Hey, nanny nanny
Radley Balko has an article in Forbes about the nanny state. Good read:
Lawmakers are also prone to banning trends they don’t understand, or just find icky. Wyoming is debating a regulation that would prohibit facial jewelry in the food service industry, an apparent attempt to keep the alternative girl’s eyebrow ring from dropping into your macchiato, even though its backers couldn’t cite a single such incident. A Texas lawmaker has introduced a bill that would outlaw “sexually suggestive” dance moves in cheerleading routines. California bans tanning beds for kids under 14, citing studies linking tanning beds to skin cancer. No word on whether they’ll bar kids from lying in the sun, too. And the U.S. Supreme Court recently let stand an Alabama ban on sex toys.
April 27th, 2005 at 1:45 pm
Reminds me of a paragraph from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress where the protagonist comes to the realization that people never advocate banning things that they actually do. They only want to ban things that other people do that they themselves can’t imagine ever doing.
It’s legislation by busybody.
April 27th, 2005 at 5:13 pm
Some mayor in Italy wanted a law that would ban certain people from wearing revealing bathing suits. Of course the certain people were, shall we say “ugly” and those allowed to wear revealing bathing suits would be “hot”. An example that the nanny state can yield benefits to society.