Posted on 04/08/2012 7:32:52 AM PDT by SmithL
Saggy pants in schools are such a menace to society that school boards will now be forced to outlaw them.
Yep, that's what our state legislature decided last week, by passing a "nanny state" bill introduced by Memphis' own Rep. Joe Towns Jr.
The law requires local school districts to create and enforce a ban on "clothing that exposes underwear or body parts in an indecent manner that disrupts the learning environment."
It covers girls' sports bras, and was a weakened version of what Towns proposed three years ago.
The earlier bill would have made it a criminal offense for anyone to "knowingly wear pants below waistline to show underwear or buttocks" in any public place.
Repeated offenses would have been a Class A misdemeanor, putting droopy pants into the same category with simple assaults and prostitution.
On this Towns and I agree: Saggy pants are aesthetically offensive. They don't project an image congruent with maturity or self-respect.
I cringe when I see a man's drawers escaping from the top of his pants, which usually are belted just beneath his rear end.
When these guys have to move quickly and lose their precarious hold on their pants, I think: Serves you right.
That said, I've seen no proof that this is a matter of public safety, or even that kids who sag their pants are proven miscreants.
Towns said the law had lots of support in the legislature and in the community.
"In schools, high schools, places of academic training, those are places the kids should learn all the good habits they need" for a successful professional life, Towns said Friday.
Parents should be the first line of clothing defense, Towns said, but sometimes kids leave the house dressed appropriately only to succumb to peer pressure and sag their pants at school.
Only nine state representatives, eight of them Republican, voted against the bill, which passed unanimously in the Senate.
Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, was one of the no votes.
Before the vote, "I looked into different school boards to see if they had adopted policies already that had dealt with that," Sexton said. (Towns acknowledged that he did no such research, not across the state or even locally.)
Several had, Sexton found, yet Towns' bill would require school districts to create a policy, whether local districts felt like they needed one or not.
"I thought it was too much of a reach," Sexton said, and an issue best left to local powers.
Rep. Andy Holt, R-Dresden, another no vote, was surprised by the margin with which the bill passed.
"I don't want (my) vote to come across like I wear saggy pants or I even endorse it," he said. "I think most folks were casting their votes because they don't like people wearing saggy britches."
Said Rep. Scotty Campbell, R-Mountain City: "My preference is that the local school board...be allowed to make decisions regarding what is appropriate in their schools."
Imagine that: A local entity empowered to make its own decisions.
(Here is where snarky Wendi would note that the legislature had no qualms rewriting state law to dictate the merger of the city and county schools, but snarky Wendi has the day off.)
Legislators are not elected to be the fashion police, particularly when the style is likely a passing fad.
"The school system, there's a lot going on and a lot...it may not be a priority," Towns said.
Exactly. If school districts can ban saggy pants and haven't, then why should the state step in?
Pursuing such legislation is a waste of our elected officials' time. Bills like these only reinforce the perception that our representatives in Nashville are majoring in the minors.
If legislators think any such non-problems require legislative intervention, maybe they need a swat right above the area where saggy pants usually start.
It's done deliberately, as a low-grade, below-threshold form of assault on others. Like boom cars and boom boxes.
The prototype is the civil rights movement and Gandhi's "nonviolent" violence. Gandhi promoted nonviolent insults to the law as a way of provoking retaliatory violence, and then using newsreels of brutish LEO's abusing honest, hardworking (lawbreaking, but that doesn't show on film) mass-followers. Worked like a charm, and the homies still know how to work the grift.
Danish arbitrator?
Dixie Attitude?
Desi Arnaz?
District Attorney?
Dancing aardvark?
Documented anisotropy?
Dervish from Ankara?
Doctor of Arts?
Dashiki Afro?
Dalmatian aristocrat?
Dolichocephalic artificer?
The mind boggles.
I’m 75 and went to public school and have no idea what a DA is!
Thank you for your service.
Fly Navy, Beat Army!
But when the guys are wearing their breeches around their thighs and the girls are wearing their baby doll cutesy dresses, it makes it all so easy. I am sure the Moms who send their daughters to prom and even church dressed that way aren’t thinking that their daughters look Easy or even that they themselves look Easy when they dress that way. I guess there have always been risqué fashion trends. Heh
Now dress codes are racist?
I hope McDonald’s never goes out of business or they’ll be racist.
Duck’s a$$.
A hair style from my parents’ generation.
Then there was the variation with the flat top, called a "Chicago boxcar".
Hard to explain what it looks like but D.A> means “Ducks Ass”. This refers to the way the hair in back of the head was combed towards the middle and when properly done resembled what a Ducks ass looked like from behind.
Google images and you may find a pic.
It may have been a regional thing. I went to school in Northern NJ (Bergen Country)
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