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You are here: Home / Open Threads / All dressed up for the spooky scene

All dressed up for the spooky scene

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Sometimes the stuff in National Review is so strange that I don’t know what to make of it. Consider that this article (via), about which British colonialist you should dress as to scare your liberal neighbors, goes on for three pages and lists something like eight (I lost count) possibilities:

So, what better costumes to don for Halloween than those of great British imperialists throughout the centuries? After all, the Spanish considered Sir Francis Drake something of a monster (they called him “the Dragon”), Sir Richard Francis Burton “prided himself,” as the Earl of Dunraven noted, “on looking something like Satan — as indeed, he did,” and the British Empire actually got its start with piracy.

I have nothing to add.

(I am disturbed by the fact that the Halloween song to which the title refers cannot be found any of the internets that I’ve seen. Was it only my school that taught kids this song?)

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  1. 1.

    TenguPhule

    So, what better costumes to don for Halloween than those of great British imperialists throughout the centuries?

    Yes, the Tories are back. And just like last time, they have to be driven out the country with steel and fire.

  3. 3.

    MikeJ

    Was it only my school that taught kids this song?

    My google fu was useless. I think you hallucinated it.

    Just between you and me, we got a very serious problem with the people taking care of the place. They turned out to be completely unreliable assholes.

  4. 4.

    Suffern ACE

    Or, you could save yourself the trouble of having to explain yourself all night long and go as Evel Knievel.

  5. 5.

    Joshua Norton

    Don’t forget the snake handlers latest call for something called JesusWeen.

    They suggest you give out bibles and christian tracts. The only benefit I could see from doing this would be that you won’t have to buy toilet paper until at least next Hallowe’en.

    What’s even funnier is that they think the “ween” in Hallowe’en is actually a word.

  6. 6.

    hhex65

    whilst Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow, was himself a monster raving loony with quite heavy friends…

  7. 7.

    TenguPhule

    In other new Rick Perry apparently is up for 5 more Republicans Debates…….

    There are 5 more Republican Debates?!

    Raptor Jesus Wept.

  8. 8.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    My middle son has decided to dress up as one of the soldier peg dolls from Doctor Who. That’ll be far scarier than anything they could come up with, unless you’re going to pull off Zombie Benedict Arnold.

    Once again, this whole thing seems to be about going back to the Articles of Confederation, Halloween edition.

  9. 9.

    Chris

    Dress up in “piss off a liberal” costume? For crying out loud, just dress up as Hitler and get it over with.

  11. 11.

    Martin

    List of things to dress up to scare your conservative neighbor:

    Um…

    1) Not Reagan
    2) Not Jesus

    They’re scared of everything else. It was just easier this way.

  13. 13.

    TenguPhule

    There are 14 more scheduled.

    ….

    If there is intelligent life out there in the universe, this proves humans are not worthy of being part of it.

  14. 14.

    Martin

    @Chris: Hitler doesn’t piss liberals off. It was a liberal that kicked his ass back across Europe. The thing that pisses liberals off are intentional idiots. So, republicans should just come as themselves.

  16. 16.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    Actually, there is a pretty good opening for a counterarticle, Doug. List all of the people that Democrats could dress up, that Republicans would hate, such as:

    Ronald Reagan: Actor, union member, voted to raise taxes seven times.

    John McCain: A man who has lived on the government tit his entire life.

    Ayn Rand: Accepted government disability benefits.

    Newt Gingrich: Dump your wives twice when they need you the most.

    Donald Rumsfeld: Associates with leaders such as Saddam Hussein.

  18. 18.

    King Apparatus

    Conservative humor. Lolz. Roflmaof. Omg. Brb. So good, like plochop from Aruban hooker.

  19. 19.

    Chris

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):

    Those last three aren’t actually anti-Republican. Anti-whatever image they want to project of themselves, maybe, but Republicans sucking on the government teat (and angry because other people get to as well) are so common they’ve long since gone from the “irony” zone to the “worn out cliche” one.

  22. 22.

    MonkeyBoy

    What would truly scare me would be if any of the current crop of GOP candidates or anybody from the GWB administration showed up on my doorstep. (I mean the actual people, not jokers wearing rubber masks)

    Of those figures from history it seems that the writers get Libertarian confused with Libertine and think that drink or sex addicts are enough non-PC to evoke fear rather than pity.

  23. 23.

    karl

    What might get lost is the weirdest part of all — the premise. Why do these people think that British colonialists are scary to their imaginary ‘liberal’ neighbors? Even if we take it as a joke (which it, I’m sure, is), what makes it funny? What kind of world do these people live in?

