Shop Owners to Bootleg Used Kid’s Clothes?
– ‘A Little Ain’t Enough’
‘A Little Ain’t Enough’, from David Lee Roth’s , (of Van Halen fame) third solo album, aptly describes the reaction of many small shop owners and charitable thrifts to the latest development in their quest to ‘Stand-Up’ and save their consignment, resale and thrift stores from closure on February 10th.
MTV banned Diamond Dave’s videos of some of the songs at the time because they, and the album’s cover bearing what appeared to be a curled up baby with a devil’s tail, were deemed too hot to handle. Now, as his staunchly loyal 80’s hard-rock fans age with him, the songs can be heard in the background on the canned music tracks of many of the small shops whose inventory itself will be banned as hazardous by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) come February 10th.
As American’s unleashed an uproar over the internet, with calls, letters and petitions; and, amidst escalating television and radio reporting, the Consumer Protection Safety Commission (CPSC) attempted to douse the furor in typical political fashion. Dave sings a great song with a perfect title for that too, but the track isn’t on this album. His many fans know what it is called.
After the announced resignation yesterday of Julie Vallese, they issued a much anticipated Press Release to clarify CPSIA regarding the secondary kid’s market. ‘It’s Showtime!’. Many shop owners with a deeply vested interest are signed up on CPSC’s RSS Feeds. Were subscribers the first to know? Everyone knew who would get it first.
They really should have tried to hire Diamond Dave and ‘DAVE TV’. He would have done a vastly more entertaining job. Scratch that! Diamond Dave’s willingness to be outrageous is because he has a firm grasp on his role. He is first and foremost an entertainer; and, because he believes in giving the people who elected him a rock idol in tickets, what they all so loudly scream they want.
Did the CPSC, no doubt with pressure from members of Congress and lobbyists, simply just ‘Tell the Truth’? That would have been too simple. They did ‘The Dogtown Shuffle’.
Here is probably a more accurate, shorter summary of the press release: Stop bugging us! Stop talking about this, especially to the media. Congress is putting pressure on us to make this go away. So really, go see Congress. To remove the specter of jail time and huge fines from the shoulders of children’s resale, consignment and thrift shops, Congress alone will have to do what you pay them to do: address the issue and amend their own poorly crafted law. We have sugar coated it the best we could. May ‘Lady Luck’ be with you!
A poorly understood fact about Dave is he is highly intelligent and insightful, as is the American public. He is famous for calling The Clash on the carpet for reloading Jack Daniel’s bottles they drank from on stage with iced tea. We are talking about honesty here. That is one of the things his fans still love most about him to this day. That and, yes, decades later, he would still look fabulous in those cut-out black leather pants.
Politicians of all persuasions take good notes here. Why do you think Obama was elected? Have you ever thought it was because Americans still hold out hope there is one politician who can speak in simple, plain and direct terms? Does the word, ‘statesmanship' exist in the dictionary anymore? Webster’s might have removed it for being obsolete.