Droopy Pants and Drippy Laws

Drought has gripped much of the south, while Texas, Oklahoma, and the upper midwest are plagued with storms and excess rain; either way, food prices are pressured upward. On top of the continuing violence in the Iraq mess is the rising boldness of the reformulating Taliban in Afghanistan, who has now taken to kidnapping foreigners. The sub-prime home lending crisis has crept into the general housing market, crimping everyone's home values and drying up credit. Misery and injustice are all-too-abundant.

But what has got Atlanta burning? Baggy pants, if the city council is to be believed.

Yep, Atlanta's city council has proposed an amendment to their indecency laws that bans baggy pants worn to reveal boxer shorts, the kind that urban black culture has made either popular or epidemic (your call). Ladies, wearing that waistline where your thongs show would also be illegal. Councilman and co-sponsor C. T. Martin said "I don't want young people thinking that half-dressing is the way to go. I want them to think about their future."

Their future? We're not talking about a full-torso tattoo. The solution is a lot easier than salt and a stick of butter.

Personally, the half-covered-seat look is just butt-ignorant. How many folks have felt an inkling to get a staple gun and affix some yahoo's britches up above the crack line? And it certainly doesn't look any better on some of the local appropriatin' white dudes where I live.

But the Atlanta amendment, and the similar local ordinances that have passed in Louisiana, is more ignorant than the look it combats. I think we can have a mature discussion of the value issues of hip-hop culture without resorting to dress codes. Besides, all of us adults drew the ire of our parents' generation with the way we dressed and groomed ourselves, from ten-inch pompadours to mod hair to purple hair, from spiked dog collars to the first Madonna look to the once-innocuous flannel shirt.

Though part of me may cheer a beating back of something that just looks stupid to me, we've had way too much government intervention the past few years. And, as I suggested above, we've got a lot more important things to be concerned with.