Dress Codes Are Not Fashion Fascism

The following is an unpublished letter-to-the-editor that was sent via e-mail to the New York Daily News as well as amNew York, a free daily newspaper.

Voice of the People

New York Daily News

450 West 33rd Street

New York, NY 10001

October 21, 2005

To the Editor:

Re: NBA dress code. To call Commissioner Stern's decision racist or, as [sportswriter] Filip Bondy termed it, an act of "fashion fascism," is utterly ridiculous. What's wrong with looking your best? How can that be interpreted as "attacking cultures," as one of the athletes described it? What is cultured about wearing pants so low that one's underwear shows?

If Joe Louis, Martin Luther King, Nat "King" Cole, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Duke Ellington, and other African-American luminaries had dressed as slovenly and thuggish as some of today's millionaire athletes, no one would have taken them seriously. In fact, the black community would have been ashamed of them for looking like someone's unmade bed.

Sincerely yours,

Charles Michael Smith

Dumb Donald And King James

There is an old saying, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Well, Donald Trump, our 45th president, decided to throw stones at basketball star LeBron James (called King James by his fans) via Twitter.

James, a staunch critic of Trump and his policies, said, in an interview with CNN's Don Lemon, "We are in a position in America where this race thing has taken over. ...I believe our president is trying to divide us."

The Tweeter-in-Chief responded by saying that "Lebron [sic] James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn't easy to do."

Trump has received much criticism in the media for again attacking the intelligence of African-Americans.

However, according to journalist Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, there have been several  people inside the Trump Administration who've questioned Trump's intelligence.

"There was now a fair amount of back-of-the-classroom giggling about who had called Trump what," reported Wolff. "For [Treasury secretary] Steve Mnuchin and [former Chief of Staff] Reince Priebus, he was an 'idiot.' For [Chief Economics Advisor] Gary Cohn, he was 'dumb as shit.' For [National Security Advisor] H. R. McMaster, he was a 'dope.' The list went on." (See page 304.)

Those attitudes among people in the Trump White House should make LeBron James smile and say to himself, "Look who's calling me and others dumb."