Tag: Halloween

Categories
crime and punishment folly general freedom nannyism privacy property rights responsibility

The New Ortho-Doxing

Halloween, Southern Poverty Law Center, lynching, doxing, racism, hate speech

“What a nice Halloween,” my wife remarked as we turned out the lights. 

Well, not in nearby Oakton, Virginia, where Jamie Stevenson walked past her neighbor’s home last Saturday and saw “a racist display.”

“She knew it was a Halloween decoration,” the Washington Post reported.

Heedless, she contacted her homeowners association, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the perpetrator: “What you appear to be displaying is an effigy of a black person being lynched. As your neighbor and a person of color [Stevenson is Asian], I find this racist . . . deeply offensive. I’m sure this is not your intent.”

“It is not my intent to offend anyone,” was her neighbor’s immediate and predictable response to her email. Shockingly, he had never noticed that his “Monster in the tree had darker skin.”

So, on a rainy Sunday, he took it down.

One might think that, with Stevenson’s sensitivity, she wouldn’t perform her own social media lynching — or doxing — against her neighbor. But on Monday, acknowledging that no offense had been intended and with the offending display removed, Stevenson still posted “a flier” on Facebook with a photo of an actual 1889 lynching next to the picture she had snapped of her neighbor’s Halloween display, declaring: “RACISM and HATE have no place in our neighborhood.”

She called for a boycott of her neighbor’s free Halloween candy . . . and handily provided his home address.

“[W]hen you point out racism, people have a choice to make,” she insisted. “They either acknowledge it and have to do something about it, or they deny it and are complicit in it.”

Or then again, neighbor, maybe you’ve got racism on the noggin and folks are only complicit in sharing a traditional joy with the neighborhood kids.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
political challengers term limits

The Goblins of November

Which is scarier, Halloween or the Tuesday after?

Silly question. Of course it’s Tuesday. Election Day.

The ghouls and goblins of Halloween are all dress-up; kids enjoying some play on the dark side, the better to go back into the light and . . . eat candy.

The ghouls and goblins of Election Day are dressed up, too. But the pretend element is that incumbent politicians aren’t the problem. (Or, as the contest heats up, that it’s some other incumbent’s fault.)

It’s all trick and no net treat, though, when their idea of “the good” incorporates all sorts of scams and schemes to take from some to give to others. Or better yet, to promise to give something later . . . long after they’ve retired. Then, those good intentions develop horns and tails and sulfuric stench.

It’s highly likely that U.S. Congress’s majority Democrats will receive many thwacks from challenging Republicans. This is to the good not because Republicans have proven themselves stalwart foes of politics-as-usual, but only because the devils I don’t know (the challengers) ought to be better than the devils we do know (the incumbents).

Why? The incumbents have learned the devil’s trade. The challengers have not necessarily succumbed to the temptations of that deviltry.

Yet.

Term limits, which cut down the time politicians spend in the path of temptation, might help purge some of the evil.

Unfortunately, term limits aren’t on most ballots next Tuesday. Only in Oklahoma.

Happy Halloween.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

A Halloween Sermon

It’s amazing how often my online critics assume that I am a Republican. Hey, I’m not a member of either major party.

Still, I reserve the right to hold Republican feet to the fire — using their own principles. Democrats, likewise. I have to: Politicians in both parties control too much of our lives and ignore too many of their principles.

I was driving the other day and caught businesses putting up their Halloween-themed promotions. I almost drove off the road: Halloween is almost here?

Of course, the holiday is several weeks away, but as I wrapped my mind around the idea of a “Halloween Season,” it hit me: So it is with politics.

Christmas is a notoriously imperialistic holiday. The season keeps starting earlier and earlier — gobbling up more of the calendar.

The Democratic Party is like Christmas. It has its Santa figures and its lore about sleighs full of goodies and a lot of activity in chimneys, being swept clean, etc.

The Republican Party is like Halloween: A bit scary sometimes — sometimes too eager to throw out the Bill of Rights . . . and its own Santa-ish treat giveaways.

But the chief function of Halloween is to put an early, pre-Thanksgiving stop to the imperialist creep of the big-spending Christmas Season.

And maybe the real meaning of a Democrat Christmas is to stop the foolery of the Republican’s Halloween.

As an independent, of course my favorite holiday is Independence Day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

Scary Halloween

Halloween was even scarier than usual this year, at least for the kids in one Maryland neighborhood. Sit around the campfire, little ones, and let me tell you all about it.

As you may know, obesity is being called a disease these days. People are said to be putting their lives at risk if they indulge in a Nestle’s Crunch or a McDonald’s hamburger. Nothing against careful eating habits, but there’s nothing catastrophic about a heaping of junk food once in a while.

Fortunately, the Halloween ritual of costumed kids going around extracting candy from neighbors continued this year as usual. But the kids in Takoma Park, Maryland, got an extra fright when they came to the home of Michael Tabor.

Tabor is a politically correct hater of Ronald McDonald who warbles that candy is nothing less than rat poison. The Washington Post reports that Tabor was on a nutritional mission this Halloween. When the kids came to his door, he adopted the terrifying guise of dietary hobgoblin. Harangued the kids about the evils of candy and warned that chocolate could cause could cost them a limb. Then offered a choice: a boring apple, or the usual chocolate kids love. His wife kept a tally. A few kids picked the apple, poor doomed souls. But so many just picked the candy despite Tabor’s ghoulish harangue that his wife finally stopped counting.

Tabor says if he had given kids a choice between one kind of apple and another, then they would have picked an apple. Yeah, probably. Wow, that was scary, wasn’t it, kids?

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.