Further Moves Toward Governmental Control

Positively flushed from his success at banning large-capacity carbonated beverages from fast-food places and convenience stores, the Mayor of New York launched a spate of new regulations over the lives of the helpless and, by now, totally cowed New Yorkers.

The sale of cigarettes to persons under 21 was banned.  Feeling good about that, they lifted the age of legal smokes to 25.

The next measure was in response to the seeming manic pace of the citizens, which was deemed to be bad.  Henceforth, coffee was to be sold only in the "tall" size: "Grande-" and "venti-sized" coffee was banned.  This led to an eleven o'clock slowdown by taxicabs and bicycle messengers.   Pick-me-up tall coffees in early afternoon became the norm. 

Then mustard in public places was banned.  No longer could you get your hot dog with mustard.  Somehow, ranch dressing took the edge off this popular street food.  But this was part of the fiendish plot to make New Yorkers eat more healthy by schmear regulation.

New York, as the fine arts capital of the United States, needed to protect its reputation by reducing esthetic blight.  While Times Square, the obvious culprit was overlooked, there were laws pased against public display of garden gnomes and plastic flamingoes.  Hizzonor the Mayor was quoted, "We don't want our fine city to begin looking like Atlanta, do we?"

While these impositions were accepted in good grace and good faith, eventually the Mayor went too far.  It dawned upon him that high-heeled shoes were a safety habit.  Accordingly, an ordinance was drafted "prohibiting the wearing of shoes with heels more than two inches of length."  Actually, he was able to come up with statistics which indicated that high heel-wearing women were more likely to have sprains, fractures, or bruising from falling than were the sensible shoe-wearing set. 

Naturally, this new ordinance raised a lot of mention in the news.

The title of the New York Post's article read, "Mayor Seeks to Ban Fuck-Me Shoes!!!"  [Worth three exclaimation points!]  They were against it.

The more prim New York Times led with "Mayor Would Prohibit Wearing of 'I Desire Intercourse' Shoes.'"  The Times saw it as a health and birth-control initiative. and applauded it.

The Boston Globe wrote that New Yorkers were obsessed with sex, as usual.

And Jay Leno and Dave Letterman had a field day.  But orthopedists and obstreticians feared a drop-off in business.

Rush Limbaugh rushed to assert that this was un-American: A free-born American should wear as slutty footwear as she pleases.

Mainline churches kept silent; hoping that this would go away, and figuring that anything they said would backfire on them.  Sometimes silence is golden.

But the purveyors of Fashion Week, being ever forward-looking, conceived of emphasizing walking shoes as the new style in sophisticated ladies' footwear.