Written By : John Hawkins

Should high school kids be walking around with their underwear showing and their pants sagging? No, of course not. It makes them look like trash or idiots, or more accurately, idiotic trash.

That being said, why is that the government’s business?

Seems the best way to sell legislation these days is that it’ll be good for the economy. That’s how Rep. Hazelle Rogers (D-Lauderhill) pitched her so-called “sagging pants” bill to members of the House’s K-20 education innovation subcommittee today.

“This pro-family, pro-education, pro-jobs bill provides each school district … adopt a student dress code of conduct, a policy that explains to each student their responsibility,” she said. “This would make for a better school district and more productive students.”

The bill passed the subcommittee unanimously.

Rogers’ bill doesn’t actually use the words “sagging pants.” But it requires school districts adopt a dress code that prohibits students from “wearing clothing that exposes underwear or body parts in an indecent or vulgar manner.” Penalties include verbal warning and a call to parents for the first offense; ineligibility for extracurricular activities for up to five days on the second offense and in-school suspension on the third offense.

House staffers did, however, provide a brief history of sagging pants in a bill analysis: “Although no rigidly academic analysis of the history of ‘sagging’ has yet been conducted, it is commonly thought that ‘sagging’ originated in prisons where belts are not issued because they may be used to commit suicide or used as weapons. The lack of belts combined with loose, ill-fitting pants result in pants falling below the waist.

Similar legislation went nowhere last year. A Senate bill with the same language was scheduled to make its last committee stop today. The NAACP Florida State Conference released a statement today calling the Senate bill a waste of time that could have a negative impact on young black males. Rogers and the sponsor of the Senate bill, Sen. Gary Siplin (D-Orlando), are both black.

…One committee member, Rep. Kathleen Passidomo (R-Naples) said she’d read recently a horrible story out of Texas about the rape of a young girl.

“There was an article about an 11 year old girl who was gangraped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed like a 21-year-old prostitute,” she said. “And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn’t happen to our students.”

No one commented on that line of reasoning.

What’s stupider? Kids wearing saggy pants or the comments from that article? Not only is the whole idea of the the government getting involved with school dress codes perfectly ridiculous, the NAACP actually managed to up-the-anti on the stupid. While they’re right that it’s a waste of time, they’re seriously saying that this could be harmful to young black males? If they were concerned about what’s good for young black males, they’d issue a press release telling them to pull their d@mn pants up so they wouldn’t look like jackasses — although in all fairness, I’ve seen plenty of white kids sporting that look, too. Then to top this entire moron festival off, we have Kathleen Passidomo basically blaming the 11 year old victim of a gang rape because she thinks she dressed too trashy. Wow. Just wow.

If you’ve ever wondered why so many Americans have tuned out politics and turned on American Idol instead, this sort mindless inanity going on in government definitely plays a role in it.

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