The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Tim Krohn

October 24, 2009

Good taste goes out the window around Halloween

By Tim Krohn

Some of the best Halloween costumes I’ve seen have been the most tasteless.

After Princess Grace Kelly died in a car accident, a colleague came to the company Halloween party bloodied-looking, with a steering wheel hanging around her neck.

Another couple came as the victim and suspect in a grizzly local murder case that was big news at the time.

Of course, a group of journalists is not the best barometer of good taste or restraint.

The current outrage over political incorrectness comes from an “illegal alien” costume featuring a space alien mask, an orange prison jumpsuit and an oversize green card.

Pro-immigrant groups called for Target, Walgreens, eBay and others to pull the costume because it perpetuated ill will toward immigrants.

(Perhaps if they’d have just called it an “undocumented worker costume” people would have been OK with it.)

The stores and eBay did promptly remove the costumes. The public, of course, jumped on the World Wide Web and quickly bought up every illegal alien costume available.

High-mindedness and good will are not hallmarks of Halloween.

Pulling the costumes is an amusing corporate double standard: Yes, eBay has gone to the mat for good taste — nevermind that if you search eBay today you will find nearly 4,000 pieces of Nazi memorabilia up for auction.

Adults have hijacked Halloween from the kids, with even more adult costumes available. Which is, at least, good for the economy. Americans spend nearly $5 billion on Halloween, making it the second biggest in holiday sales after Christmas.

As is usually the case with American marketing, costume makers have found sex is the shortest route to financial success. A stroll through a big costume store shows erotic outfits for any fantasy: tart teacher, sexy school girl, risqué referee, naughty nurse.

They’re all basically the same — fishnet stockings, short and low-cut. The only difference is the accessories: clip some sheep ears on and you’re the lascivious lamb, or put an eye patch on and you’re the provocative pirate.

Men have fewer options, but there is an opportunity for guys to show their feminine side. While cross-dressing tends to be frowned upon the rest of the year, men seem wildly anxious to do it at Halloween.

Last year I dressed up like a sexy Sarah Palin. (Actually, that was last July. But, hey, what I do in the privacy of my own home is none of your business, so stop judging me.)

There will, this year, be a new political correctness dilemma. Lots of people are going to want to be Barack and Michelle Obama. Which is easier if you’re black. For the rest, it’s a question of, “To wear blackface or not?”

Visions of the minstrel blackface brings inevitable cringes of bad-times past, especially when the country has elected a black president. Still, it’s tough for caucasians to pull off the costume without the makeup.

The president could balance things out and defuse the whole issue. He could go out this Halloween in whiteface and play Vice President Cheney. Carry a shotgun and have a buddy along with bleeding shotgun pellet holes in his face.

Now that’s in good taste.



Tim Krohn is a Free Press staff writer. He can be contacted at 344-6383 or by e-mail at tkrohn@mankatofreepress.com.

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Tim Krohn