer. Goldberg is the producer of the films Guess Who and The Butterfly Effect and executive producer of the shows Beauty and the Geek and Punk'd...
to design an animated original series as seen through the eyes of a group of teenage girls called BLAHgirls.com. In 2008, Goldman was criticized by feminist groups for a shirt alluding to rape.
On July 11, 2008, he opened his own gallery, Pop-Factory. Since the gallery's opening Goldman has sold paintings to Jessica Simpson
Jessica Simpson
Jessica Ann Simpson is an American recording artist, actress, television personality, and fashion designer whose rise to fame began in 1999. Since that time, Simpson has achieved many recording milestones, starred in several television shows, movies, and commercials, launched a line of hair and...
, Rhianna
Rhianna
Robyn Hannah Louise Kenny professionally known as Rhianna, is an English R&B singer.-Early life:...
, Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
, John Goodman
John Goodman
John Stephen Goodman is an American film, television, and stage actor. He is best known for his role as Dan Conner on the television series Roseanne for which he won a Best Actor Golden Globe Award in 1993, and for appearances in the films of the Coen brothers, with prominent roles in Raising...
and the Wayans Brothers (Marlon, Shawn and Keenen Ivory). Jessica Simpson
Jessica Simpson
Jessica Ann Simpson is an American recording artist, actress, television personality, and fashion designer whose rise to fame began in 1999. Since that time, Simpson has achieved many recording milestones, starred in several television shows, movies, and commercials, launched a line of hair and...
spent $1000 on a framed lithograph reading, "You say I'm a bitch like it's a bad thing." Rhianna
Rhianna
Robyn Hannah Louise Kenny professionally known as Rhianna, is an English R&B singer.-Early life:...
spent $35,000 in a single trip to the Jack Gallery in LA on February 17, 2009. One of the paintings she purchased said, "Fat kids are harder to kidnap." A painting which Goldman says is him making fun of society's obsession with being thin. Tori Spelling
Tori Spelling
Victoria Davey "Tori" Spelling is an American actress. Spelling became known in the early 1990s for her role as Donna Martin on Beverly Hills, 90210. Spelling then had roles in a string of made-for-television films, such as A Friend to Die For and Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?...
gave her son, Liam, a copy of Goldman's Girls are Weirdos but They Smell Pretty book. Goldman plans to release two children's books in 2009 with Random House Publishing – The Zoo I Drew and Animal Soup.
"Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!" controversy
Goldman's became the target of criticism: in 2004, Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
based radio host and men's rights activist Glenn Sacks
Glenn Sacks
Glenn Sacks is an American men's and fathers' issues columnist and media spokesperson. He is the first columnist specializing in men's and fathers' issues to be published regularly in Top 100 American newspapers...
initiated a campaign against the "Boys are Stupid..." T-shirts claiming that they were part of a general societal mood that stigmatized and victimized boys. The campaign led to the line of shirts being pulled from several thousand retailers across the United States in 2005, including Dapy, K-Mart, Disney Store
Disney Store
Disney Store is an international chain of specialty stores selling only Disney related items, many of them exclusive. Disney Store is a business unit of Disney Consumer Products. James Fielding serves as the President....
, and Nordstrom
Nordstrom
Nordstrom, Inc. is an upscale department store chain in the United States, founded by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin. Initially a shoe retailer, the company today also sells clothing, accessories, handbags, jewelry, cosmetics, fragrances, and in some locations, home furnishings...
. Masculist groups claimed that the shirts support anti-male sentiments
Misandry
Misandry is the hatred or dislike of men or boys.Misandry comes from Greek misos and anēr, andros . Misandry is the antonym of philandry, the fondness towards men, love, or admiration of them...
. Others wrote that they encourage children to become participants in the battle of the sexes
Battle of the sexes
-Films:*The Battle of the Sexes , American film directed by D. W. Griffith*The Battle of the Sexes , American remake of the above, also directed by D. W. Griffith...
