Boston Mayor Thomas M Menino has declared war on t-shirts. Specifically, he's all done with tolerating shirts that say "Stop Snitchin'." They are popular now amongst those suspected of constituting the criminal element in town.
Mayor Menino has announced that he's sending city Inspectional Services Division officials to confiscate such apparel. “We are going into every retail store that sells the shirts and remove them" says Mayor Menino, with of course no attempt at any pretense of a legal justification for the obvious violations of the US Constitution. "It's wrong" seems to be all the justification he feels a need for.
Yet if you burned a copy of the First Amendment onto a 2x4 and then smacked Mayor Dumbass in the head with it, YOU would be considered the bad guy. Not to belabor the obvious, ACLU types are already all over this. Insert boilerplate about countering bad speech with better speech, etc.
Critics make the argument that these shirts are intended to intimidate witnesses to crimes. Some versions of the shirt show a "Stop Snitchin'" sign riddled with bullets.
Don't care. That's their best argument for this, but it's still obviously stupid. You can't ban the t-shirts and steal people's property. If an individual is specifically threatening a particular witness, THAT is already against the law. But this is still America, and you can't do this. Any mayor so disrespectful of the US Constitution as to talk like this has no business being in office, and needs to be rode out of town on a rail.
They've had quite a wave of crime going in Boston, with five men shot dead this week. Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley says “We are going to come down very, very hard on people who are carrying guns or committing violence."
Fine. People who are actually committing violent crimes need knocked down. Perhaps they should be directing their resources towards getting actual criminals, rather than screwing with damned t-shirts.
Do feel free to jump on that Amazon link, and buy yourself one of these bad boys. They're now officially cool. They're banned in Boston.
Article comments
1 - gypsyman
You are kidding aren't you? Nobody can be that stupid as to actally think that a t-shirt will affect anyones williness to be a witness to a crime. Oh lord how much more abuse of freedoms do politicians think that people are going to take.
Didn't America have a revolution about this a while back? If memory strikes me Boston was one of the hot spots then too... T shirt party anyone
gypsyman
2 - Al Barger
No shit, Gypsyman. I mean, damn, but I've had that Schoolhouse Rock song run so far up in me it ain't funny, "And the shot heard round the world was the start of the Revolution..."
Plus, the prosecutor seems to want to persecute people simply for carrying guns, if I'm reading him right. Of course the hoodlums are carrying guns no matter what the law says, but this might discourage law abiding citizens from packing.
A modest scattering of armed peaceful citizens amongst the populace would probably deter a fair amount of nonsense. A few normal citizens discreetly packing heat would likely do more to cut down the crime rate than, uh, confiscating some damned t-shirts.
Besides being reflexively authoritarian, this mayor sounds like a real window licker.
3 - The Fifth Dentist
Good article. My favorite line is:
"Yet if you burned a copy of the First Amendment onto a 2x4 and then smacked Mayor Dumbass in the head with it, YOU would be considered the bad guy."
For some reason it reminds me of when Montgomery Burns said:
"This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you."
4 - Al Barger
5D, it's entirely likely that I had Monty Burns rattling around my brain when I came up with that. I'm particularly big on that episode you cite with Burns running for governor, so yeah that very quote might have been bubbling around my psyche.
5 - Victor Plenty
Dude, that joke is a Jungian archetype of humor or something. It's all over the place. The writers for The Simpsons certainly didn't invent it.
6 - Stop Menino
Well, those who live in Boston could show their support for the American Spirit, while showing their contempt for Mr. Menino, by getting a few of the "Stop Menino" buttons which are available at Cafe Press
Comic and Tragic