Are We Having Fun Yet? Are They Not?

     I'm getting a little tired of the supposedly "libertarian" individuals who want to filter every damn thing through a culture-war lens and aren't willing to concede that the entity that owns or controls an enterprise gets to make the decisions about how it runs (as long as they are lawful), even when onlookers disapprove.

     Take the recent announcement that a long-running beauty pageant won't be having swimsuit (at all) or evening-gown competitions (as such).  Oh, the complaining!  Never mind that the decision was, in fact, made by the President and CEO, the Chairwoman, and the Chair of Board of Trustees of  the organization that runs the Miss America competition -- according to well-respected libertarian thinkers, it's all part of the "effort to neuter this country," presumably by taking away that yearly opportunity to ogle attractive and scantily-clad young women on television, despite there being multiple channels of television featuring just that (and far, far more), 24/7/365.

     The swimsuit portion of the old Miss America is gone, just like Bert Parks (1914 - 1992) and the recording of him singing "There She Is...." (1955 - 2012, 2015).  Don't like it?  You're not obliged to -- nor is there anything keeping the grousers from setting up their own old-fashioned, Atlantic-City-style swimsuits-and-heels pageant and calling it the Miss National, in much the manner of sports leagues.  But no, the classic libertarian "let the market decide" wisdom is old-hat and it's much better to accuse some "they" -- women or liberals or possibly government fluoridators -- of ruining everything.

     I'm tired of it.  Looky here, it's a pre-ruined world and the only good stuff you can be even a little sure of are the things you build yourself.  They've changed the formula of Vienna Fingers cookies, 7UP is getting more and more difficult to find on store shelves and Levis dropped the rise of women's 512s to well below the natural waistline long before they offshored manufacturing and started getting snippy about politics.  Change is the only constant and you can either surf it or let it tumble you around like driftwood.  There are better ways to go through life than smooth, gray and abandoned on the beach.