The newly elected Muslim mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, opened his administration by saying, "I will rid this great city of the scourge of Islamic terrorism if it costs my life so help me Allah."  Oh, wait a minute – that is not how he opened his administration.  He opened by announcing he was sending a "clear message" that starting in July, any advertisements that could create "body confidence issues" will be banned from all forms of transit run by "Transport for London."

Mr. Khan explained.  "As a father of two teenage girls, I am extremely concerned about this kind of advertising, which can demean people, particularly women, and make them ashamed of their bodies."   He added, "Nobody should feel pressurized, while they travel on the Tube or bus, into unrealistic expectations surrounding their bodies."

Let's think of some other reasons why Londoners might feel "pressurized" on the tube.  Maybe the fact that on July 7, 2005, 52 people were killed and 700 injured by Islamic suicide bombers on the tube.  Maybe the attempted London car bombings by Islamic terrorists on June 29, 2007 didn't lower the pressurization.  As recently as December 5, 2015, an Islamic terrorist slashed and stabbed a number of people at the Leytonstone tube station while shouting, "This is for Syria."  Maybe events like that do not contribute to deep relaxation for London subway travelers.  Let's ask the family of Fusilier Drummer Lee Rigby, who was stabbed to death on the street by two Islamics fiends, whether they would find a picture of a skinny woman in a bikini or the approach of Islamic strangers on the street more pressurizing.  In short, the "unrealistic expectations surrounding their bodies" of Londoners is that some Islamic monster  isn't going to blow or chop it to bits.

The term "body confidence issues" is senseless psychobabble, which gives the mayor the power to ban any advertising he chooses.  According to this garbage-as-postulation, representations of physical ideals undermine ordinary people's confidence.  But unless the public transportation in London is plastered with pictures of the fattest, ugliest, pimpliest, abnormally hirsute slobs, somebody might experience an erosion of confidence.  A picture of a tall person might reduce the confidence of a short person; a picture of blue eyes may undermine the self-confidence of a brown-eyed person.  Might not the sight of a mane of wavy locks send a bald-pated commuter into a reactive depression?

The foundation of this idiotic theory is to prevent the risk that people will experience shame.  Shame is a painful experience of oneself as inadequate, defective, or unacceptable.  The experience of shame in the absence of an objectively shameful action is termed "felt shame."  Mayor Khan is unilaterally assaulting three hundred years of progress in the great tradition of free speech in the Christian West to protect teenage girls from shame about their appearance.

Has the gentleman spent much time with adolescent girls lately?  Is he aware of how contemporary adolescents talk, dress, tattoo themselves, and relate to each other through social media?  Anyone who could figure out how to instill more shame in teenagers should get a Nobel Prize.  If you could make a shame-inducing pill that parents could slip into Mountain Dew, you would be a billionaire.

The mayor says he is "extremely concerned" about the emotional effects that seeing thin, scantily clad models might have on his own two daughters.  What a slimy verbal maneuver to undermine freedom of expression for the British people, the God-parents of freedom for all the world.  How often do the Khan girls ride in the underground?  But even if they did, if seeing a picture of a model in a bikini makes his daughters feel ashamed of themselves, he and their mother have done a lousy job as parents.  Self-confidence in girls develops through childhood in the unwavering love of their father and mother and in their own mastery of age-appropriate challenges.  In worrying so intensely about the experience of shame in girls and women, the mayor subtly begins to instill that shame.  He also sets the stage for the exclusion of girls and women from experiences reserved to men in the segregative practices common in Islam.

Over the last several hundred years, how our ancestors struggled, fought, and died so we could live free.  What a catastrophe we are witnessing.