Dept. Of We Have No Fuckin' Clue And Black Kids Scare Us

[filkertom]

Some cities are enforcing brand new laws against -- wait for it -- saggy pants.

Comments

[voiceofkiki.livejournal.com]

I think you got the title right.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

I know that somewhere was going to do the same thing for visible bra straps. It's always nice to know that I have the possibility of breaking the law and getting a hefty fine by accident. (In the duel between tanktop straps and bra straps, sadly the bra straps usually win. I'm guessing you didn't really need this insight into my life, but there you have it.)

[sethb.livejournal.com]

My first thought about the law against "exposing underwear" was how many women would get caught by that.

The next one was how many people would just stop wearing underwear; the distance pants have to ride down to show underwear is a lot less than for illegal exposure.

Or people will start wearing bathing suits instead of underwear. (If something is legal by itself, it has to remain legal if more clothing is put on top of it, right?)

[rook543.livejournal.com]

Now it could just be a law against looking like a friggen idiot!

[oceansedge.livejournal.com]

"The penalty is stiffer in Delcambre, La., where in June the town council passed an ordinance that carries a fine of up to $500 or six months in jail for exposing underwear in public. Several other municipalities and parish governments in Louisiana have enacted similar laws in recent months."

How much you wanna make a bet that doesn't include my plumber - that's been disgusting me for years.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

At least one place included an "occupational exception" in that law.

[dragonscholar.livejournal.com]

Saw this. Some places are doing JAIL TIME for saggy pants? WTF? Oh yeah, THAT'LL help put kids on the straight and narrow. Let them get jailed for their clothes.

Honestly, its obviously racist, very stupid.

[snobahr.livejournal.com]

Since the saggy pants is a reflection of incarcerated saggy pants, isn't putting them in jail basically doing what they apparently wanted already?

[hvideo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how widespread it is, and if it's determined county by county or city by city or just what, but in quite a number of places in California it is not against the law to be nude in public. There are still laws in these places against obscene behavior (such as both being nude AND acting in a manner to call attention to the genital area) but nudity BY ITSELF is not unlawful in these places.

There was a recent case just a week or two ago - a carpenter was working in the nude, got arrested, and either the case was dismissed or he was found not guilty, I forget which. If memory serves he was working inside an existing house but was visible through the front window and someone lodged a complaint. But since he was not doing anything to draw the attention of others to his genitals there was no violation of the law for that locality.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

This is only racial profiling to the extent that wearing saggy pants is part of being black.

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

Based on the number of white suburban kids I see wearing them, it's not exclusive to the black community by any measure.

While the is stupid, as long as they aren't exposing themselves it's not the government's business how they dress.

[que-sara-sara.livejournal.com]

Well, they really are a fashion crime but if they were that big an issue they should have started doing something about it five years ago when it started.

[baphnedia.livejournal.com]

I don't think you have the title right on this one - where I used to recruit for the Army, wearing saggy pants was something that everybody seemed to do (cept tightwads like me).

Butt, is usually the only thing I don't like seeing when anyone wears them. So, indecent exposure should cover that just fine. Besides that though, we could use fewer laws, not more.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I think an official mayoral proclamation that "people who wear pants with the crotches down to their knees look comically stupid" would be adequate.

[pandoradeloeste.livejournal.com]

Nice. Way to dump more "criminals" into a prison system that's already overcrowded. (Where arguably they come out more criminal than they went in. . .but that's another rant. So is the one about people thrown in jail for smoking pot.)

[realtegan.livejournal.com]

Huh. The last time I saw saggy pants was last week at the State Fair. And it was a white kid. I *almost* made a comment about his nice boxers, but I decided to ignore him instead.

I've always seen more white folks wearing saggy pants than black folks. Is that just a Seattle thing?

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Is that just a Seattle thing?

I've seen the same thing in the Boston area and in eastern Pennsylvania, so it's not exclusive.

About a dozen years ago, I remember a friend telling me about a close friend of his who "wore baggy pants before everyone was wearing them", so that refers to a point at least fifteen years before today - this isn't exactly a new fashion style.

Very goofy looking one, but not new.

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the rhetoric and idiocies I used to hear about kids wearing (gasp) jeans to school in the mid to late '60s. And it was even more virulent against girls wearing pants! I had to get special dispensation to wear pants (not jeans) when I was in 8th grade and on crutches. That would have been 1970. And yes, some places did actually try to legislate the matter.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

The purpose of such a law is, if the police want to stop someone who looks suspiciously urban black and search his baggy pants for drugs, but they don't have any actual grounds to suspect him of illegal activity, this gives them the excuse.

Hey, tough on crime, right? Nothing to complain about if you got nothing to hide, right?

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

If they're going to arrest people for baggy pants, then I'd like to start a grass roots movement to outlaw business suits. I mean, look at embezzlers, wire fraudsters, and white collar criminals, they all wear suits! Call up any news story videos about Enron and you'll see that every single one of those convicted were wearing business suits! The crooked politicians who have been convicted or are under investigation, and the people who bribe them, all wear the same gang uniforms! What was senator Craig wearing when he broke the law in that men's room? What were Cheney and Rove's minions wearing when they outed Plame?

