I’ll be the first to admit, in print for all the world to read, I think pants that hang down half-mast look sloppy. I’ll say the look looks bad. I admit when I see younger-than-I folks with their pants down, showing their undies and/or butt cheeks and/or specially placed tattoos, I cringe and think, ‘What, are they stupid? Pull them pants up.?
I know what my dad would have done if I came home looking like that — an hour lecture on the virtues of self-respect and on how first impressions often stick.
I can honestly say I hate that wardrobe style. Further, if anybody came to a job interview with that look, I would not hire them — even if they were the best candidate.
I never said I was cool, hip or with it. Were I not so rotund, I’d call myself square.
All that said, I am amazed at the politicians in Virginia. Last week, one of their two legislative bodies actually drafted a bill that would fine folks fifty bucks for being caught with gravity defying pants. I thought this was still America, home of the brave and land of the free. Where if you don’t mind looking like a bum, you can.
I mention this, because it’s alarming to see where we are headed, in regards to freedom, as a nation.
Take for example this long-haired, leftist, blow-hard out Colorado way. Ward Churchill got my blood churning recently when news got around about what he wrote about victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This pointy-headed, America-hating, university professor compared the victims to Nazis — calling them ‘little Eichmans,? referring to the Nazi official who helped oversee the Holocaust.
While I may take offense to what he said, thus coming to the conclusion he’s a big fat jerk, I don’t believe he should be shut up (though he might want to shut up). There’s a big effort afloat out west to can Ward-o. Why? He’s an American and he has the right to speak his mind. It is his perogative.
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Over in Okemos, near the state capitol of Lansing, a company by the name of Weyco Inc. has told its employees they can’t smoke. They can’t smoke at work or during work. They can’t smoke in their cars going home from work. They can’t smoke in their garages or basements. They cannot smoke, ever. To do so is to be axed from the company payroll.
The company is just trying to save money on health care insurance.
Yikes! Does the same standard apply to employees who take risky (yet legal) chances by eating fatty fast foods, engage in ‘un-safe? sex or riding a motorcycle without a helmet? And I wonder, does it apply to the top of the corporate ladder as well as those down a few rungs?
Ain’t it great to be living, working and being in America?
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Speaking of living in America, quick: What is the cornerstone of American life?
If you answered anything other than the First Amendment to the Constitution, I think it is time you went back and hit the history books.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Needless to say, it’s a way of life in these parts. That’s why I was disheartened to learn more than one in three American high school students said the First Amendment went ‘too far? in the rights it guarantees.
This survey of over 112,000 students was conducted with a $1 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation last year.
More frightening was that 36 percent of the kiddies believed that the government should approve newspaper stories before being released to the public.
WHAT!?????
What is being taught these days? Better yet, what is not being taught? How much time is spent on the Constitution and the unique grandness of the document?
I don’t know. It seems the more enlightened we become the more intolerant we become. If America is to fulfill its destiny, there has to be room for those long-haired, droopy-drawered, smoking loudmouths as well as the flabby squares like me.
Comments to that radical, Mr. Don Rush, can be e-mailed to: dontrushmedon@charter.net