Now Everybody's Gonna Want One

I live in France and for months now, the government has used the issue of the wearing in public of burquas by a very small minority of moslem women to, change the subject and coddle the extreme right.

It is officially against the law to wear a burqa in public in France now and Britains new Conservative Governement is jumping on the band wagon.

The dialogue is reduced to the extreme positions of respect and out right banning. What ever happened to tolerance? The middle?

Let's face it, it has not been that long since we had this discussion about tattooing. It was a an anti social act. Psychiatrists wrote books about the pathology of tattoos. The very discussion of tattoos made them cool enough to the point that they are totally banal now. One in every 5 of us has a tattoo and the usual discussion is "Cool, who does your work? Geez, that must have cost...."

It's hard to believe that we are having this debate. Governments and legislatures shouldn't be telling us what wew can or cannot wear. We've got the right to wear exactly what the hell we want. I guess I draw the line at crotchless jeans out side of primary schools or exploding top hats with sparklers while you are at a gas station filling your 4x4.

Perhaps there are tattooed people who wear burqas. Who would ever know? Not that I could ever find anything good about wearing a burqa. Any belief system that insists that half the population go about constantly covered from head to toe in black cloth, whether out of modesty, humility, tradition or stealth has a massive flaw.

But, then, I also believe that it is ridiculous to believe in transubstantiation, considering the bible to be the literal word of god reduces that supposedly omnipotent being to a muddle headed maniac. The Hindu caste system and the Roman Catholic rules against contraception are evil enough to have been invented by Satan, who was invented by....

Well, there, Now if something happens to me, no one could ever guess who's killed me.

It's not bigoted to disagree with peoples choices as long as you are defending their right to make them. If people do things I don't agree with, altering their appearance in ways that I think look awful or silly, then I am allowed to say so. Which brings me back to tattoos.

Tattoos on most people are horrible and never come off. Walking around with a bad tattoo is like perpetually screaming, "I should never have done this!" at the top of your lungs.  It isw foolishness made permanent. Most people can extricate themselves from a bad marriage with less pain. The fashion for tattoos, this fad for the indelible, shows an outbreak of mass imprudence comparable with Easter Island at its giant head-carving  peak. Will it lead to thousands of years of collecticve regret?

But that's liberty for you: gladly or not, it's all about suffering fools.