No one complains about kids dressing up as serial killers or chain-saw murderers and zombie /psycho flesh-eating monsters. Hitler was a monster, so what is wrong with wearing a costume of an evil monster like all the rest of the gruesome costumes found in the Halloween macabre dress-up tradition? Before anyone reminds me that the difference is that Hitler was real, that he killed millions of Jews, and all the stuff which is common knowledge, let me just say that there are also real serial killers, real people who murder with chainsaws and other gruesome methods, and flesh eaters like the Hannibal Lechters and Jeffrey Dahmers who still exist in this world but haven't been caught yet.Was this student's rights infringed upon?
Student causes stir with Hitler costume
NEW YORK - A Brooklyn high school student caused a stir when he showed up for class dressed as Adolf Hitler for Halloween. Walter Petryk, 16, defended his costume Tuesday, insisting it was a satire of the Nazi dictator.
But some students and officials at Leon M. Goldstein High School were not impressed.
School administrators ordered the junior honors student to remove his beige coat bearing a red swastika armband or possibly face spending the day in the office, Petryk told the New York Post for Wednesday editions.
Petryk refused, saying his parody was protected by his right to freedom of expression.
Petryk's stepfather, Howard Bloom, who is Jewish and lost relatives during the Nazi genocide, told the Post he was initially "very disturbed" by the costume but nonetheless defended his stepson's rights.
"If he had wanted to advocate my genocide, I wouldn't have allowed" the costume, Bloom said. "That wasn't the spirit in which he was doing this at all. He was doing it in the spirit of Monty Python and Mel Brooks."
The city's Department of Education discipline code allows for the removal of students from class if they wear clothing that causes a disruption.(It's A HALLOWEEN COSTUME for crying out loud! If they want to be ridiculous, then be fair about it and ban ALL Halloween costumes for being outlandish and absurd and "disrupting" the normal school day. Geesh!)
The student succumbed to the pressure . . .
In order to avoid a disruption on the way to school, Petryk disguised his Hitler getup as a costume of Charlie Chaplin, adding a bowler hat and cane.
6 comments:
I can't stand this sort of P.C. nonsense, I'm afraid it may be here to stay. It's been around my entire life and has yet to wane...
There's a war between cultures going on, thousands of American troops are dying, innocent people are dying all over the world from all sorts of horrible tools of suffering, children are stepping on landmines, insane morons are doing their thing in all branches of government, and we actually care what a student wears to class because it might - Heaven forbid! - offend someone? Gah! What is the world coming to!
This isn't new; this is life, and it's just damn weird.
It's a weird thing. Some people assume if you say that you have read "Mein Kampf", that you must agree with everything in the book.
I guess because she wore a hitler uniform, they assumed that she agreed with hitler.
It was halloween after all. So, in context, the costume seems as appropriate as the costume of any other monster.
beepbeep...funny how people never assume kids agree with horror movie murderers, or believe in goblins, devils, and witches when they dress up like those things. You'd think by high school that kids and teachers would know what a parody is. Is the world losing its sense of humor?
There's an episode of South Park where Cartman dresses up as Hitler. He's then forced by Mr Mackie (m'kay?)to attend a de-indoctrination class, where he has to sit through films of Nazi stormtroopers strutting and saluting - all of which has the opposite effect on Cartman's warped little mind from what was intended.
There was a big fuss here, when Prince Harry went to a fancy dress party in a Nazi uniform.
It seems that make-believe monsters are OK to dress up as, but real-life monsters are too disturbing for some people.
It's maybe a good thing that people still freak out at folk wearing Nazi gear after 60 years. It's when they stop bothering that we should worry.
By changing from Hitler to Chaplin, the student showed maturity. Sometimes you have to compromise for the sake of society.
Intriguing.
& yet we can air the movie 'The Producers'. Wasn't UBL a halloween costume?
I think the deacon may have a good point.
Did anyone dress up as Ann Coulter?
THERE'S a scary thought. How would you make the dead eyes dead on?
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