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male breast. See, as we become a society overrun by scolds and whiners, we will come across stuff that’s deemed evil, when it’s not.
    Colloqualisms are often the first to get hit. Whether it’s “chink in the armor” or perhaps a word like
niggardly
, the easily offended would rather not have such things present in everyday language—even if you’re using them correctly and without offense. But for the most part, I get it. These days, I can’t believe anyone would use the word
niggardly
in a headline if it wasn’t intended to get a snicker from a racist who takes pleasure in the not-so-veiled similarity to the vile slur against blacks. I’ll give a pass, however, to Ohio Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, who, when appearing on MSNBC’s
The Dylan Ratigan Show
back in March 2012, used the word
niggardly
to describe how some in Congress are acting toward veterans. He used the word correctly, and without malice to blacks. I make this point knowing that an equivalent writer on the left would not give the same pass to a Republican senator who might do the same thing. I guess I am just a better person (I can bench-press twice my own weight and I’m learning Esperanto).
    So we’ll let that go. My concern, for the moment, is “moobs.” Moobs are man boobs. You’ve probably seen them around town—usually at the public pool, or at the Sandals resort you made the mistake of visiting in the late nineties. Moobs travel in pairs and are often connected to middle-aged men who suntan poorly. Possessors of moobs are generally gentle souls who shun exercise in favor of beer and television. Moobs are a scourge of dudes as they drift into their forties (and also for young, unfortunate men suffering a medical condition called gynecomastia). I had moobs for about three years, when I gave up the gym in England in favor of red wine, Indian food, and training bras. When they became too big—so big, in fact, that I would get aroused by them when I caught myself in the mirror—I realized it was time to return to the toning and firming that I’d performed with relish years before. That’s the cruel prank of exercise—all those bench presses I did to give me that hardened V-shape chest were now paying me back in erotic flab. Once you stop pumping iron, that muscle sags like CNN’s ratings. It was time to either hit the gym or switch genders.
    I bring up moobs for the sake of a man named Eduardo Ibarra Perez, who, back in May 2010, ended up on a most-wanted flyer, shirtless. Perez was wanted for a variety of infractions, but it seemed the most obvious one at the moment was his gigantic moobs. What made them stand out, though, was not their flabbiness but the fact that the flabbiness had been blurred, so you could not make them out. Yes, whoever in law enforcement decided to distribute the flyer felt that Perez’s breasts might be too offensive to our puritan sensibilities, perhaps because they so closely resembled the pouting female bosoms of a local female (the similarities to my 1983 prom date were uncanny; oddly, she also ended up on a law enforcement poster).
    I could imagine the discussion between the folks who had created the flyer.
    “Wow, he has great tits.”
    “That’s got to be a 34C.”
    Then an administrator probably walked by, fresh from a course in diversity training, thoughtfully stared into the distance for a brief moment, and said, “We can’t have that. That’s offensive.” I’m sure that was met with silence, as everyone in the room thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
    Well, whoever was concerned about these tits wasn’t kidding, and his repressive tolerance won, because these beautiful hairy breasts were now obscured. And why? Because they looked like something that normally would have been obscured had they actually been, um, that thing. But they weren’t. They were male breasts, but because they could be construed (in someone’s head) as appearing female, they must be blurred.
    And this