About a year ago, while visiting the West Coast, I bought this really cool messenger bag. It's a light khaki canvas bag with a huge red star on the outside flap, and underneath in red Chinese letters is a Mao Zedong quote, TO SERVE THE PEOPLE. Or at least I think that's what it says. I mean, I'm not completely clueless; when I bought the bag from the nice saleslady in Los Angeles' Chinatown, I asked her what the script said, because I didn't want to be walking around with a bag that said, look at what the stupid tourist bought. But let's be real: The reason I wanted the bag was because it's a good-looking bag, not to make any kind of statement.

Anyway, fast-forward to a couple of weeks ago, and I'm talking to a Chinese dude, as in "from China," and he comments on the "interesting" quote on my bag. And there's something in the, I don't know, tonality of his "interesting" that makes my neck hair stand up. So, I thank him and make a mental note to go and ask someone who speaks Chinese and isn't trying to sell me the thing what the bag says, because now I'm wondering if it's some kind of "To Serve Man is a cookbook!"-type mistranslation thing that's happened. I guess that's what we risk when cultural history gets appropriated into popular culture.

One of the facets of our symbol-driven culture is that often we advertise aspects of our value system and beliefs just from what we're wearing. One of the most popular examples of this phenomenon is, of course, sports paraphernalia. You like a certain team and, to show that affection, you wear a cap or jersey. This concept can easily be applied to television shows, musicians, politicians, whatever.

Every now and then, however, this also means that you're putting yourself out there for people to challenge your fidelity to the subject matter. I'll never forget, about 15 years ago, an old dude hemmed me up and straight drilled me for 10 minutes about the music of John Coltrane because I had the audacity to be a young man wearing a T-shirt with the cover of Blue Train on it. Luckily, I could answer about three-fourths of his questions so I, uh, passed, but I think my man was going to take the shirt right off my back if I didn't know that McCoy Tyner was one of Coltrane's pianists. And, y'know, I don't really have any hard feelings over it. Every now and then, I see some young whippersnapper wearing a Run-DMC shirt and have to stifle the urge to grab 'em and demand they recite the lyrics to "Can You Rock It Like This." I mean, if you're wearing it, you should be able to talk about it, right?

This becomes even trickier when you include politics in the mix. Like, on the one hand, I'm actively looking for this great T-shirt I saw bearing Rosa Parks' mug shot and, underneath the photo, the words american revolutionary. I love that. Whenever you think of the popular depiction of Parks, there's just that image of the little old lady sitting on the bus, but the mug shot subverts that and recasts her into the active role of what she really was: a revolutionary. But, see, I know enough about the civil-rights movement to articulate my logic. Likewise, because I'm comfortable talking about it, I have a million things with the Black Nationalist red, black, and green flag on it.

On the other hand, you know what I've passed up on buying, like, a million times? One of those cool Haile Selassie T-shirts. That's a little too much for me--I don't know enough about Rastafarianism or Ethiopia to be rocking a shirt with his face on it because it matches my sneakers. Truth be told, I'm just old enough to remember dudes getting into tight situations because their hair was `locked and they didn't really have a cohesive line of reasoning for doing it. Hell, that's pretty much why I never signed up for the Che Guevera T-shirt bus. Call me oversensitive, but I just think you have to roll easy with things that are a little more serious than, again, matching your outfit. And, let's face it, even on his best day my man Mao was a complicated guy whom folks have pretty strong opinions about.

Which brings me back to my bag. I actually went up to ye olde Chinese Studies department at my local university (no, seriously, this was on my mind) and asked one of the professors. Sure enough, my bag says, TO SERVE THE PEOPLE, and, sure enough, it is a Mao quote, but beyond the striking iconography of the red star and the script, I have to wonder what all I am saying with it, and is that really the baggage I want to carry around with me?