Full court press

Recently, courts were back in the news.

No, it wasn’t a case of “activist judges” legislating their beliefs over the beliefs of others. In fact, the courts were absolutely in the right in their decisions, as far as I could see in the details that were included in the two news stories. The real stories were either the cases themselves or what happened after the decision was handed down.

A Maryland man had his conviction for indecent exposure overturned when a judge ruled that “mooning” a person, while distasteful, is not illegal.

And the world breathes a collective sigh of relief.

The judge stated after the trial, “If exposure of half of the buttock constituted indecent exposure, any woman wearing a thong at the beach at Ocean City would be guilty.” He also added that the outcome could have been different if the man was on trial for being a jerk.

Man, we’re all in big trouble if it ever comes to that.

The man allegedly mooned a woman he had been feuding with over homeowners’ association issues (you know how testy those meetings can get). After yelling at the woman, he mooned her while her 8-year-old daughter was nearby. Indecent exposure is punishable in Maryland by as much as three years in prison and a $1,000 fine.

So, where do I stand on mooning? Well, I find it an appropriate way to demonstrate the boorish behavior of frat brothers in movies such as “Revenge of the Nerds,” and it may be worth a giggle or a smirk in other situations, but I don’t think it is an appropriate punctuation to a debate, heated or otherwise. In fact, I don’t understand what was going through this man’s head.

“I hate you, lady and I wish that you would step down from the homeowners’ association,” the man yells in broad daylight, before dropping trow and wiggling his bum at the woman.

Huh?

I wonder how the woman could have kept a straight face, especially since (and I’m only guessing here) that it wasn’t a prime example of the beauty of man.

I wish I could ask this guy, why your rear end and not, say, a middle finger. It’s economical and easily understood by others. There’s no guesswork with a middle finger, whereas who really knows the tone that an exposed rump is going for? Is it supposed to be cheeky?

O.K., sorry about that. I’m done now.

I feel sorry for the woman and especially her little girl, but I’m glad the guy didn’t go to prison for a mooning. Our prisons are overcrowded as it is and if one college party gets a little out of hand, we could have a whole new breed of convicts walking the yards and taking up valuable cell space.

In other legal news, a man in South Korea was upset with a judge’s decision to uphold a $300 fine for disturbing the peace, so he decided to disturb the peace a little more. He left the courtroom, doused himself with heating oil, returned to the courtroom and set himself on fire.

Now that shows that you’re a rational human being who deserves the benefit of the doubt, doesn’t it?

The man, who was initially fined for a disturbance in a mobile phone store, is currently in critical condition at a hospital and doctors say he is fighting for his life.

Hopefully, he’ll survive and the hospital won’t do anything to tick him off, like give him lime Jello when he asks for orange. It seems that little things can get this guy really angry and you don’t want to see him when he gets angry, because the smell isn’t great and smoke might get in your eyes.

Yes, my friends, truth is stranger than fiction and you don’t need David E. Kelley to write up some quirky courtroom situations to find it.