Althouse: "Vietnam has suspended a much-criticised plan to ban very short, thin and flat-chested people from driving."

October 29, 2008

"Vietnam has suspended a much-criticised plan to ban very short, thin and flat-chested people from driving."

"The proposal worried many in this nation of slender people and [spurred] jokes about traffic police with tape measures enthusiastically flagging down female motorcyclists, and predictions of a run on padded bras."

So! Mockery works, even on communists.

6 comments:

AllenS said...: Padded bras could take over the function of bumpers. Good idea.; 10/29/08, 6:36 AM
KCFleming said...: In Iowa, if you see a car going down the road seemingly on its own with no driver visible, chances are there is a tiny old lady barely peering over the dashboard, but ya gotta look real close.

It's like the Rapture came.; 10/29/08, 6:44 AM
Mortimer Brezny said...: Danica Patrick is a cheater. I say this not to begrudge her success as a racecar driver, for whom, truly, envies a racecar driver save a less successful racecar driver? But she is lightweight, so much so that spotting her on the street might be occasion to notify the Audubon Society. It is rare these days and perhaps in any epoch, to fault a feminine beauty for her lightness of bones or sprightliness of step, but in racecar driving comparative advantage is oft derived from marginal increases in velocity. One way to increase velocity, keeping constant all other variables, is to decrease mass. The ideal driver, then, is an anorexic sparrow. How dare such a petite female be permitted, with her narrow hips and perfectly contoured waist, to zip ahead of all the top-heavy, lantern-jawed, lead-footed men? I raise this issue only because Danica Patrick rarely wins, and has been formally penalized for her less-mass advantage. One could conclude there is valid but unsound reason to fear the skinny automobilist.; 10/29/08, 6:47 AM
Ron said...: "Vietnamese nun in a padded bra" sounds like a Jeopardy category!; 10/29/08, 7:25 AM
Pastafarian said...: "So! Mockery works, even on communists."

Good to know; I'm looking for some coping-mechanisms to help me make it through the next 4 to 8 years.

Mortimer -- surely you jest, but you do know, don't you, that they add weight to Danica Patrick's car to make her weight, plus this dead weight, equal to that of male drivers, right?

Personally, I think that this is outrageous -- I don't see them making a tall basketball player play on his knees, or making a marathon runner who's lighter than the others carry some weights around their neck. I guess that they do this so that women and very small men don't come to dominate their sport, like they do horse racing, because smaller people don't track well with the auto racing fan demographic.; 10/29/08, 10:52 AM
Tibore said...: "Vietnam has suspended a much-criticised plan to ban very short, thin and flat-chested people from driving."

... which would leave tall, fat, overendowed people on the road. Sounds like they're trying to get more Americans driving! :D

(*Ducks*); 10/29/08, 11:39 AM