BONUS: Hangin' Out with Eiynah 5 - Halloween Special!
Oooooo-wooooo! Wokeness is Scary! In this little Halloween bonus, Jack joins friend of the pod Eiynah Mohammed-Smith, and Dr Caitilin Green, for a special spooky space over at cursed nazi chan board X. Recorded October 27th 2023. Please excuse the usual sound quality issues. We talk about right-wing and IDW-type panics over woke Halloween costumes, concerns about cultural appropriation, etc. To quote Eiynah's write-up: "We discuss Bill Maher, Steven Crowder, Yale professors Nicholas & Erika Christakis & their calls for students to ‘look away’ from ‘offensive Halloween costumes’, U of Oregon Professor Nancy Shurtz who wore blackface at a party that students attended ….all this and more." As always, thanks to everyone who turned up to listen and contribute.
Thank you for patiently waiting for us to get this started.
And thank you for joining us today for a very spooky Twitter space.
Jack and I will be discussing various Heterodox horror stories where some poor victims of cancel culture were criticized for doing or defending something bigoted and Halloween related.
We thought it'd be a good time for a little, like, uh, you know, roundup of such stories from the past few years.
I think they are becoming, like, uh, less and less common because the awareness around why these types of things are so fucked up is increasing.
What is your sense, Jack?
Yeah, I think they're just getting a bit rote, aren't they?
I think even the people churning them out year after year are maybe getting, you wouldn't think it was possible, but maybe just getting a little bit self-conscious about it.
Yeah, it's like the same article.
You could just do like a Mad Libs, you know, with it and just like replace the names and the setting.
Yeah, so who wants to go first?
Zombie stories of the brave culture warriors.
I'll start with everybody's favorite person, Bill Maher, which I found a, it's kind of a, yeah, I know, it's kind of a arsehole-ception situation, because it's a report about Bill Maher talking about Halloween on the Daily Wire, kind of dickbag squared.
Yeah, so it's just the Daily Wire turning something Bill Maher said on television into a news story.
Which, in fairness, people across the political spectrum do that.
But yeah, this one made me laugh because it's... Bill Maher unloads on the problematic costume police.
So it's...
He reads through a list of problematic Halloween costumes compiled by BuzzFeed, which he renames BuzzKill.
Isn't that funny?
What he did there was he changed the word feed, in the name BuzzFeed, to the word kill, and thus implying that they're... It's very, very clever.
It's so edgy.
It is, isn't it?
Yeah, I'm cutting myself on all the edges here.
But yeah, he says something in the article, it says something that really made me laugh.
He says, the entire point of the night of freedom that came before All Saints Day is to be problematic.
Which, no, no Bill, no.
Being problematic is not the entire point of the night before All Saints Day.
Hasn't always been.
It isn't now.
No, you're just wrong.
Being problematic is not, that wasn't part of the Christian calendar, you know, that wasn't what that day was for.
And yeah, then he goes on to, he denounces people who care about these things as emotional haemophiliacs, which is, again, really brilliant, and renames Halloween All Skulls Day, which again, the word substitution humor, it's so clever.
He is truly, you know, Giving dad jokes a run for their money here.
Absolutely.
Watch out dads.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Searing social commentary and, uh, and, and so wittily put together as well.
Uh, yeah.
So, um, So like if, if my grandpa had like a talk show, maybe this is, maybe he'd sound a little better than that actually.
So yeah.
Um, Halloween is supposed to be outrageous.
He says it's a festival of the sacrilegious, a celebration of the grotesque.
Here he is getting pretentious.
Every year, there's a new list of offensive things that we shouldn't do on the day that's all about being offensive.
No.
No, really.
There isn't.
There's just advice about what you shouldn't wear if you want to be careful about your costume.
That's really all it is.
Yeah, like, they make it seem like there's, like, police cars stationed on every street corner that are going to, like, check your Halloween costume.
Yeah.
That's what they always do, isn't it?
But he goes through this list of things that are supposedly, this costume list that's supposedly banned by BuzzFeed.
He says, he went on to read a number of other verboten costumes.
That made me laugh because that's something, the word verboten is also used by Barry Weiss in a stupid column she wrote a few years back called Hooray for Cultural Appropriation, where she says things like, oh no, hooped earrings are verboten now.
And of course, she puts loads of links all over the article, which you click the link and it doesn't go to anything that says, you're now not allowed to wear hooped earrings.
You say, what does verboten mean?
What does forbidden mean here?
But he says it as well.
