Steve Horner's Revenge, or the ascent of Roy Den Hollander

Looks like renegade party pooper Steve Horner may get the last laugh after all. After calling "dibs" on the ideal that "Ladies Night" at bars crushes his civil rights, a gaggle of "me too's" are popping up nation wide. Seeking to one up Mr Horner, who merely sued for the rights of all Colorado males, one Mr Roy Den Hollander feels that he needs to lead the charge for all American males and is taking his case to the Federal Court. He's a modern day Martin Luther King Jr. I'm sure that one day there will be schools, streets and holiday's in RDH's honor.

Says RDH, "I'm tired of having my rights violated and being treated as a second-class citizen." I suppose, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by their chest hair but by the amount of liquor they can drink for half price." would have been a bit much.

Seriously, shouldn't having your rights violated and being treated as a second-class citizen for something that 150 million American share, a hoo-hoo, affect more outrage than just one jack-ass? I honestly feel more like a second-class citizen because RDH is somehow my representative than his silly lawsuit. Can I sue him in Federal Court for making me and my whazzit look ridiculous (just to beat the wife to the punch, yes, I know I do a good enough job on my own)?

Another "man" who doesn't understand economics, George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf, says this is just the tip of the oppression iceberg. Seems Mr Banzhaf thinks the conspiracy of free choice spending extends to dry cleaners and hair-cuts. Just to help Mr Banzhaf out, no way no how will I spend what my wife spends on a hair-cut. I'm also in and out in 30 minutes, and have had the same basic hair cut since I retired my mullet in 1992. So a smart business owner maximizes what someone will pay, ladies will, and do, pay more, men, won't pay more, so they pay less. As far as clothes, I don't own nearly as many "dry clean only" clothes as my wife because I'm too lazy and don't care enough about them anyway. My local dry-cleaner would go broke waiting for me to bring my clothes in. His only chance is keep the prices down. In fact, I'm much more apt to by-pass a product that says "dry clean only" than to buy one. The clothing manufacturers know this too, and design around "dry clean only" products. There's nothing at all nefarious about any of these practices. In fact, if women wanted, they could easily band together and boycott until prices came down.

Bottom line? If ladies night was truly an oppressive, civil rights destroying, male bashing, submissive practice, guys wouldn't line up and frequent the bars that hold these events. The bar would suffer, and the bar owner would change the practice. Being a guy (I'm a life long member of the club), I'm fairly plugged into what bugs guys. Ladies night, I assure you, is not on the list. What does bug guys is little squirrelly cynics ruining a good thing and making us all look like idiots.

Whatever it Takes

This post is admittedly a bit unfair. I'm going to make the argument that I don't care a whit if some of these pedophiles had their civil rights violated during this investigation. This will of course put UBlo in the position of having to appear to defend pedophiles to support his fairly unyielding civil rights positions (something that he clearly would not be doing). I assure you, that is not my intent. And I want to say up front that I do respect to a large degree Mr. Blo's position on these matters. However, when it comes to eliminating this type of evil from the world I will continue to argue that I don't care if rules have to be bent to speed up the process of shutting down this kind of horror. It is tragic that these types of people exist and would be even more tragic if we were unable to eliminate them in the shortest time possible because we had to cross every T and dot every I.

I know that the theoretical argument is that we can have it both ways. Our law enforcement can nail the bad guys and the innocent can be uncompromised. I don't believe that. I don't believe that because people are categorically far less than perfect and the systems they create suffer the same fate. Therefore, investigations of this type of evil will always be less than precise. The price of an innocent person having their email or internet footprint compromised to save one of these children even one more hour of this type of abuse is an absolute bargain. I am grateful for our rights in this amazingly wonderful country, but I also understand that there are things much more important than my rights and I'm willing to lay them down when the circumstances call for it.