Maybe I'm starved for heroes in these pusillanimous times, but I have found a new one in Anette Pharris, the Tennessee woman charged with "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" because she hired a stripper for her son's birthday party. This is a lady who, despite her regrettable lack of morals and motherly instincts, possesses enough other virtues to compensate. She's got guts, gumption, and the "you-mind-your-business-and-I'll mind-mine" sensibility that Americans used to own in spades.
In buying such sordid entertainment for her family, Mrs. Pharris has done the nearly indefensible. And the usual suspects have rushed to condemn her. Don Aaron, spokesman for the Nashville police, self-righteously sniffed, "We don’t think the Nashville community is ready to allow adult entertainment in the form of a nude dancer around teenagers at a birthday party."
Speak for yourself, Don. Anette and the 30 or so folks at her son's birthday party are members of that community, too; in fact, as Anette pointed out, “We even had grandpa [at the party]." Seems that if Anette et al. let you decide what sorts of parties you’ll throw for your kids, you ought to extend the same courtesy to them.
But Don wasn't finished: “Minors are not permitted in adult establishments in Nashville or anywhere in this state. A person shouldn’t be allowed to circumvent that law by hiring a stripper…”
And what is Anette's reaction to this invocation of “the law”? Does she collapse like a politician's promise? Does she cringe, grovel and throw herself on the nation's mercy? Whine about being a victim of childhood strippers herself? Indulge in an orgy of self-flagellation so Big Government Daddy will like her again?
No! She stands firm! And even tells off the cops! In fact, she courageously and cleverly indicts the whole police department for its hypocrisy: AP quotes her as saying "a stripper was nothing to get upset about in their neighborhood, where prostitution and drug use are common."
Preach it, sister! Remember that Anette yet faces a court date, with her future and no doubt a sizeable portion of her assets hanging in the balance. Yet she is undaunted at Leviathan's power and fearlessly lashes its minions with the truth.
Behold, too, the admirable pith of her statement to the Tennessean newspaper: “It’s a bunch of bull. I tried to do something special for my son. It didn’t harm him.”
I'm not a mother and know nothing of child-rearing, so I'll leave the substance of her remark to the experts to debate. But I have enough faith in Anette to know that when those experts vehemently and sanctimoniously disagree with her, it won't ruin her day. No, our Anette will shrug – actually, she'll probably flash them the finger – and toss off another memorable quote, like this one: “Who are they to tell me what I can and can’t show to my own children? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Whoa! Seems Anette has not heard that raising children takes a village. Nor does she consider anyone but herself and her indicted co-conspirator, a.k.a. husband, entitled to rear their children.
Will Anette's questionable taste in birthday entertainment scar her children for life? Are they doomed to promiscuity thanks to this party? Again, I'll leave that to the experts. But I will venture to guess that these boys have received a powerful lesson in feistiness and refusal to kowtow to the authorities, qualities as rare anymore as they are valuable. And let's say, once they graduate from minors to majors, that the Pharris men have a steady stream of strippers stepping in and out of their homes; I'd still choose them for neighbors over the smug busybodies who turned their mother in.
Which brings us to the drugstore jerks, I mean, clerks who ratted Anette out after they developed the pictures she shot at the party. The Tennessean doesn’t reveal which drugstore snitched. I hope the paper's deliberately being coy to protect an advertiser: I hope there are enough red-blooded Americans left that a store so careless of its customers' privacy, so quick to turn snoop on them, would suffer a boycott were its name revealed. But I'm an idealist. More likely, the oversight is just that. Perhaps some enterprising soul will do us all a favor and ferret out the store's identity. Then those who don't similarly wish to explain their tastes and habits to a grand jury can avoid processing their film there.
I also hope the folks so eager to prosecute the spirited Anette are planning to go after Michael Chertoff as well. He’s the Secretary of Homeland Security who lusts to turn American airports into giant peepshows by installing "backscatter" X-ray machines: these see through clothing and will allow Federal screeners to view passengers who walk through them in their birthday suits. All in the name of fighting terrorism, of course. Thus, while Anette merely enabled her son to watch a stripper's act, Chertoff wants him to be the act the next time he flies.
Now who's contributing to the delinquency of a minor?
June 1, 2005
