Only one thing as dumb as baggy pants

Make no mistake: If you're one of those people out there wearing jeans three sizes too big, letting them hang down halfway across your bottom, showing the whole world what underwear you're wearing each day ... you look like a complete idiot.

But that idiocy is only matched by city councilmen is places like Atlanta, Pine Bluff and Hot Springs, who have introduced city ordinances outlawing the so-called baggy jeans.

You may have read about the baggy jean bans. Atlanta was the first city widely publicized for its attempts to outlaw this fashion faux pas.

Apparently emboldened by the Atlanta initiative, a Pine Bluff, Ark., city alderman proposed a similar ban for his city. That measure was dropped when it was determined that there wasn't enough support on the city council. Threats of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union may have had something to do with that.

Most recently, Hot Springs joined the fray. Just this week, the news broke that a councilman in that Arkansas city is pushing for a baggy-pants ban.

Now, while I've visited Atlanta, Pine Bluff and Hot Springs, I admit I can't speak intelligently about the specific challenges and struggles each city is facing. But I can reasonably presume that in the grand scheme of things, baggy pants just aren't among the top municipal problems.

I mean, these communities can't be all that different than Blytheville. Here at home, I expect our city councilmen to busy themselves which such issues as crime prevention, parks development, street improvements and economic development. Issues like that are more than enough to keep them busy for the next several decades or so.

And if the day ever comes that saggy, baggy pants rank among the biggest problems in our community; well, that would be a pretty happy day.

In other words, any city councilman wasting his time on a baggy pants ban clearly has his priorities out-of-whack

And besides that, there's the simple fact that you just can't outlaw stupidity.

Suppose you get a baggy pants ban passed. Fine. And suppose the ban somehow survives the inevitable legal challenge brought forth by the ACLU. Congratulations. But do you really think that's going to stop young people from "expressing their individuality" by the way they look and dress?

Heck no!

The baggy pants will just be replaced by something else. Whether it's marking every inch of their body with tattoos, or piercing themselves into oblivion, or wearing baseball caps inside-out, upside-down and backwards, young people will always come up with a new fashion phase that, to those of us with better judgment, looks stupid.

And no ordinance passed by a city council is going to magically make young people stop doing stupid things.

And aside from all that, this is America. As we all learned in elementary school, America is a free country. And the nature of living in a free society is that sometimes some of our members will engage in stupid behavior. But that's their right. After all, as poet John Ciardi once said, "The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself."

And, really, that's all these idiots with their baggy pants are doing. They're making fools of themselves. They look stupid, and one day they'll probably realize that. And until then, the best thing for the rest of us to do is just shake our heads, wonder where their parents are, and maybe point and laugh.

There's no need for a law. City leaders — whether they're in Atlanta, or Hot Springs, or even Blytheville — surely have much more important matters they could be pursuing.