The Fashion Police Are Spreading

As I said a while back, when Atlanta was discussing a law against sagging pants, I applaud the intentions, but I don't see a way to write a law that can't be evaded. Still, there's some hope that discussion of these laws might lead adults to start cracking down on their kids about this--because that is the only domain where this problem has a ghost of chance of being fixed. From September 16, 2007 Associated Press:

Cities Cracking Down on Saggy Pants
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - It's a fashion that started in prison, and now the saggy pants craze has come full circle - low-slung street strutting in some cities may soon mean run-ins with the law, including a stint in jail.
Proposals to ban saggy pants are starting to ride up in several places. At the extreme end, wearing pants low enough to show boxers or bare buttocks in one small Louisiana town means six months in jail and a $500 fine. A crackdown also is being pushed in Atlanta. And in Trenton, getting caught with your pants down may soon result in not only a fine, but a city worker assessing where your life is headed.
"Are they employed? Do they have a high school diploma? It's a wonderful way to redirect at that point," said Trenton Councilwoman Annette Lartigue, who is drafting a law to outlaw saggy pants. "The message is clear: We don't want to see your backside."
The bare-your-britches fashion is believed to have started in prisons, where inmates aren't given belts with their baggy uniform pants to prevent hangings and beatings. By the late 80s, the trend had made it to gangster rap videos, then went on to skateboarders in the suburbs and high school hallways.
"For young people, it's a form of rebellion and identity," Adrian "Easy A.D." Harris, 43, a founding member of the Bronx's legendary rap group Cold Crush Brothers. "The young people think it's fashionable. They don't think it's negative."
But for those who want to stop them see it as an indecent, sloppy trend that is a bad influence on children.
"It has the potential to catch on with elementary school kids, and we want to stop it before it gets there," said C.T. Martin, an Atlanta councilman. "Teachers have raised questions about what a distraction it is."

This Well-Intentioned Proposal Is Doomed

A member of the Atlanta City Council is proposing a law that is doomed to failure--and that's really unfortunate. From the August 22, 2007 Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Exposed boxer shorts and thongs would be illegal in any public place in Atlanta if the City Council approves a proposed amendment to the city's indecency laws.
The target is young men who wear their pants low off their hips to show off the two pairs of boxers they wear beneath their saggy pants, said Atlanta Councilman C.T. Martin, a college recruitment consultant who sponsored the ordinance. Saggy pants are an "epidemic" that are becoming a "major concern" in cities and states around the country, the ordinance reads."Little children see it and want to adopt it, thinking it's the in thing," Martin said Wednesday. "I don't want young people thinking that half-dressing is the way to go. I want them to think about their future."
Under the proposed ordinance, women also couldn't reveal the strap of a thong beneath their pants. Nor could they wear jogging bras in public or show off even a wisp of a bra strap, said Debbie Seagraves, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.
The proposed ordinance states that "the indecent exposure of his or her undergarments" would be unlawful in a public place. It would go in the same portion of the city code that outlaws sex in public and the exposure or fondling of genitals and the breast of a woman. Martin said the penalty would be a fine in an amount to be determined.
Seagraves said any legislation that creates a dress code would not survive a court challenge. She said there's no way the law could be enforced in a nondiscriminatory way. She said it targets a cultural phenomenon that came out of the black youth culture.
"This is a racial profiling bill that promotes and establishes a framework for an additional type of racial profiling," Seagraves said.

"Black youth culture"? No, it actually comes out of the black gang culture. (The ACLU may not recognize that there's a difference.) Lots of jails and prisons don't allow belts, both for the risk of suicide and the potential to use a belt as a weapon. Gang members and young black men who wanted to look like gang members stopped wearing belts--and intentionally wearing their pants baggy to expose their boxers--as a way of saying, "I'm a gang member--or I want you to think I'm one." Now it has become fashionable--in spite of being among the most unclassy styles that I have never seen.

I completely sympathize with Councilman Martin's concerns. My guess is that Martin wants young black men to be seen by whites as decent and respectable members of American society, and is therefore attempting to rid Atlanta of this absurd symbol of gang culture. It reminds me of bikers wearing swastikas in the 1950s and 1960s. Did they wear swastikas because they sympathized with the Nazis? No, but it was a way of saying, "I'm bad, and I spit on everything that my parents' generation did."

Unfortunately, the problem with such an ordinance isn't just that the ACLU will challenge it as "racial profiling" or violating freedom of speech. The problem is how do you define "undergarments"? Boxer shorts are not so different from shorts in appearance these days. Would someone wearing briefs, then boxer shorts, then sagging pants be in violation if the boxer shorts were visible?

For women, the definitional problem is even more severe. The camisole used to be considered an undergarment, but now many women wear them as outerwear. Spaghetti strap camisoles with a bra strap showing would certainly qualify as a violation of Martin's proposed ordinance. (Not to mention that the combination looks ridiculous.) But the camisole alone can range from profoundly provocative to really, really gross, depending on who is wearing it. Is a camisole an undergarment or not?

I don't have much hope for an ordinance like this to be enforceable. It's rather like banning the wearing of swastikas, which even ignoring freedom of speech claims, is too easy to get around. You can define a swastika, but what happens if someone wears a swastika with one arm broken off? It's no longer a swastika within the law, but everyone stills knows what it is.

Somehow or another, there needs to be a great spiritual change in black inner city America to solve this particular problem. There are a lot of serious problems that laws can fix, but I rather doubt that this is one of those problems.

