I was talking with my friend Lance Mannion on Friday morning. We were having our respective cuppa. Columbian Supremo for me, something decaffienated for Mannion, as he’s working on his blood pressure. Me? I drink coffee until I feel suffiently paranoid to face the day. (A phrase from my friend G.W. in Iowa City.) I was sipping Supremo when Lance said something about a GOP legislator in Montana who recently proposed a ban on wearing yoga pants in public.
As Jenny Kuttner writes at Salon:
We live in a world full of problems. Thankfully, we also live in a world of problem-solvers, such as one Rep. David Moore of Montana. The Republican legislator recently proposed an innovative response to a tricky situation his town found itself in last summer: A group of naked cyclists biked right on through Missoula in August, and they couldn’t be stopped for fear of violating free speech rights. So, to get back at ‘em, Moore would like to ban yoga pants in public.
Ah stretchy schandenfreude! Rep. Moore of Montana so hates naked bicyclists he decided to issue an edict about yoga pants—a “through the looking glass” topsy turvy Feudian “reaction formation” in which one unregulated hostility becomes another.
Lance and I couldn’t figure out why any American legislator would want to ban clothing. We don’t ban guns; we don’t ban flag burning; we don’t ban Nazis from marching in the streets; we don’t ban warrantless spying on innocent people; we don’t ban toxic chemical dumping in hydraulic fracturing; its a long list—but for Rep. Moore, in an era of climate disasters, terrorism, police brutality, and Charlie Hebdo, yoga pants are “it”—and worthy of a chronique scandaleuse.
“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
Yes, Mr. Paine. Apparently the American Revolution was fought to install a tyranny of Puritan taste.
Ah, Dear Mr. Paine:
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. ”
Excerpt From: Thomas Paine. “The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete.” iBooks.
I suspect, being spiritual and all, yoga pants are highly esteemed in Heaven. So should it be in our democracy.
Planet of the Blind 