Pink Alert 0
A couple of years ago, I was handing out literature for a city council candidate at a local trade show. One of the booths belonged to an organization dedicated to breast cancer research.
I chatted for a bit with the woman staffing it; I recall remarking that “when we are were young, you couldn’t even say ‘breast’ in polite conversation” unless you were talking about fried chicken, to which she agreed, we both being of an age. Heck, back in the olden days, when I was a young ‘un, “bosom” was borderline permissible and “ba-ZOOMS” was the height of risque humor, unless you were discussing a sewing pattern, yet the measurements of the new Miss America were published in the newspaper every year. I won’t mention the Sears catalog . . . .
I thought that silliness to be waning.
Then, again . . .
The (Easton) Express-Times says the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Philadelphia heard opening statements Tuesday in the case, in which two Easton Area Middle School students say their freedom of speech rights were violated when they were suspended for wearing the bracelets in October 2010.
The district is appealing a federal judge’s ruling that the district cannot ban the rubber jewelry because it is not lewd, vulgar or distracting to the school day.
(snip)
“Everybody understands this is about breast cancer,” argued ACLU attorney Mary Catherine Roper. “There is nothing sexual about breast cancer.”
But district solicitor John Freund called the bracelets “cause-based marketing energized by sexual double-entendres.” A ruling in favor of them, he argued, could open the floodgates to similar marketing campaigns for testicular cancer and prostate cancer containing a vulgar reference to the male anatomy.
Although I do tend to share the disdain for “cause-based marketing,” in which marketing outshines the cause, as for the rest, well, pretending something ain’t there don’t make it go away, but it does display your creepy hang-ups to the rest of the world.
