Bloombergitis Spreads to L.A.

For the last two years, Los Angeles has been welcoming a steady trickle of refugees from Mayor Bloomberg?s increasingly anti-fun Big Apple. But instead of cornering the market on free-living coastal types, the City of Angels seems hell-bent on topping even Iron Mike for regulations against sin. The latest: The L.A. City Council?s Public Safety Committee has produced an ordinance that bans lap-dancing, forbids patrons from getting within six feet of strippers (no more G-string tips for you, Courtney!), and requires the supervision of a manager or security guard at every interaction. Club owners violating the new regulations would face six months in jail and a $2,500 fine. The adult clubs say they?ll challenge the constitutionality of the ordinance, which has yet to be passed by the full Council or signed into law.

Comments

[Robert Nabors]

Damn puritanical bastards.

Why is it so utterly horrid that someone might enjoy themselves?

-Robert

[Todd Fletcher]

That reminds me of Mencken's definition of "puritan" -- The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

[Ira Weatheral]

If LA has a Committee of Public Safety then it's more akin to Paris than to NYC.

The main difference seems to be that they force you to LIVE there instead of killing you!

[Justin Slotman]

HEEEEYYY--we can smoke, we have the Stanley Cup, AND we can touch the pretty unclothed ladies in New Jersey! Awright! BABY WE WERE BORN TO RUN.....

[Anonymous]

"AND we can touch the pretty unclothed ladies in New Jersey!"

Yes, both of them.

[Brian]

Well...I hope everyone over in LA feels "safer" now.

[David 2]

Actually it wasn't Bloomberg that started the anti-fun trend in NYC.. that was the city's new patron "saint" and former mayor, Rudy "proud thug" Guiliani.

And the LA clubs had better be prepared to go to war (in purely legal terms mind you) over this proposal if they want to stay in business. They need to challenge every study, every report, every assertion made by the city, and make them look even more ficticious than Hillary Clinton's new book! They had better be prepared to publicly name names and list who on that committee is being bought and paid for by what moralist special interest group.

They need to treat this as a war, because in the eyes of the anti-freedom crowd, IT IS a war.

[Plutarck]

BP:

You mean a Red Light District? I think every place should have one. I have one in my apartment - it's called "my computer".

My city has one as well, and it's just a medium sized city.

[Anonymous]

Just more evidence that Left Wing Puritanism is just as despicable and insidious as its analogue on the Right!!

And, as for myself, a conservative of heterodox taste, one with strong libertarian leanings -- i.e. a libertarian who happens to think morality and happiness have an objective core {I know: an outright epistemological, phenomenological, ontological heresy to purist libertoids} I do feel that leftist puritanism IS more pernicious than the species of Christian right puritanism, the latter which of course is odious in it own right (that goes without saying). One huge reason being that Leftists, of whatever myriad or nuanced variety, are intensely political and politicized in a way most Christian rightists subtley are not. The latter are an entity come out of the woodwork, elicited by the excesses of a thirty-year Kultur Kampf, the lefty "long march" through the "legitimating" institutions of society (most prominently universities); most of the Christian Right are people who, at the end of the day, are more interested in matters private, this in contradistinction to the Left which avowedly conflates the distinction between public and private, i.e. State and civil society. This serves the left-liberal cause of Progressivism but is premised on a broadly understood doctrine of socialized rights -- a type of "rights" which point to group representation rather than representation of the individual; socialized rights in contradistinction to natural or individual rights, the latter which, according The Federalist and the Framers point toward limited government.

[Robert]

Oh, previous one was posted by moi.

[Robert]

And by the Christian Right being, at the end of the day, more interested in things private - I mean, naturally, things that constitute civil society (family, church, charitable orgs, private schooling etc.). In that sense, actually, the Christian Right has greater libertarian credentials than one would think.

[Ian]

Robert- you have successfully used language to obfuscate your point. Reminds me of an old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon.

[Ian]

addendum:
Calvin: I like to verb words.
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs...remember when 'access' was a thing? Now it's something you do. It got verbed. Verbing weirds language.
Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.

[Eric E. Coe]

Puritian - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

OK, so how about:

Leftist - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might make a profit.

Just for contrast.

[B.P.]

This is just great -- central big cities will, taking each other's cue one-by-one, drive all "vice" into outlying areas, thus erasing one of the reasons (excitement/enticement) that people travel to central cities in the first place. Per Justin's comment, soon every metro area will have at least one burb that acts as "New Jersey" -- a place where folks can relax, have a smoke, check out an unclothed breast, etc.

[Robert]

Ian -- give me a break; check out the time stamps on my post; it was late at night and I study political theory. An I do so into the wee hours of the night. After a while, it's inevitable that one ends up writing -- and even talking ! -- like one of these verbose clowns.

But thanks for the correction.

Hey, I put "legitimating" in quotes for a good reason, the word being a favorite among postmodernist jackasses.

[Anonymous]

I am totaly fucked now. Me and a bunch of other girls will now resort to prostitution thanx to this.

[carlos]

what is going to happened with the girls that work there are there going to have to look for a job where they make $7 bucks an hour

[Anonymous]

do people even realize that how so unimportant this issue is, who cares if dancers can't be touched groped or other things! Lord fobid they have to go out and get a real damn job, and people who go to these places might just have to go home to their wives and kids, boo hoo!! is it really the sadest thing in the world i don't think so....

[Minarich Christopher]

EMAIL: [e-mail]
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DATE: 01/26/2004 01:08:30
It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.