Have a Correct Halloween

Speaking of tolerance, as I did last time, along comes news of offensive Halloween costumes.  They are not offensive in themselves, but have been declared offensive by various groups of teachers and other authorities.

As we learn here, “From first-graders to college seniors, schools are cracking down on a wide swath of Halloween costumes.”  The list of banned costumes is long and varied.  Anything considered controversial is disallowed.  Some elementary schools have cancelled Halloween in favor of an “orange and black” celebration with no costumes involved.

The schools are walking on eggshells prohibiting any dress that can be considered racist by anyone!  Superhero costumes are discouraged for violence or carrying pretend weapons.  “Tufts University last year threatened investigations by campus police against any student whose costume was deemed offensive, especially if the outfit is thought to be culturally appropriated or ‘relating to tragedy, controversy, or acts of violence.’”  Imagine being detained or arrested for your choice of costume based on one administrator's hypersensitivity!

Halloween is a big holiday.  Last year spending on candy, costumes and decorations was projected to be $9.1 billion in 2017.  But maybe the fun is coming to an end.

The only fun left seems to be trying to guess what is acceptable and what will get you sent home, or worse.  Based on the vague guidelines one writer opined that students are “presumably restricted from dressing up as samurais, hombres, geishas, belly dancers, Vikings, ninjas, rajas, French maids, Bollywood dancers, Rastafarians, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Zorro, or Thor.”  The list goes on.  It reminds me of the story about magician Penn Jillette going to his daughter’s preschool party dressed as a ghost and suddenly realizing he might be mistaken for a Klansman.

“The company HalloweenCostumes.com recently pulled an outfit of Holocaust victim Anne Frank from its website after it was hit with a slew of criticism.”  Personally, I wouldn’t recognize an Anne Frank costume if I saw it, but someone objected.  Clowns are out, because of recent creepy-clown incidents.  A hobo was a favorite years ago, but it could be interpreted as disrespecting the homeless.

Remember from last time:  It’s more acceptable to say, “I’m offended” than to admit, “I’m intolerant,” but it boils down to the same thing.  What one person thinks is cute or funny, can be banned by a single complaint.  What’s worse is that the “injured party” is free to go on social media to try to exact revenge by destroying a reputation or a business or even indirectly calling for violence.

The reaction to this by schools is understandable.  They too are required to guess what a single person might find objectionable and do “everything possible” to avoid it.  (These are the institutions with zero tolerance policies.)

Think of how well off one has to be, how unconcerned with survival, how sheltered from conflict, to let someone else’s choice of a Halloween costume for a day out of the year cause such upset as to drive that person to complain!  But being offended and complaining is the new national pastime.  Some are so needy that they will be offended on behalf of a group they don’t even belong to.  Where is the perspective?  Where does the insanity end?

Perspective

Two recent events reminded me of the dimension of perspective.  One was international and the other local.  Perspective is a dimension with two closely related facets:  the ability to separate the important from the trivial and gratitude, an appreciation of what we have.

The first example was the announcement in the USA Today that the President would be recalling the troops sent to Liberia to help with the Ebola outbreak, “as infection rates there fall to near zero.”  Wasn’t it just a few months ago when we were facing dire warnings of a worldwide spread of the disease?  In September the World Health Organization (WHO) joined with those predicting that the “numbers will continue to climb exponentially, and more than 20,000 people will have been infected by early November.”  By November, in fact, the number of cases was falling.  In the face of the alarm some people canceled vacations to Kenya and other West African countries, thousands of miles away, apparently because they were both located in Africa.  All this panic was over a disease less contagious than measles and influenza, some of the diseases people calmly decide to skip the immunizations for themselves and their children.

The lesson here is that there are only so many things we have time to be scared of.  The evening news and on-line sites are filled with potentially upsetting stories about a crisis here and a crisis there, or the spread of a dreaded disease.  Social media carries warnings of any number of dangers to our families, some of which, like non-organic food, people have been living with for centuries.  These are hyped for headline value or circulated to reinforce beliefs, valid or not, of the senders.  The truth is we don’t have time to react to it all!  Only a couple of weeks ago some folks were hopping mad about football inflation.  Get a grip!

The second incident appeared on my neighborhood website where various local residents were exchanging information about garage door repair and collecting recommendations on reliable vendors.  One neighbor reported that their garage door was broken and “we have had to manually open and close our garage door for about a month now and it is a pain in the rear.”  Wow, what hardship!  Perhaps they should have gotten it fixed sooner.  Perhaps, while they were waiting, they could appreciate the fact that they have a garage and don’t have to brush the snow off or scrape the windshield every morning before leaving.  There are many who still do.  Possibly they are too young to remember when everyone who was lucky enough to have a garage had no choice but to raise and lower the door by hand.  Again, get a grip!

We are so well off in America that sometimes we have to search for things to complain or worry about.  Let’s appreciate that for a moment.