Apparently, baring one's breasts in public is now considered political wangling - and wangling used to be such a personal, enjoyable experience.

Public nudity is only considered lewd and punishable by law if it is not performed whilst leaning on the First Amendment, which apparently protects your nakedness if you're "free speeching." Truth be told, loopholes in the Constitution which would create juvenile double-standards should be closely examined and reformulated to begin with. But that's for another bare-assed day - right now we face the chunky, chromosomally-challenged females (and emasculated males) of the movement "Breasts Not Bombs" (aka Dicks Not Death - you think I'm joking?), a group led by Sherry Glaser, a Mendocino woman who seems to be as intelligent and lucid as most American citizens whose awareness pierces the veil of Bush administration duplicity, yet whose body seems to be in the right place at her wrong time.

When alerted to this faction, fingers flew over internet keys in a veritable frenzy of anticipation, to view these politically-charged mammii in their unnatural environment.

And I looked. A long, hard, roundish look. After dry-retching only minimally at the disable-bodied, matron-plump examples of Friar-Tuckdom picketing unsuspecting Berkeley streets in dire exhibitionistic fervor, it occurred to me that these women (though their hearts may be in the right place - buried securely under Stay-Puft marshmallow mounds of mammary fat) had somehow skewed their original intent by making themselves incumbent in delivering their message.

Their objectives of empowering women, honoring mothers, and displaying their accountably misshapen forms, clashes with their goals of ending war in Iraq and making America aware of all those government duplicities which America is pretty much aware of anyway. Picketing the streets of Union Square in San Francisco, The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa and even the Gates of the White House, Glaser proclaims, "We are not concerned with your judgment of our breasts or underarm hair. We have got your attention and we will speak about the indecencies of the Bush Regime." Righteous enough, with a laundry list of indecencies which include: War on the Poor, Fixing intelligence to go to war, No bid contracts for Halliburton and Bechtel, War profiteering, Torturing prisoners of war, Karl Rove outing an undercover CIA operative, and many more hits...

But The Message may be falling on deaf eyes. You see, turning political tides may be second nature when you're Helen of Troy or Marilyn Monroe - but even a few missing teeth, or close to five times the required body-fat ratio to qualify you as morbidly obese, would find you hard pressed to move the local council to fix a pothole on your street, let alone ending government duplicity. And standing out there in birthday suit with placard, unshaved 'pits and unwaxed mustache only brings the planet one step closer to the christian version of hell on earth. No wonder arrests were made - in early November, on the steps of the state Capitol in Sacramento, Glaser and another topless hippie, Renee Love, were hauled in and threatened to be charged as "sex offenders."

Which raises a paradoxical point on whether going topless during protests is truly "free expression" or "offensive." If humans were as liberated and civilized as some seem to think we are, we would be allowed the option to wear clothing or not on any given day in any given forum. Nakedness is good. But each human is solely accountable for retaining a physical aspect that would not autonomously cause the opposite gender to cry mutant. "Free expression" is The Way - but in this case, it is also "offensive." If Glaser and her cohorts had a modicum of shame, firstly, they would not have let themselves attain the behemoth proportions so passé in this indulgent, un-hungry society; secondly, rationalizing their nakedness behind "woman empowerment" detracts from women's empowerment because no woman should actually aspire to look like Glaser for the sake of being empowered.

Not that these trans fat troubadours need necessarily be bikini models to impart their message; if they were even moderately "inshape," hell!, even I'd be tempted to bare my botty and picket the streets with them, rubbing shoulders (and who knows what else) with their able-bodied political ta-tas. But - as rightly guessed - my participation would not be for the reasons that they advocate, but purely for my own "firm" beliefs.

And if they were Nicolette Sheridan or Pam Anderson - or any of those semi-whores famous for displaying only as much boob tube as required to engender spitshine fawning from the weak-minded males who are their psychological support structure and simultaneous whipping boys (Tara Reid or Nicole Ritchie or any number of sweet-smooth, blond underachievers whose only major decision between now and the signing of their Will is which nail polish to use with which shoes) - would not The Message be dramatically exemplified?

Alas, this option would open the way for the dugongs to complain that their Message is lost amidst the mounds of perfection exhibited by the pros. But isn't it this very shallowness - this predictable and sought-after rubbernecking by semen-filled males and curious females - that the dugongs are exploiting in the first place? Glaser even crows on her site about their demonstration outside the White House, "I have a feeling George Bush was peeking out from behind one of those curtains, how could he not?"

They may decry the superficiality of demeaning their outer beauty - okay, for calling them fat and ugly - but it is this selfsame shallowness in the human species that has prompted them to shoot themselves in the foot by exhibiting their abdominal lobes in the first place!

Contrarily - if silicone-addled bims paraded the streets unclothed, The Message would be lost at the other end of the spectrum. Instead of missing The Message and considering how to flense the image of "beached sea-cow" from our neo-cortexes, we would be missing The Message and considering how to best surreptitiously touch The Messengers (or ourselves) in public in ways which would be beneficial to both.

Women can't win. Because The Message In The Mammaries is not now - nor ever was, nor ever will be - "political."

Honey, no one's taking you seriously. You might as well keep your clothes ON for all the waves that your Message is making in the White House - absolutely none. The regional courts and police departments are the only factions being affected by your actions - and are being hampered in their struggle against street crime by devoting time and resources to quelling juvenile naked protests and their attendant onlookers and troublemakers. Bush's cronies and war-gamery are far removed from your Tits Without Wits.

Since our hominid ancestors evolved to walk upright, the only Message in female breasts is one of signaling to the male of the species; an unambiguous come-hither to Lay That Pipe. Squeal misogyny and let slip the litigators of sexism, there's no denying the simplicity of body parts. Stop trying to complicate things with claptrap.

Ultimately, these ex-hippies and flashbacking itinerants are the only sociological caste even inclined to Breasts Not Bombs. The semi-whores (Sheridan, Anderson, et al) couldn't be bothered - they're making enough money not to be. And those women fiercely ensconced in political wangling far greater than Glaser and Co., like California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, don't need to burn their bras to achieve political impetus, for they have something that Glaser and her crew only read about in cheap pulp novellas - class. Not that I am a fan of politicians, but trailer-parkers unqualified for anything in this society (except Jerry Springer Guest) being granted credence for alerting America to "causes" which most intelligent citizens are aware of anyway, simply get on my tits!

And I don't care if it is political - stop that wangling when I'm talking to you.

END