New Fashions for Men

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Al Franken, Bill Cosby, Charlie Rose, George H.W. Bush, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., morons, Roy Moore, sexual assault, sexual harassment

(Author’s note: This piece would not have been possible without the kind assistance of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore, Louis C.K., President George H.W. Bush, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Kevin Spacey, and hundreds, possibly tens of thousands, of others.  Thank you for your service.)

Those few American males still presumed innocent of peeping, ogling, leering, drooling, touching, pawing, grabbing, groping, are seeking strategies and concrete measures that would keep them on the right side of public opinion and the law, if not simple human decency.

Providentially, a savvy fashion industry has answered the call.

Avoidance:

Versace’s Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Day Suit: You, too, can control the urge with this jolly all-in-one outfit of oversized shoes, frilled collar, red nose, and orange hair that will leave them laughing, then (laughing) leaving. The response will shrivel your libido and dampen any suspicion you’ve got a gun in your pocket (though the baggy pants will hide it if you have).

Revlon’s Blonde Pouffe Comb-Over: A different approach that recognizes there’s no stopping you if you’re utterly determined, but realizes you can’t grab what’s not there. They’ll see your mane at a hundred yards and flee like terrified antelopes.

Prevention:

Levis’ Button-Fly Jeans: There’s a touch of nostalgia, and a measure of modern necessity, to these retro pants. Laboratory-tested to be four times slower-to-open than your modern zipper, it gives her a fighting chance.

Jockey’s Modesty Belt: Inspired by the Middle Ages, this durable under-garment comes with lock and key. Keep the key secure at home. Do not carry it with you in the vain hope that the next chick will make it consensual by unlocking you. If she tosses it in the gutter, you’re screwed. Comes in gray and grey.

Calvin Klein’s Straight-Guy Jacket: Designed for the man with hands that love to roam, this exciting new garment features tie-in-the-front sleeves. Gives you that confident, svelte look, assuring that nothing will flap or dangle, including your arms.

Escape:

J. Peterman’s Rogue’s Running Shoe: Times Square … High Noon … In Flagrante Delicto. Your hand … still hot from flesh briefly encountered through a thin layer of dappled tights. Your mind … racing and eager for one more touch, but realizing that, in a few short moments, blue uniforms, now made of ultra-lightweight synthetic fabric with nano moisture wicking and anti-microbial capabilities (also available in women’s sizes), will be on your case. Your feet … ready for a speedy getaway, thanks to our new ultra-road-gripping technology and your foresight in purchasing these featherweight speed demons. Your future … unlimited.

Tommy Hilfiger’s Invisibility Cape: If you believe that waving your cute little thingie will turn her on, then this cape is for you. Comes in every conceivable shade of no color at all.

When All Else Has Failed:

Hugo Boss’s All-Purpose Jump-Suit: What was once available only in stripes now comes in a range of colors, from electric orange to cool green. Whether it’s trial or appeal; rock-breaking or license-plate-making; lawyer interviews or conjugal visits; gang fights in the yard or legal research in the library, these practical, comfortable outfits are good for life.

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The Lost Amendment

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Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, Constitutional Convention, Constitutional rights, guns, James Madison, repeal, Second Amendment, smoking, the right to smoke

As we debate gun rights, the absence of any reference to the original intent of the Second Amendment — the right to smoke — is understandable, but still noteworthy.

It started with Ben Franklin and James Madison. Franklin was addicted to his pipe and smoked incessantly during Constitutional debate and drafting sessions. Delegates complained that the pall of smoke made it impossible to concentrate. Franklin countered that the same would be true of him if he could not smoke.

But Franklin saw he was outnumbered and, ever the realist, recognized that the complainants would have as much right to be free of smoke as he had to smoke unless he could enshrine in law his right to smoke.

Madison, too, loved to smoke. He normally refrained from lighting up during formal sessions, but he kept his cigars in his breast pocket, at the ready.

Madison realized that, if he didn’t support Franklin, the Virginia tobacco lobby would crucify him. And he became convinced that, with the pressure of these sessions building, he too might need the protection of a right to pull out a cigar and light up (the first known articulation of the principle of concealed carry).

Once an acceptable draft of the First Amendment was taken care of, Franklin and Madison turned to an initial version of the Second Amendment:

A well-regulated public domain, being necessary to the full enjoyment of life in a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear smoking devices, shall not be infringed.

Their effort, however, drew substantial criticism:

Abraham Baldwin (Georgia): In the preamble, the reference to “a well-regulated public domain,” while seeming to protect a right, actually puts in government hands the legal authority to regulate that right. This would allow the government to determine the manner, and even the location, in which smoking implements are stored, distributed, and utilized. Such a “right” is no right at all. Moreover, if the right does not apply to the private domain, it would seem that the government might go so far as to ban smoking devices therein. Better that the Constitution should be mute on the issue.

Alexander Hamilton (New York): A so-called right to “keep” speaks only of “possessing,” and a right to “bear,” only of “carrying.” We all know that, as would be his right, Mr. Madison “possesses” cigars, which he “carries” in his breast pocket. But such carriage and possession are of no use to him if his right to “use” them is not also guaranteed.

Gouverneur Morris (Pennsylvania): This amendment, as worded, is dangerously vague. It leaves open two related possibilities: (1) that the right, which applies to “smoking devices,” of which the pipe and cigar are our only current examples, might also apply to devices, developed in the future, whose insalubrious effects we cannot foresee; (2) that future jurists might strictly construe our intent as applying only to the two smoking devices we know, in which case, the right would not attach to new devices which, nonetheless, might have had beneficial effects. All told, we would be better off focusing our efforts on a matter — guns, for example — about which there is no ambiguity.

These views carried the day, and the delegates turned their attention elsewhere.

While we cannot know for certain what results a Second Amendment right to smoke would have produced, we can draw on what has happened in the absence of such a right, and make some reasonable guesses:

Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, more Americans, whose right was protected from infringement, might have suffered and died from pulmonary or cardiac diseases, or lung cancer.

An economy that might, correspondingly, have staggered under increasing health-care costs and declining worker productivity.

A pro-smoking political force, made up of a powerful tobacco industry and a legion of die-hard tobacco addicts, that might have made it impossible to repeal so destructive an amendment.