  24. 24.

    Villago Delenda Est

    As usual, the morons at National Review demonstrate their total lack of familiarity with history.

    The conflict between the Colonials and the Crown WAS really all about “no taxation without representation”. The Crown (or, to be much more precise, George III’s current bunch of ministers) went out of their way to piss off the colonials by suppressing representative bodies, installing governors as dictators, quartering soldiers in people’s homes…the sort of thing that even the locals in England got pissed about.

    Lord North could have diffused the entire thing by giving the colonies representatives in Parliament. The reasons for the taxation of the colonies were not that far out of line, but the methods used really got people going. The problem is North would not budge on the representation issue…and that was the crux of the colonists’ complaint.

    The colonists were pissed that they were not being treated as the gentry was in England itself…they were generating a lot of wealth for the mother country, and they wanted to participate in how that wealth was distributed. READ the damn Declaration…it’s all in there. I know. I’m asking a hell of a lot from the dipshits at National Review. The sad truth is the American Revolution was the hated Enlightenment…the reaction to centuries of royal tyranny…and this drives these neofeudalists fucking nuts.

  25. 25.

    Rafer Janders

    Um, wasn’t the US founded on opposition to British colonialism? So isn’t British colonialism, you know, anti-American? I seem to remember something about this from my junior high history classes….

  26. 26.

    Martin

    @karl: “Ha ha! You weren’t scared because you libruls aren’t smart enough to understand our obscure joke. It was supposed to piss you off, and that’s funny because libruls get pissed off.”

  27. 27.

    soonergrunt

    OT–DougJ, you may be pleased to note that the website for Steven J. Baum P.C; the law firm that hosted the forclosure-themed halloween party is apparently completely offline and has been for quite some time today.
    The google cache of http://www.mbaum.com shows only “The site is currently undergoing routine maintenace. Please be patient while this task is being completed.”
    Pings to their IP address time out.
    The story about the party is currently the top story on TPM.
    Either somebody crashed them or more likely, so many people have tried to go to their site that they’ve overloaded.
    Additionally, all the links on the first couple of pages of google search go to stories about fines they’ve had to pay or subpoenas they’ve had to answer, or to the various lawsuits they are currently defending against.

  28. 28.

    scav

    They are clearly interpreting howls of laughter as a sign of fear. Poor dears. I’ll keep a special bowl of acorn treats near the door just for them.

  29. 29.

    JGabriel

    National Review via DougJ:

    So, what better costumes to don for Halloween than those of great British imperialists throughout the centuries? After all, the Spanish considered Sir Francis Drake something of a monster (they called him “the Dragon”), Sir Richard Francis Burton “prided himself,” as the Earl of Dunraven noted, “on looking something like Satan — as indeed, he did,” and the British Empire actually got its start with piracy.

    Honestly, if they want to reveal their inner men, why not stick with more readily identifiable right-wing icons like Hitler, Mussolini, Satan, Phyllis Schlafly, or Donald Duck Trump?

    .

  30. 30.

    JGabriel

    @Rafer Janders:

    Um, wasn’t the US founded on opposition to British colonialism?

    Yes. The National Review, Fox News, and the GOP are entirely staffed and run by people who would have been Tories in 1776.

    .

  31. 31.

    scav

    @scav: Oh help, now I’m already over-involved in thinking about the christmas cookies. Gingerbread acorns, maybe some more acorns out of marzipan (dipped chocolate caps?), beheaded plutocratic gingerbread men a must of course, Oh Oh! instead of a gingerbread house, a bunch of gingerbread tents in an Occupy Xmas display! Seriously, right next to the creche — mines basically the French santon version so I’ve already got the cross-section of workers assembled so it won’t even look as odd as it might otherwise. I am so building those tents.

    Clearly, time for bed.

  34. 34.

    Suffern ACE

    As an adult, though, something that really would scare me on Halloween is the realization that I had neighbors over the age of 14 who still thought the whole point of Halloween is to scare other adults and tried to do so. I mean, when was the last time you really were scared of someone in a costume on October 31?

  35. 35.

    JGabriel

    @karl:

    Why do these people think that British colonialists are scary to their imaginary ‘liberal’ neighbors? … What kind of world do these people live in?

    They live in a world beyond The Wingularity, that boundary between the universe and section of it where meaning has collapsed under the weight of its own right-wing rhetoric and propaganda. No one really understands qua understanding what goes on beyond the Wingularity. We can examine the emissions, but, like great Cthulu, they are beyond rational ken. Repent! For The Wingularity Is Nigh!

