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Middle America pulls up sagging pants menace, belts repeat offenders

Low-slung kecks 'totally offensive', thunders Wisconsin politico

It's evident that despite the best attempts of Middle America to crack down on sagging pants - da yoof's low-slung kecks look that has right-minded citizens firing up the Twat-O-Tron - the US way of life continues to be menaced by trousers flying at half mast.

Back in 2007, the Louisiana town of Delcambre took up cudgels against the outrage when it declared the inadequately hitched would face fines or possibly jail for "indecent exposure".

In 2010, a Memphis man popped a cap in the ass of a passing youth whose hip dress sense offended his fashion sensibilities, while Fort Worth's Transportation Authority showed a tad more restraint in 2011 when it simply banned low riders from boarding its buses.

A couple of years back, a University of New Mexico football player found himself on the wrong end of a cuffing when he declined to pull up his trousers after boarding a US Airways flight with pants "so low that his genitals were almost showing".

Now, this very week, Green Bay alderman Dave Boyce has proposed a ban on sagging pants on the grounds they make the Wisconsin city "look bad". He thundered: "There is a sense of outrage, and it's just demeaning to see people walking around like that. It's offensive. It's totally offensive."

Unfortunately for boiling-blood Boyce, Green Bay's legal operatives have warned him the ban "might be a hard ordinance to enforce". Joe Public agrees, and one Virginia Beaton, "visiting with her husband Norm, from Illinois" told a FOX 11 reporter: "I can understand it like in a restaurant or something like that. But people walking around, they have a right to wear what they want. What can you do?"

Boyce also faces objections that his proposal is racially motivated - a charge once levelled at Delcambre mayor Carol Broussard in 2007. But he dismissed that claim, insisting: "White people wear sagging pants, too."

Boyce agrees, adding: "When you go on Google, and you see pictures of Justin Bieber, everybody likes to sport these things with their belt below their groin."

Whether the good burghers of Green Bay are spared the sight of half-masters remains to be seen, but FOX 11 notes they're no longer welcome in the the New Jersey beach town of Wildwood, which earlier this month joined the crusade and outlawed saggies, with fines starting at $25 and rising "as high as $200 for repeat offenders". ®

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