SCOTUS Rules on Hoodies

This week's blog got sidelined by the Supreme Court decision to  allow a trademark for the clothing brand that starts with an F (and ends with a t, and you know what it sounds like.)

What struck me first about it was how far we've come, since the 1950s, to being stunningly and spectacularly superficial. I've written about this before, but in 1957 the obscenity trial for Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl at least put a POET on trial, not a trademark. And I can't help but wonder how we got from words to threads, and why we even consider the trademark for said threads a story.

Not that I have anything against those hoodies and T-shirts or the company making them. I'm glad for the free-speech ruling and all that. I just want a more compelling case to be decided at the highest level of justice. Silly me.

I also wish the Supreme Court gave the same kind of attention to matters like gerrymandering, which is robbing whole communities of the right to vote IN their communities by making up fake boundaries. In case you don't know much about it, gerrymandering is what happens when a political group tries to change a voting district so the result will help them win.

The practice basically robs all of us of having our votes counted the way they should be counted. That's why the Supreme Court was asked to rule on it. While clothing named F-T seemed to get judges' undies in a bundle, so to speak, the majority at SCOTUS decided to say gerrymandering was A-OK.

At the same time, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the minority of three judges in the court, by saying, 

Of all the times to abandon the Court's duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government.

But, the majority ruled, and in this case, ruled against us. While no one can know what they might have done in an obscenity trial like Ginsberg's, we know how they feel about T-shirts and hoodies. And about leaving the rest of us, well. F-CT.

Supreme Courthouse Photo:  John Brighenti