    .

  36. 36.

    Sly

    and the British Empire actually got its start with piracy.

    Don’t forget drug trafficking and slave trading.

  37. 37.

    Chris

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Lord North could have diffused the entire thing by giving the colonies representatives in Parliament. The reasons for the taxation of the colonies were not that far out of line, but the methods used really got people going. The problem is North would not budge on the representation issue…and that was the crux of the colonists’ complaint.

    That’s funny, they sound like our current Galtian overlords. Who could easily just give an inch, allow the regular people what they deserve (the secure middle-class society the New Deal produced) and still be richer than God, but out of stubborn “principle” (a.k.a. sheer petulance and entitlement), refuse to even do that.

  38. 38.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Chris:

    You’ll note that the Brits actually LEARNED from the experience of the “civil war” that resulted in the 13 North American colonies going their own way…much to the delight of the French, the Dutch, and the Spanish.

    While they didn’t give Canada or Australia (for example) representation in Parliament, they did give them their own self-governing legislative bodies and didn’t repeat the high-handed treatment which resulted in the end of the “first” British Empire. Of course, those were the “white” colonies…the others got more high handed treatment.

  39. 39.

    Noah Brand

    I’d like to believe there’s more to modern conservatism than “Whatever liberals say they’re against” but they just don’t offer me anything. Seriously, half of that article is just “Heheheheh… racism. Awesome.”

  43. 43.

    Origuy

    It wasn’t just the colonists who had no representation in Parliament. There were many cities and towns which had grown up since the Middle Ages that had little or no representation. There were other constituencies such as Old Sarum that had a representative for a handful of people. This wasn’t fixed until early in the 19th century. Also, only men with property could vote anyway.

  45. 45.

    Keith

    So costumes like ‘Aborted Fetus’ and ‘Tranny Reagan’ should be great red state costumes, right?

  46. 46.

    TheHalfrican

    “Sometimes the stuff in National Review is so strange that I don’t know what to make of it.”

    What an odd statement. NR has to cater to American Conservatives in 2011 – why wouldn’t they be printing idiotic counterfactual nonsense?

  47. 47.

    Joseph Nobles

    I don’t know what on the front page made the adbot think we were susceptible to a Spanish website promoting Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles, but let’s keep doing it, amirite?

  48. 48.

    TheHalfrican

    …..and if you want to dress up as a evil scary colonialist, why not King Leopold II? He killed 10 million people and turned severed human hands into currency….for money. Yep.

  49. 49.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The conflict between the Colonials and the Crown WAS really all about “no taxation without representation”.

    Coming from a different background I was taught that the colonists were in fact undertaxed in relation to the cost of maintaining the colonies, and that granting representation in London was considered pretty futile considering the travel time involved and the fact that most of the colonies already had (for the time) representative governments.

    Instead the key to the revolution was the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Whereby the Britsh crown attempted to honour undertakings to loyal Indians resulting from the Seven Years War and tried to protect their lands from colonial infringement. Such restrictions on westward movement alienated yeoman farmers as well as southern planters looking for cheap land.

    This was exacerbated by the Navigation Acts which restricted trade with the colonies of England’s traditional enemies, Spain and France. This alienated the mercantile class.

    As a result you saw an alliance against Britain between small farmers, planters and merchants who formed the core of the Revolution.

    The Revolution was less an ideological conflict than it was a battle of conflicting economic imperatives which were inevitable once the security of the colonies had been assured with the Treaty of Paris.

    Also too, growing up as a kid on a diet of America TV I have to say that Halloween appeared totally weird. For instance Leave It To Beaver would have a Halloween episode, but there would be no background. Why were kids dressing up as witches and ghosts? What was the point of the lollies? Do you get a day off school for it? Was it compulsory?

    None of these important questions were answered until much much later, by which time I was too old to care.

  51. 51.

    JGabriel

    TheHalfrican:

    [King Leopold] killed 10 million people and turned severed human hands into currency….for money.

    Well, that’s one way to implement a cheap bounty system. Just make the head cash, and you take care of both earning the reward and collecting it with one stroke. As it were.

    .

  53. 53.

    Digital Amish

    If I’m reading that right, if the NR was being published in 1776 it would be a Loyalist rag.

  54. 54.

    Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937

    I was going to go as Zombie Reagan and bring my little dog dressed as Margaret Thatcher.

  55. 55.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @TheHalfrican: The problem is that he was Belgian.

