Drop of a Hat (Or a Hoodie)

"Hoodie bans" are making headlines in Britain. A Kent mall that banned hooded tops and baseball caps (also, swearing, smoking and leafleting) has seen a jump in traffic. Tony Blair is on board. Why the anti-hood prejudice? Alan Cowell of The International Herald Tribune says hoods are "the tribal mask of an underclass," emblematic of "thuggery, hoodlumism and unbridled drunkeness" and "the icon of a failed youth" being blamed for everything short of losing the empire.

Mark Steyn has a different take--hood as protest against a surveillance society:

The British are the most videotaped people in the history of mankind, caught on camera by official surveillance devices as they go about every humdrum public manoeuvre….Perhaps teen clothing will undergo another evolution, and the youth of the nation will be hanging out dressed like John Simpson in that burqa he wore to liberate Kabul.

Whole thing here.