The New Orleans Times-Picayune has a snort-worthy article about how Mayor Ray Nagin’s “Chocolate City” remarks have revitalized the city’s economy (well, the t-shirt market, anyway) and its sense of humor:

The man selling the “Chocolate City Police” T-shirts at Cooter Brown’s bar on a recent night looked, and dressed, remarkably like a New Orleans cop, though he would only smile when asked where he worked. The tip-off was the writing on the back of the shirt: “We’re Bitter.”

That even city employees have apparently gotten into the business of making money from — and making fun of — Mayor Ray Nagin’s now-infamous Martin Luther King Day speech is an indication of just how firmly ingrained the comments have become in local and national political culture…

…Dolph Federico, who launched imnotchocolate.com just hours after the mayor’s speech last week, said his Kenner screen-printing shop Pelican Graphics has received about 3,000 orders for his “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory”-inspired shirts, which feature Nagin’s head superimposed on the title character’s body.

It has created a rare post-Katrina boom for Federico, who noted appreciatively: “This hurricane, while it has taken away a lot of opportunities, it’s given some.”

The idea for the shirts came to Federico shortly after Nagin’s address, when a friend asked him to make a banner that read, “I’m not chocolate, but God wants me here too.”

“Then we started toying with the idea,” Federico said. “This thing just came about in a matter of seconds.”

Interest in the matter goes far beyond the New Orleans metro area. In fact, Federico said, about half of his orders have come from outside Louisiana, including such distant locales as Norway, France, Canada, Malaysia and Germany.

“It went from just telling friends to kind of snowballing,” Federico said….

So celebrate diversity in New Orleans. Shop imnotchocolate.com.

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Meanwhile, a reader sends along these pics of other popular t-shirts making the rounds in New Orleans:

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Speaking of snort-worthy, here’s newspaper P.C. editing run amok.

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