by Rob Purifoy

Created on: September 19, 2007   Last Updated: February 11, 2009

It should be disturbing to everyone that state and local government is now sticking their big snoot in America's fashions, including fads. Remember in the 1980's when Marky Mark's underwear ads in, and on, magazines and billboards were everywhere? His jeans were pulled down to show the name of his Calvin Klein's and no one seemed to mind then, why now?

I'm wondering, what's next in the new world of fashion police, I can't wear a ball cap backwards or my favorite team's Jersey in public? Actually, I can wear what I want because I'm a 30 something white guy and it's obvious that profiling and zero tolerance in full force at it's best, or I should say, at it's worst.

Recently I listened to the radio as a Dallas Mayor deputy "pro tem" ( temporary mayor pending the real one's return ) rambled on about he or his grandmother doesn't like seeing "saggy" pants and claimed it an insult to females. This man was spouting his own beliefs and his grandmother's complaints on the air. Personal opinion is not what law making is about and the more we sit by and let our rights be taken away by the powers that be the more we all suffer. Do I think Saggy pants are cool, heck no, do I think a person has the right to dress as they want? YES. I'll give you a few more examples;

I was in North Carolina at an airport, in a Chili's restaurant waiting on my flight. There was this black fellow with saggy jeans and a chili's apron walking the tables. I was a little suspect of him actually working there I must admit, but in watching him, it turns out he was part of the wait staff. Mind you, the tables protruded into out of the restaurant and into the lanes of the airport. But he was smiling, treated his customers well and everything was fine. One example of the gangster profile the saggy jeans emit, but it doesn't mean that it's not a fashion style just because he chose to wear a style popularized by gun toting rapper's on MTV.

To stray from the topic of pants and speak to zero tolerance, because it still applies; It was Monday of my senior year in high school, 1985. A buddy of mine had just fondly recounted his weekend and how he and his Dad went on a fishing trip, caught several fish and skinned them on the spot in his truck and iced them down. It turned out that the school parking lot police (an old man of 80) had discovered a knife in the back of a pickup truck that Monday, my friend's truck. He was called to the office and promptly suspended without question. This one act showed me that zero tolerance is zero thought and has huge ramifications upon the psychology of the victim and all around them.

But back to the pants, what if your state decided they didn't like black cars anymore and decided to confiscate all black cars? Not too cool now is it? Banning a style is also absence of thought just because one person has some vendetta against it. I could go on forever about zero tolerance "laws", but that's another topic that I'm sure to divulge at every chance.

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