I wish I could place a 911 call to Saudi Arabia, directly to the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Members of this unapologetically strict group regularly patrol the streets of that nation’s cities, enforcing rigid dress and behavioral codes. They have nearly unlimited power to arrest, detain, interrogate and even punish suspected offenders. Prudes and proud of it, these men mean business.
Showing cleavage? Drunk in public? You’re in a world of hurt. Prepare to be flogged.
Now, why would I want foreign virtue police running lights and sirens to our shores? Because I am under siege and in need of backup. Some examples:
Last summer, all summer long, up and down my street late at night drove the boom cars. With supersized subwoofers thumping and bumping, rattling windows and knocking dishes off shelves, they transformed my peaceful neighborhood into the epicenter of a quake registering 8.0 on the Richter scale. Best I could tell, the “music” blaring from these mobile stereos consisted largely of chanted profanities in praise of gang-banging and cop-killing.
As I was strolling through Washington Park recently, enjoying the glorious weather, approaching me on my left was a young female jogger (aka near-naked wiggler-jiggler). As she passed by me, she turned her head and spat, narrowly missing my shoe. I had the temerity to give her a disgusted look. She apparently took this as a direct challenge to her First Amendment rights, called me a vile name and trotted off.
Last week I was crossing Colfax by the courthouse, in the crosswalk, with the “walk” light. A man making a right turn on red nearly ran me down. I expected, if not an outright apology, at least a glimmer of contrition, some microscopic acknowledgment of wrongdoing. Instead, he called me a vile name, gunned his engine and sped off.
Forget the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse. I vote we declare ladies and gentlemen an endangered species. Every day the evidence mounts: polite, considerate and classy native flora and fauna are being inexorably overrun by noxious invaders (scientific name: malus vulgare). I’m talking about the gross and stupid, coarse and crude, aggressively rude, right-in-your-face crowd. You’ve seen them in LoDo at let-out, drunk and screaming, cursing and brawling, vomiting on sidewalks, urinating in alleys. You’ve heard them on the shuttle bus, loudly regaling one another with lurid details of their latest amorous exploits. And you, of course, are not allowed to object to their nastiness.
Even the gentlest rebuke, the mildest criticism, elicits from them a torrent of obscenities, raised middle fingers, sometimes even physical assault on your person.
Make no mistake, jackbooted jerks are everywhere on the march, trampling graciousness and courtesy into the mud. Their coup de grace? The demand that we in the white hats forgo all remaining manners and morals, join ranks with their anything-goes standing army and goosestep to its cadences: loosen up, lighten up, get a life, get over yourself.
My response? No thank you. I choose to stand and fight.
You want to cruise down my street blasting Ludacris at 3 a.m.? Fine. Here’s a little Lawrence Welk right back at you. You want to chug nine beers and barf down my back at the ballgame? Say hello to 50,000 volts of electricity from my little friend the Taser. You won’t see a white flag from me.
I realize I can’t totally defend against the blitzkrieg of modern-day slob culture. But I can join with like-minded others in demanding baseline standards for public behavior. Leaving public spaces inviolate is not a new idea. Consider Mrs. Patrick Campbell, 19th century British actress, who said, “Does it really matter what these people do, so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses?” If Mrs. Patrick Campbell could magically time-travel to present day Saturday night LoDo, what would she say?
Please stop, people. The horses are terrified.
Teresa Keegan (tkeegan@ecentral.com) of Denver is a court clerk.
