Eight Million Regulations

There is a classic film noir called The Naked City (1948). The film’s plot is the investigation of a murder, and the story takes place in New York City. At the end of the flick, a narrator intones a famous line: “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”

Reading a recent report on the latest regulations laid down by the Justice Department for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, I thought of a new take on that line: “There are eight million regulations in the Obama state. This is just another flock of them.”

In an effort to ensure perfect “fairness” for all the “disabled,” the feds now dictate the following.

• Amusement parks must provide at least one seat for the wheelchair-bound on any new or altered ride.
• Miniature golf courses must make at least half of the holes “accessible,” defined as having a surrounding ground space that is “48 inches minimum by 60 inches minimum with slopes not steeper than 1:48 at the start of play.”
• Regular golf courses must now have “an accessible route to connect all accessible elements within the boundary,” and must also “connect golf cart rental areas, bag drop areas, teeing grounds, putting greens, and weather shelters.”
• Gyms must now position at least one of each type of exercise machine so that it is accessible to the wheelchair-bound.
• Saunas must now provide accessible turning spaces and an accessible bench.
• Shooting ranges must now provide accessible turning spaces “for each different type of firing position.”

My favorite is this one: all public accommodations must allow miniature horses as guide animals, because some handicapped people have moral or religious problems with dogs.

The good news is that the feds rule out full-size horses. Why, I don’t know — couldn’t some handicapped people have moral or religious problems with both dogs and miniature horses?

The miniature horse rule brings to mind another line I remember from the past: Frank Zappa’s song about Montana — “Just me and the pygmy pony, over the dental floss bush.”