I am long on record as hating Halloween. Halloween involves: children begging in the streets like vagrants, white people offending me with their face, unleashing “sexy” costumes in a pathetic attempt to make up for 364 days of sexual repression, an entire movie industry that revolves around white people being too complacent to react appropriately to supernatural events, the shaming of sex offenders, rapidly rotting gourds, and, as a parent, an intense amount of time, effort or money spent on meeting the fickle imaginations of your children. If I could exorcise one feature of our culture… well, it would be Republicans. But Halloween would be in my top five.
The only good part about Halloween, for me, is that I’m a content producer and Halloween always brings opportunities to talk about people who screw up, incredibly and publicly, when trying to make something out of this dead-ass holiday. And “Halloween came early” this year, thanks to the creative geniuses at the Atlanta District Attorney’s Office.
The Paulding County DA put up a little Halloween display in their lobby. When I first saw the story, I didn’t know what the big deal was. Here it is from WSB-TV:
Crime scene, skeleton, Halloween. This checks out. I mean, who cares? Who even goes to the DA’s office anyway… OH WAIT:
Channel 2’s Aaron Diamant talked to a local ethics expert, who called the display wildly unprofessional and said it has the potential to retraumatize crime victims who have to come to the office to talk to prosecutors.
Diamant spoke to the woman who took the picture. Lauri Newsome said she went to the district attorney’s office with a few family members to try to get a meeting with District Attorney Dick Donovan about a sensitive case.
She was outraged to find the fake crime scene.
“You step back. It startles you,” Newsome said. “It doesn’t help how you’re feeling. I think if I’d had a family member murdered it would have affected me worse.”
Newsome fought back tears as she described being startled by the display.
I mean, I wouldn’t have thought of it this way. But, there again, this is why I don’t truck with Halloween. What the hell is the upside? “I really feel better about the administration of justice, now that I know my local D.A. can be SPOOKY!”– said no one, ever. Even though I feel like this woman’s complaint is a little overwrought, the value of D.A. lobby skeletons is so de minimus that I can’t understand why anybody would bother in the first place.
‘Cause that’s the other thing about Halloween, people who screw up VOLUNTEERED to do this to themselves. Last year, I dealt with people — white people, MULTIPLE white people — asking me if it was “okay” for them to PAINT THEIR KIDS IN BLACKFACE so they could go as Black Panther. Like, blackface UNDER the Black Panther mask… JUST IN CASE! And, after saying “JESUS CHRIST WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?” the question that always rattled around in my head was why. Why would you volunteer to do anything slightly questionable for the sake of Halloween? How drab is your life that you need to spice things up with this kind of forced BS? If you need to dress up that badly, go see Rise of Skywalker dressed as Chewbacca LIKE A FREAKING ADULT.
Anyway, I’ve lost my train of thought about the D.A. Umm… yeah, don’t spookify murder victims when your business involves meeting with the families of murder victims. Seems like a solid rule.
Another good rule: If you are not 100 percent confident that you know all the rules, just sit on your pumpkin and ride this holiday out.
Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.