From the SF Chronicle:(07-20) 05:19 PDT LYNWOOD, Ill. (AP) --
I know we're coming up on the slow news silly season that usually descends on the world in late July/early August, and I know this is not the first time that municipalities have attempted to outlaw the gangsta/prison-inspired fashion for letting the greater part of one's ass hang out of one's pants. But this story seems to do a better job than usual of exhibiting a panoply of human idiocies. Whether we're talking about the city fathers' attempt to star in a Footloose-style drama about dorky adults trying to impose standards of "decency" on the feckless young, or the feckless young themselves, who in claiming that the city should "spend money on making the area look nicer" seem to have missed the point that that is exactly what the city is doing (how could a downtown devoid of half-clad wannabe gangsters sporting fashions from five years ago not look nicer?), it seems we've descended into a real slough of cluelessness here.
Be careful if you have saggy pants in the south Chicago suburb of Lynwood. Village leaders have passed an ordinance that would levy $25 fines against anyone showing three inches or more of their underwear in public.
Eugene Williams is the mayor of Lynwood. He says young men walk around town half-dressed, keeping major retailers and economic development away. He calls the new law a hot topic.
The American Civil Liberties Union says the ordinance targets young men of color.
Young adults in the village, like 21-year-old Joe Klomes, say the new law infringes on their personal style. He says leaders should instead spend money on making the area look nicer.
But as usual, the ACLU takes the biscuit. The law "targets young men of color"? Oh? If it were a law that banned very curly hair, or restricted access to public facilities based on melanin content, I could see their point, but in what scientific document is it demonstrated that a distinguishing characteristic of dark-skinned (presumably what they mean by "of color") people is an inability to wear belts or keep one's pants fastened at or above the waist?
Once again the overwhelmingly white dingbats of the ACLU have conflated "black" with "moronic, gangbanging thugs" and "fashion-challenged clowns" and as usual don't even seem to have the slightest idea of just how racist they're being. I mean, you could use the same logic - and some extreme "civil libertarians" have - to argue that enforcing laws against robbery or murder also "targets young men of color."
Anyway, the whole fashion for falling-down pants is on the wane anyway, even it's still a big, shocking deal in small town America. The fact that another set of retrograde brain surgeons (aided and abetted by the Village Voice's own terminal love affair with minstrelsy) finds it necessary to launch campaigns against tight (i.e., not falling down) clothes should prove that the writing's on the wall and the underwear-clad moon on the wane.
1 comment:
Okay, whoever accepted this case for the ACLU must have had too much time on his or her hands. Does that make the whole organization a bunch of dingbats? Myself, I'm glad that someone at the ACLU is fighting the Bush administration's attempts to bypass the Fourth Amendment and eavesdrop on telephone conversations without a warrant, not to mention official sanctioning of torture. I guess this makes me one of the loony left who refuses to see the light, whatever that is, Mr. Smalley, I mean Livermore.
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