This Is Not a Positive Sign For American Culture

New York City is considering a symbolic ordinance expressing their disapproval of the use of the words "bitch" and "ho." (For those of you who are over 40--"ho" is the black English mispronounciation of "whore.")

The New York City Council, which drew national headlines when it passed a symbolic citywide ban earlier this year on the use of the so-called n-word, has turned its linguistic (and legislative) lance toward a different slur: bitch.

The term is hateful and deeply sexist, said Councilwoman Darlene Mealy of Brooklyn, who has introduced a measure against the word, saying it creates “a paradigm of shame and indignity” for all women.

Professor Volokh points out that the measure actually doesn't do anything, and therefore doesn't qualify as a First Amendment violation:

It's not a ban as the term "ban" is normally used, nor is it "unenforceable" in the sense of being unenforceable because it's trumped by the First Amendment or because it's hard to effectively enforce. There's nothing here to enforce -- this is essentially government speech condemning the words, and calling for people to stop using them. The City Council would be perfectly free to proclaim such a view.

...

But in any event, let's not make a federal case out of this: The proposed resolution may be condemned on various grounds, but not because it violates anyone's free speech rights.

What I found most troubling is the degraded state of New York City residents. From that same New York Times article:

While the bill also bans the slang word “ho,” the b-word appears to have acquired more shades of meaning among various groups, ranging from a term of camaraderie to, in a gerund form, an expression of emphatic approval. Ms. Mealy acknowledged that the measure was unenforceable, but she argued that it would carry symbolic power against the pejorative uses of the word. Even so, a number of New Yorkers said they were taken aback by the idea of prohibiting a term that they not only use, but do so with relish and affection.

“Half my conversation would be gone,” said Michael Musto, the Village Voice columnist, whom a reporter encountered on his bicycle on Sunday night on the corner of Seventh Avenue South and Christopher Street. Mr. Musto, widely known for his coverage of celebrity gossip, dismissed the idea as absurd.

“On the downtown club scene,” he said, munching on an apple, the two terms are often used as terms of endearment. “We divest any negative implication from the word and toss it around with love.”

Darris James, 31, an architect from Brooklyn who was outside the Duplex, a piano bar in the West Village, on Sunday night was similarly opposed. “Hell, if I can’t say bitch, I wouldn’t be able to call half my friends.”

They may not have been the kinds of reaction that Ms. Mealy, a Detroit-born former transit worker serving her first term, was expecting. “They buried the n-word, but what about the other words that really affect women, such as ‘b,’ and ‘ho’? That’s a vile attack on our womanhood,” Ms. Mealy said in a telephone interview. “In listening to my other colleagues, that they say that to their wives or their friends, we have gotten really complacent with it.”

Paging Bill Cosby! Paging Bill Cosby!

Former Naval Person's Blog is Now Former Work-Safe Blog

Occasionally I look to see what other bloggers are linking to my posts. I saw the link (and don't click the link, especially if you are at work--for reasons that I am about to explain) Former Naval Person linked to my post about Harry Potter. So I clicked over there--and I was shocked. His blog is running ads that have hardcore obscene pictures in them--and quite a number of his other postings have pictures that you won't see on broadcast television.

I know that there are fleshblogs out there--but Former Naval Person's blog used to be a reasonably serious blog with an interest in naval stuff. I hope he's making some serious money pandering. It is sure not a way to be taken seriously.

UPDATE: Jim tells me that indeed, money is what drove the change in advertising--and he's not entirely comfortable with the ads that are running.

Alaska Cruise: The Comic Problem

We saw three shows on board. The second night there was a comic named something or other Johnson who was somewhat funny, but whose language was a little crude. Compared to the average night club comic, not vulgar at all--but apparently one family with preteen kids walked out a few minutes into this guy's act. The comic tried to make a joke out of it, but made the mistake of asking them why they were leaving, and the father told him, politely, that it was basically his language was too offensive for his kids.

The second act we saw, on another night, was one of those magic/comedy combinations that worked really well--and he was a reminder that you don't need to be vulgar to be funny--just a bit more creative and clever. (There was one relatively subtle joke sexual reference that probably went over the heads of the youngest kids.)

The third act we saw was probably the most disappointing. I've forgotten his name already, a Cuban-American, but I was probably least impressed. His humor was scatological and crude, and and even in that vein, not particularly funny. I noticed another family with small children leaving part way through his act.

I am very sympathetic to the families that walked out. There are a lot of parents that are trying to keep their kids--at least in the preteen years--out of the sewer of popular culture with its profanity, vulgarity, scatology, and obscenity. This is America, so there's no way to achieve this, but you can at least make it clear to your kids that this is not okay.

On the other hand, comics are overwhelmingly crude today--the ultimate revenge of Lenny Bruce's ghost. I don't know what these parents were thinking, bringing small children to hear comics. My guess is that either:

1. There are a lot of people out there who are not aware of the material that most comics use. I noticed that a number of the people on the cruise were part of an organized tour from Cruise Lady, which is a Mormon-affiliated operation. There's an innocence (or naivete--take your pick) that a lot of Mormons have, growing up in places that are fairly well removed from the depravity of modern America. I do think Princess Cruises would have done everyone a service by having some warning, "Note: material may not be appropriate for younger audiences."

2. These parents assumed that a generally family friendly operation like Princess Cruises would pick comics with family friendly material. If so, they were in for a disappointing surprise. I do scratch my head a bit about this. Are there no comics left in America that can make adults laugh without being crude? Or does Princess Cruises not realize that this might be a refreshing change?