Wasn't it Thomas Paine, issuing a fiery challenge to tyranny, who said, all fiery-like, "When 99 percent of the public disobey a law, then the law is wrong, not the public"? Actually, no, that was Las Vegan Mike Murphy, in a letter to the Review-Journal's Road Warrior, crabbing about Beltway speed limits. (I always get those two mixed up.) But in an era that greets almost any public outrage with an annoyed rolling of the eyes, Murphy's stirring call for legal relativism is sorta fiery, and certainly implies a challenge to tyranny, so I say we run with it. Stick it to The Man!
As you know, tyranny comes in forms other than wildly varying speed limits on partly completed freeways. Sometimes, it doesn't even happen on a road at all. Take Sloan Canyon, the petroglyph zone south of Henderson. There, the fascist jackboot of government conservation is coming down on beleagured off-roaders. It seems officials think it would be easier to conserve the canyon's 1,700 Indian carvings if crazy mofos on off-road vehicles didn't blast through the place. So they're likely to ban motor traffic. "It puts a bad taste in a lot of our mouths," a four-wheel enthusiast told the R-J. It's the old slippery-slope argument. Close off these 48,000 acres now, and next thing you know, the other 3 million acres around Southern Nevada mostly available to off-roaders get blocked off, and then the terrorists win.
Cabbies, on the other hand, have already won, and the victims of their tyrannical tip-accepting aren't happy. "It's like a form of extortion," fumed Jennifer Knight in the R-J. She's the spokeswoman for a band of resistance fighters battling the ancient practice, which the Legislature unwisely tried to curtail. If your business doesn't tip, she says, taxis won't bring you patrons. Responded one cabbie, "These people that don't want to participate, they're not being forced to. It's all business." Funny, that's what the British told Tom Paine as they squeezed him for the tea tax.
Elsewhere on the Oppressiveness of The Man front, I was shocked to read about a judge, apparently favoring tyranny over American freedom, who ruled a few days ago that the Clark County School District's school-uniform policy doesn't infringe on freedom of expression. "Students may continue to express themselves through other and traditional methods of communication throughout the school day," the judge wrote (quoting from the R-J). Now, as a guy who spent years wearing the same rigid outfit to school—jeans, afro and a crappy attitude—let me suggest that a federal judge probably isn't a man truly equipped to understand the micro-nuances of what can be communicated in the sag of one's Dickies, the peek of one's thong underwear over distressed jeans, the subtle social positioning of the right T-shirt slogan. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I should issue a fiery challenge to such sartorial tyranny, but I'll settle for an annoyed rolling of my eyes. Tyranny can wait. Law & Order is on.
Let's Do the Math! |
+1 Nevadans are definitely getting vehicle-registration rebates of $75-$275 apiece.
-1 But probably not until the fall. Sorry, inflateadate.com, you'll get your $$ then!
-3 Pro-life forces kill legislative measure that would have made pharmacists fill birth-control prescriptions they object to. What's next, AIDS drugs?
-1 Regents say Community College President underpaid at $190,000. And he can't supplement income by accepting kickbacks for sending patrons to strip clubs. At least he'll get state rebate!
Final Score
-4
Quote I Couldn't Fit in Elsewhere This Week |
"We've got to do a better job articulating what is and isn't student success."
Thursdays with Oscar |
We attend the mayor's weekly press conference so you don't have to
June 16, 2005
Main Themes: In search of lost time; many interviews; saving the best for the pigs.
Summary: "I lost a little bit of track about how I've communicated with you," the mayor said to the few reporters present, launching into a recap of many of the same activites he recapped last Thursday. (He's still worried about the lack of youth participation in Flag and Memorial days.) It's been a long week of waving the civic pompoms: He was interviewed by Reader's Digest, Vogue Hommes, Las Vegas Life and the Travel Channel. While dispensing all that quotage, he also attended a conference of mayors in Chicago, where the other mayors "grabbed about $50,000 worth of my little chips." (They can't be redeemed for cash or airtime.) Quizzed about the "cake fiasco"—in which the supposedly free Centennial cake cost $90,000—Goodman said it was covered by sponsorship money. "The pigs [farm animals that ate the leftover cake] got the best of it," he said. Don't they always.
Scott Dickensheets is a Weekly writer at large. Give him crap (or cake) at
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