    @Viva BrisVegas: The reasons you mention were at least as important as the taxation without representation issue. Taxation without representation was the issue that worked best as a “soundbite,” and, therefore, it was given priority. Soundbite might be too harsh, as it was really the issue with which they thought they could get the most traction among the people who mattered in in Britain. This discussion and the behavior of the 1% over the past 30 years really remind me of Barbara Tuchman’s March of Folly. From the publisher:

    Barbara Tuchman defines folly as “Pursuit of Policy Contrary to Self-Interest.” In THE MARCH OF FOLLY, Tuchman examines 4 conflicts: The Trojan Horse, The Protestant Secession, The American Revolution, and The American War in Vietnam. In each example an alternative course of action was available, the actions were endorsed by a group, not just an individual leader, and the actions were perceived as counter productive in their own time.

  58. 58.

    EIGRP

    @EIGRP: Doh. OFF the Jesus juice. FYWP.

    @Omnes Omnibus – yeah, I looked at it. Lost a few seconds of my life that I will never get back.

  59. 59.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @EIGRP: Please accept my sincere apology, but you had to know that it was out there. A sadder and a wiser blog commenter, you will be as a result.

  60. 60.

    RSA

    Sometimes the stuff in National Review is so strange that I don’t know what to make of it.

    This piece was written by the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War, the contents of which I can only imagine. A blurb on the cover reads, “…did you know… that the South had the moral high ground in the war?” No, I did not know that.

  61. 61.

    Joseph Nobles

    Nit: Shouldn’t it be Jesuse’en? Because, you know, Hallowe’en is short for All Hallow’s Eve, the day before All Hallowed Day, or All Saints Day?

    And doesn’t Jesus have enough evenings already?

    Hey. Why can’t the hardcore Christians just start celebrating All Saints Day? OK, OK, I’ll stop insisting on rationality from people who’d celebrate Jesuswe’en.

  66. 66.

    BC

    . . . the Spanish considered Sir Francis Drake something of a monster (they called him “the Dragon”)

    As a pretty pink liberal, I’d be more frightened of someone dressed as King Philip II of Spain than either Sir Francis Drake or Sir Walter Raleigh. The Spaniards were very anti-Enlightenment; the English of the time, not so much, after all the blood spilled during Henry VIII and Mary I reigns.

  67. 67.

    Nutella

    @Joseph Nobles:

    Why can’t the hardcore Christians just start celebrating All Saints Day?

    This would assume that the hardcore Christians actually knew anything about the history of All Hallows and All Hallows Eve, that is, that they are familiar with the history of their own religion.

    So it will never happen.

  69. 69.

    Al

    Ok, I’ll bite

    “Have you seen the ghost of John?
    Long white bones with the skin all gone
    Woo woo woo woo woo woo woo
    Wouldn’t it be chilly with no clothes on”

    Though I think the official school version was “no skin on”.

    And as a kid in the 60’s I would have corned AND soaped the holy F out of any house that pulled that bait and switch.

  70. 70.

    Scott P.

    Coming from a different background I was taught that the colonists were in fact undertaxed in relation to the cost of maintaining the colonies,

    You hear that a lot, but the issue is more complicated. The Seven Years War saw the British and French fighting in North America (known here as the French & Indian War). This was was rather expensive. The British crown felt that since the war was fought in part to defend the British colonies in North America, that the colonies should bear some of the cost. So far, so good.

    However, in the mid 18th century the American colonies were very capital poor compared to the mother country. By contrast, they offered a supply of cheap manpower, manpower that did not need to be schlepped across the Atlantic. So a bargain was struck — the colonies would provide most of the soldiers (with a British core as stiffeners), the British government would provide the money to supply them. So far, so good again.

    However, despite ending in a British victory, the war proved very expensive. The British government also worried about the danger of disbanding a large number of regiments at once, thinking that this could cause civil disorder. So they continued to maintain a large (British) garrison in North America, despite the fact that there was no longer any French presence to worry about. Forgetting about the men/money deal made a few years earlier, they asked the colonists to pay to support these garrison troops. The troops were kept far from England, and the government was relieved of the burden to keep paying them.

    As it happens, though, this decision was made in the early 1770s, right in the middle of a major economic depression in the colonies. Money was short, times were especially bad. To the colonists, therefore, the British government was hiking their taxes, in contravention of earlier agreements, in the middle of a depression, in order to support troops that weren’t necessary, all without any consultation of the colonial governments. Voilá, the American Revolution.

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