School clothing hang-ups

By William R. Toler

Three girls.

Two schools.

One problem.

They all got in trouble for their clothing decisions… and it’s not like they were dressed like whores.

Texanna Edwards, a senior at Gibson County High School, showed up at prom with a dress displaying the school colors of red, white and blue. But when she tried to walk in, she was denied.

The reason: her red, white and blue made up the stars and bars of the confederate battle flag. School officials told her it was “offensive and inappropriate.”

Mall steals shirts to suppress speech

By Corey Friedman

A suburban Dallas mall trampled a T-shirt vendor’s free speech rights when it seized shirts that bore an unflattering depiction of a crime-plagued city neighborhood.

Courtesy Dallas Morning News

The shirts show a silhouetted figure stuffing a body into a car trunk above the message, “Welcome to Pleasant Grove.” Management and security guards at the Town East Mall in Mesquite, Texas, surrounded the kiosk and took the shirts Thursday, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Local business executives and chamber of commerce members took umbrage at the tees, which they say perpetuates negative stereotypes about the neighborhood. The newspaper descrbed Pleasant Grove as a blue-collar community in southeast Dallas.

Mall officials had previously warned the kiosk to stop selling the shirts. The confiscated clothing was brought to the local chamber of commerce, where business leaders gloated openly about suppressing the shirtmakers’ message.