OBSERVATION: I can't bare it any longer

Someone recently noted that I seem to be locked in on the Obama/Clinton race for the White House. Okay. I will talk about something that has been bothering me for a long time.
I am not sure what it is about the radical left that equates nudity with social conscience. I am talking about striping down to one’s birthday suit to advance a cause. Seems like a lot of them advance thier issues with their tissues.

Certainly the most prolific proponent of genital activism (<-- I think I just coined a new term) is the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). It would appear to me that they view their own au naturale presence as some sort of solidarity to the unclothed fauna of the world. (Except the couple in the below photo, who seem to sieze other advantage). PETA even gets publicity desperate has-been movie stars to pose naked on their way to the taping of their latest age-reducing skin cream informercials.

However, PETA people are not alone in equating nudity with protest – and it is way not a Millennium phenomenon. I recall my 1960s days as a resident of Washington, D.C., when hundreds of thousands or war protesters descended on the Capital City. One of the delights of my youth was to observe bare breasted women walking down the street, and completely nude demonstrators splashing in the public fountains.

Wars seems to have an unusually strong appeal for public strippers. I guess if your slogan is “make love, not war,” you have to always be ready to engage. I assume this because some of those 1960s radicals did engage in intercourse on the concourse – demonstrating that their iconic slogan was not empty rhetoric.

I have the impression that those youthful exhibitionists are the very same people who have barely protested Vietnam and Iraq. I say this because the nude bodies on the front line of anti-war activism today are not the svelte sexy figures I recall from those “days of rage.” They are decidedly more mature (being polite here) and far less worthy of admiration. In fact, it has come to the point that it is almost impossible to read the painted slogans on the sagging and wrinkled skin. (Yes! Yes! For my graphic, I purposely chose svelte over saggy).

Nudes against nukes take the issue beyond any specific war. I am not sure what the symbolism might be. Are we to look forward to a world that is nuclear free, clothes optional? Annihilation and Armageddon are not the only reasons to prance around with bouncing breasts and swinging johnsons. Opposition to everything from oil drilling to the 2004 presidential election seems to result in an ocassional “show” of solidarity.

Once a year, in most cities, the more colorful fringe of the gay community takes “pride” in parading through the streets in various stages of undress (and occasionally offering street a theater versions of gay pornography) in demands for AIDS funding and civil equality (inadvertently proving that all men are definitely NOT created equal). I am never sure if they are exposing themselves to expose us to gay rights, or is it just public orgy?

Nudies have protested animal mistreatment, war, poverty, racism, nuclear proliferation, civil rights and immigration. Maybe that’s how these things happen. You read about the Pope wearing ermine and you are overcome with an obsessive desire to strip off you clothing in public in defense of the poor animal that gave up his life for the pontiff.

Or course, we can always mount (no pun intended) a protest against such bald-faced (and everything else) civic disobedience. But, what is the protocol of demonstrating against naked demonstrating? In our own counter protest, do we remain clothed? Or is it better to take up the tactic, thus giving evidence of its impropriety? I am sure my own naked appearance on the front line would provide significant incentive to abandon the custom.

I have a theory that all this started when an invitation was issued for a big PUBLIC protest, and a typo resulted in the call for a big PUBIC protest. This is only my threory, but how else can you explain a bunch of people shedding graments as a means of saving the whales.

So I ask … how long are we to bear the bare?

FOOTNOTE: Frankly, I don't really care much if folks want to strip in public, but I do wish the liberal activists would find sexier people. Let's have a rule, like, no naked protesting by people whose relevant numbers exceed 40 and 250.

FOOTNOTE 2: I was told that a bit of nudity would help build readership. I was pondering a photo of myself naked, but decided against. ……………….. Your welcome.