If we outlaw the business suit, then only outlaws will wear Armani.

Notice Atlanta is on the list...

[bobmage.livejournal.com]

that would end Dragoncon as we know it.

Re: Notice Atlanta is on the list...

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

Nah, spandex body suits and leather corsets are still safe. Vinyl lingerie is borderline, but I think they'll ignore it.

[warinbear.livejournal.com]

I have been told -- and I do not know whether or to what extent this is accurate -- that the 'fashion' of saggy pants started in prison anyway. It was, according to my source, a way for the in-prison pimps to show off their boys' wares. I told that to a guy once . . . never saw him in saggy pants again. :)

[omimouse.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's the fact that prison pants are baggy and they don't let 'em have belts. (weapon or suicide potential)

Would this guy be Squawky form your workplace?

And as for the laws themselves . . . good grief. Oh yeah, I can just *see* the poor local prosecuter. 'Yes your Honor, we wish to imprison this young man for 6 months . . . because the top band of his underwear was showing.'

[dbcooper.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Having solved all our other problems, local governments have decided to commission fashion police.

They should ban neckties--the lawmakers wearing them clearly have tied them too tight and cut off oxygen to their brains.

[goth-twiglet.livejournal.com]

Wait!
They're going to throw them in jail for "wearing a loud shirt in a buil-up area"?
See, when the Not-the NIne-O'Clock-News team did that it was supposed to be funny. D'oh.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

That was decades ago.

Now busy shirts are OK. It's wearing burberry in a middle class neighborhood that gets you 30 days without the option.

[shannachie.livejournal.com]

The issue made the German news. In this country there seems to be some broadgrinning bewilderment at the fact that on there are countries where everyone has the right to bear arms but not the right to bare ass... ahm... I mean trousers of choice.

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

And yet this law, in it's own odd way, comes from the same source of fear as many gun control laws. (http://www.constitution.org/cmt/cramer/racist_roots.htm)

I wonder if I'd get arrested in one of these town? I haven't replaced my jeans and I've been losing a lot of weight. My pants are getting awfully baggy of late.

[eye-ar-smaurt.livejournal.com]

I personally don't have a problem with this. It's a bit annoying, for me, to see kids walking around with their pants around their knees.

And if doing a thing is wrong, then not creating a law against it because people of a certain race do it more than others is just stupid.

[arakasi1.livejournal.com]

Hold up.

So the new criteria for making something illegal is now "It's a bit annoying, for me"?

Great. Now I can get my neighbors arrested for mowing their lawn three times a week. I think that six months in jail is appropriate

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

*reads your second paragraph*
A-bloody-men. This is one time I can't agree with the ACLU. If they were fighting this battle on a First Amendment front, I could get behind them.

But to call this racial profiling is, I think, racist in itself. And yeah, the parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who can remember having to fight to be considered something other than thugs, I can easily see them taking a hairbrush to those bared behinds.

Sad day

[arakasi1.livejournal.com]

Completely off topic

Robert Jordan just died from complications from cardiac amyloidosis.

It's not a big surprise, considering his health over the last year or so, but still a shock.

All the primary links that I have are blocked from work, but his Wikipedia article has the details

[gavroche42.livejournal.com]

If we're legislating against obscenity, I think we should just make it illegal to not wear underwear, and to reveal that fact in any fashion. (So wearing no underwear is fine, if your pants are secured by suspenders or a tight belt.)

Was at a cafe the other day and a performer bent down to fiddle with the sound equipment. Yikes! Saw way too much.

Saggy pants are fine if there's underwear underneath. Especially boxers. People wear boxer shorts in public with nothing over them. Boxers do it quite often.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

To wear no underwear under a kilt ('ware high winds!) is a unique part of a Scot's ethnic heritage.

And the kilt has been banned before now, didn't kill it off....

[wordwitch.livejournal.com]

So I've told my son (who is black, unlike myself) the beltless origin of the fashion.

I have also told him how much it sends the message "Grope Here" specifically to gay men - since women are usually not impressed by bared boxers.

I have even told him, with demonstration, that what he can expect from me is a SuperWedgie if I catch his pants riding low.

None of these things have discouraged him, which I kind of expected, since Fashion is a force indifferent to reason, even though he was impressed by all of my claims. (It does give me a fabulous excuse for inflicting SuperWedgies on a regular basis, which, you know, bonus.)

The law has Absolutely No Place in this process. Whether it is the boxer band, the upper slope of the buttocks, the full buttocks(!), or the buttocks-plus-some-thigh (suspended, I've been told, by the judicious use of safety pins, and a belt on the boxers!) - this fashion crime must be dealt with on, and only on, the peer-and-parent level.

Otherwise we make ourselves laughingstocks among all the nations. Again.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]