. Goldman was named as number 97 on Bernard Goldberg
Bernard Goldberg
Bernard Richard Goldberg , also known as Bernie Goldberg, is an eleven-time Emmy Award-winning American writer, journalist, and political commentator...
's 2005 list of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America
100 People Who Are Screwing Up America
100 People Who Are Screwing Up America is a non-fiction book by Bernard Goldberg that was published in 2005. The book's central idea is to name and blame a long list of specific individuals for making the United States a "far more selfish, vulgar, and cynical place."Goldberg's book denounces many...
. Goldberg also criticized Goldman's slogans for being part of what he called a boy-bashing craze, in which the makers of related products do not realize (or do not care) that young men have higher rates of depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
and suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
than young girls in America. Goldman responded to the criticism, stating that he "hopes to be ranked higher next year."
Accusations of plagiarism
In April 2007, Goldman was accused of plagiarismPlagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
by webcartoonist
Webcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....
Dave "Shmorky" Kelly, in a post on the Something Awful
Something Awful
Something Awful, often abbreviated to SA, is a comedy website housing a variety of content, including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka in 1999 as a largely personal website, but as it grew, so...
forums, saying that Goldman's piece "Dear God Make Everyone Die" was traced
Tracing
Tracing may refer to:* Tracing , a process by which a one demonstrates the ownership of property, with the intent to be awarded a claim based on this information...
directly from a 2001 Purple Pussy comic by Kelly. Mike Tyndall maintains a page which summarizes the original Something Awful
Something Awful
Something Awful, often abbreviated to SA, is a comedy website housing a variety of content, including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka in 1999 as a largely personal website, but as it grew, so...
thread, at which dozens of images are compared, with the claim that Goldman plagiarized many artists.
On May 3, 2007, Goldman's publicity agent announced that Goldman (who initially dismissed the controversy as "false accusations and blogging" in the contact with the media) and Kelly had reached a settlement: Goldman would pay Kelly the money he earned from the paintings and Kelly would drop the case. Goldman's art dealer said that several art galleries
Art gallery
An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...
stopped showing Goldman's work and the wholesalers who buy Goldman's posters canceled their orders and asked for refunds for unsold stock. "I lost the three biggest poster distributors in America," his art dealer, Jack Solomon, said. Goldman later reported that the poster distributors came back.
In an interview with Sense
Sense magazine
Sense Magazine is a Los Angeles based magazine that focuses on the Culture, Entertainment, Fashion, Nightlife and everything else dealing with the LA lifestyle. The magazine focuses mainly on Los Angeles with features on Las Vegas, San Diego, and other Southern California related cities...
magazine, Goldman said, "I guess what happened was this: I have a whole design team that works back in Florida creating t-shirts for me. And then I take some of these images and make paintings out of them. If we do 50 t-shirts a month we probably create over 300 images to narrow down to those 50. Listen, I couldn't paint in my lifetime the amount of stuff that we've done. I thought that image was created internally within 'David and Goliath'. I guess the original idea came from that Kelly guy which one of my artists had seen. We changed it to "Please God Make All my Friends Fat," because the Die wouldn't sell on t-shirts. But I thought it'd make a great painting. So I painted two images from it. 5 months later it was hanging in this gallery and someone saw it and started this whole Internet thing. When I found out it wasn't our image, I apologized to the guy and gave him the full proceeds for the sale of the paintings. They sold for $10,000. So I didn't profit from him. There was no lawsuit from it. But then a whole can of worms opens up and suddenly I'm knocking off everyone apparently."
External links
- Todd Goldman MyspaceMyspaceMyspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
- Archive of legal letter presented to Wired magazine - A Wired blog post about Goldman was removed
- Cartoonist pokes fun at self and spread smiles
- Goldman puts art in cartoon
- Todd Goldman : Professional Doodler
- Artist Profile: Todd Goldman Art Business News