An American Halloween ... A Scary Tale

[theHandpuppet]

Somewhere amidst the ghosts and goblins, butterflies and ballet dancers, there came to our door a truly frightening (on so many levels) image which still has me rattled this morning: a young boy and girl dressed, respectively, as an Abu Ghraib prisoner and torturer. The boy had a feedsack-type hood over his head and wore a dirty white shift with a prisoner number scrawled on the front, whilst the girl led him around at the end of a rope tied loosely about his neck.

I have to say the experience has left me at a loss to explain the psychology motivating the parents of these kids, and I'm not even sure why I'm posting about this experience except that I needed to vent among some folks who at least have a clue why I found this so distressing.

[humanbeing]

1. I saw something like that in The Stranger, a Seattle alternative magazine.

http://www.thestranger.com/current/

This liberal paper's cover for this week's issue is...that.

[theHandpuppet]

2. Yep -- horrifying all right...

What made the impact of this costume even greater (for me) is that we live not that far from where the Abu Ghraib NG unit is stationed, in an area wholly embraced by Evangelical Christians.

[humanbeing]

3. maybe...

...it might seem partially in bad taste, I could see that, but consider that it's probably closer to a liberal viewpoint than anything else -- Abu Ghraib IS scary and shameful for the US. Maybe the kids' parents wanted to tweak a few conservative noses with it.

[orpupilofnature57]

4. Halloween costumes depict what is happening now,whats..

Horrifying is the fact that they have such an atrocity to depict.