Reason.tv: Who Was The Nanny of The Month For September '09?

Whether you love something, hate it, or have never thought about it, chances are some nanny wants to ban it.

Pit bulls, horse carriages, fireplaces, chewing tobacco, chickens, shark tours, big snakes-they were all on someone's hit list in September 2009.

Same for smoking in parks, selling homemade pie at farmers markets, and getting tattoos. Busybodies took aim at all those things, but there's only one Nanny of the Month for September 2009…

The Alabama Supreme Court-for banning sex toys. More specifically, for upholding a state law that bans the selling of "any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs."

"Nanny of the Month" is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Director of Photography: Alex Manning, Associate Producers: Paul Detrick and Hawk Jensen, Camera: Zach Weissmueller, Production Assistant: Tannen Wels.

Approximately one minute. Go here for embed code and downloadable versions.

Comments

[sage]

Eh, too lazy to type my email address each time. Now my actual comment:

Hopefully you guys will do this every month. I like it.

[Squirrel]

The remember function is now enabled.

[Jeffersonian]

Unless the SCoA had a legal reason to strike down such a stupid law, they were right to uphold it. Just as the people of Alabama would be right to vote out of office any ignoramus that would support such a law, unenforcable as it is.

[Andrew S.]

Disagree. Nothing in the constitution would give the government the right to ban sex toys. So the Alabama Supreme Court should have overturned the law.

[TrickyVic]

Oh it's enforcable. They will just do it selectively.

You're right, if Alabama wants a stupid law like that on the books, and it's constitutional, they deserve said stupid law.

[Brian Courts]

Nonsense. Alabama can't "want" anything - it is a collection of very different individuals who want very different things. Alabama therefore can't "deserve" anything either. An individual in Alabama burdened by this stupid, religiously-motivated, over-reach into her personal life doesn't "deserve" this simply by virtue of her living in a state with too many backwards Christian fundamentalist wackos.

Oh, and where's the "preview" button??

[Urkobold™]

WHO IS THE NANNY OF THE MONTH? WHY, THIS NANNY, OF COURSE!

[John C. Randolph]

Urkobold is my hero, again.

-jcr

[Urkobold?]

WAS IST LOS?

[Mikey]

I predict incredibly high sales for back massagers in the great state of Alabama. Why continue with laws that are unenforceable? Who gets elected to do nothing?

[Alabama Supreme Court]

I saw some woman in the supermarket looking suggestively at a cucumber. We're going to have to do something about that.

[B]

And thanks to the American Pie, they'll also have to work on banning pies.

[Geena]

Alabamans' tax dollars at work (their state sales tax is EIGHT PERCENT, higher than the hoity-toitiest enclave here in Metro Atlanta).

[John in Nashville]

I have a client who should be happy with this ruling. He owns Expressway Books & Gifts in Elkton, Tennessee--six miles north of the Alabama border on I-65.

[B]

Alabama better ban back-massagers, they can accomplish the exact same thing.

[Adam]

Heck, it was probably the back-massager lobby who got the bill passed.