For those of us disinclined toward glitter, face paint, and costume stores, Halloween can be complicated. For kids, dressing up is simple: a superhero, a ghost, or whatever Miley Cyrus recommends. Teens usually take a sabbatical — too young for pumpkin beer, too old to be begging neighbors for Snickers bars. It’s only once one gets to college that Halloween becomes an event.
For years, an easy way to get laughs was to pick up a George W. Bush mask at the local pharmacy. Wear the mask, add a suit, boogey to the “Monster Mash,” and you’d be the life of the party. Wear the Bush mask and convict orange, and people thought you were downright hilarious. Wear a Barack Obama mask, however, and — well, no candy for you.
You see, until quite recently there was an unspoken rule that Obama wasn’t funny. A lefty student sweating under a rubberized Barack could get away with it, barely, if shrugged off as a bit of ha-ha worship. But wearing Obama to spoof could raise some eyebrows. As the Columbus Dispatch reported last October: “Dressing as your favorite presidential nominee for Halloween could be socially risky.”
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“It’s uncharted territory that we’re in,” Ohio state senator Ray Miller, a Democrat, told the Dispatch reporter. “We’ve made a lot of progress in America on the issue of race relations, and we need to be careful not to move backwards.”
How things have changed in a year.
On Halloween night 2008, hope and change was in the air on college campuses. Sorority sisters put Obama campaign posters in their windows, and legions rallied to his cause. Poking fun at Obama was simply unacceptable. For liberal co-eds, the real glee came in shimmying around parties as Sarah Palin, or her daughter Bristol, with a pillow strapped to their midriff. Such getups were an easy way to generate giggles while waiting for the keg.
The real problem with the Obama mask was that we didn’t know how to pull it off. All we knew was the mask, not the man. We knew Obama’s story, but not what made him tick. Sure, you could buy the mask and yell, “Change we can believe in,” but it didn’t feel clever. At least the crude Palin impersonations could get you a wink.
Now we know what’s behind the president’s smile. Pick up an Obama mask this week and you’ll have plenty of options: Obama mask, ATM bottom. Obama mask, Caesar toga. Obama mask, Nobel medal. (If you want, you can use the poker chip in tinfoil from your Michael Phelps outfit from last year.) Perhaps you’d like to dress up as Obamacare — Obama mask, scrubs. Or, call up the White House, and see if you can borrow one of their nice leftover doctor’s coats, starched and ready to go. A grim reaper’s outfit would also work, for the more macabre trick-or-treaters.