Verboten costumes, Queen Elizabeth II, too soon, characters outside of your race, and Elvis.
He claims that Elvis is on a list of costumes that BuzzFeed say you can't dress up.
I don't know.
If that's true, then that's one list, which is a bit weird, Bill.
Get some perspective.
Obviously, there's going to be silly recommendations and people's mileage will vary on these things.
It's all about personal uh interpretations right yeah and obviously but outside of that there are some very clear clearly like very obviously offensive costumes and these guys they try to muddy the water blur the lines so that if someone's being silly saying okay don't wear an elvis costume or whatever um
then that immediately also applies to like oh people saying that blackface is wrong are also too sensitive and fragile and whatever, you know?
Yeah, exactly.
That's the goal here.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And of course the endless talking about these things as if we're talking about some new draconian set of laws.
When we're talking about People becoming more sensitive about these things and passing ideas back and forth about what's polite or impolite or whatever, and trying to come to some sort of consensus about what's acceptable and what isn't acceptable.
There's nothing wrong with that.
That's a cultural conversation.
We need to have them.
But people like Bill Maher, ironically, given that his big complaint is that everybody's so easily offended now, these people are so desperate to be offended.
That they just jump on.
People say silly things, of course they do.
In these sorts of conversations, somebody will say something that's a bit of a silly thing.
Okay, so what?
One person said a silly thing.
One list had a silly item on it.
So what?
But they generalize that out to some sort of great big social syndrome that doesn't exist!
Yeah, I mean, they just don't want people to become more aware and inclusive and not make fun of other people's cultures, so they find these really silly suggestions and use them as examples to hold up in those cases, you know?
But didn't he also like in that rant I remember watching it but I don't I don't remember very very clearly because it was a while ago but didn't he also end with and like dressing up in a sombrero or some some culturally insensitive costume so he started off with like oh yeah suggestions like oh People say Elvis, you know, can't dress up as Elvis anymore, but then he's like, Oh, you know, but you should dress as Pocahontas or in a sombrero.
I can't remember.
Cause he's done so many of these Halloween rants.
Like in one of them, he definitely said he was dressing as Pocahontas.
I don't know if it was this one or... He does that in this one, and he says, you know, children should dress as all these things that they're not supposed to dress as.
So according to him, they're not supposed to.
But it ends with him dressing up as, you know, a woke person, a woke culture warrior.
And he's got a t-shirt on that says, F the Patriarchy.
And hilariously, he ends the skit by saying, oh, I've got a stick here, and that goes up my ass.
I mean, it's already up your ass, Bill.
Yeah, exactly.
It's very far up your ass.
There's no room up there.
You've already got your own stick up there, Bill.
Yeah, I remember.
And he also used that little, oh, here's my, you know, to be like anti-mask.
And he's like, here's my three masks.
You know, it's like, dude, you know, that was a real pandemic, right?
Yeah, that did happen.
People died.
It's that blurring of lines that is so insidious and just awful, and they love to use Halloween as a time to do that.
Well, Halloween, for some reason, has always been a kind of playground for right-wingers trying to get ideas across.
I remember there's a talk by the author China Miaville where he talks about this, and he mentions, like, Stephen Crowder, Um, back in the day when he was starting out as a sort of Fox News personality, he did a thing where he kind of did a sort of hidden camera thing where what they were doing was they were getting kids trick-or-treating and then they were redistributing each kid's Halloween candy equally.
So obviously what they're doing is, what if we did trick-or-treating according to socialist principles?
And, of course, they zero in on the screaming, crying faces of the kids, and that proves that socialism doesn't work.
It's a bad economic system, because the kids don't like their Halloween candy being evened out.
They've been doing this stuff with Halloween for so long, it's really weird.
It's super strange.
They know that adults are not kids, right?
Well, I don't know.
I don't want to speculate on what they know or don't know.
Do you remember there was this really big story in 2015?
I'm sure Caitlin remembers this one well.
It's from Yale.
There was this huge blowout with this professor, Nicholas Christakis, a favorite of the IDW.
So apparently him, him and his wife were like, not only professors, but masters of a residential college.
So they basically had like a dual role, right?
So one was just teaching and one was just like, you know, being there for students in like life outside of classes and just like being responsible for their wellbeing and general life on campus.
So this, um, Intercultural Affairs Council, the Intercultural Affairs Council asked students to be thoughtful about the cultural implications of their Halloween costumes.
And, um, his wife, Erika Kriskakis, Asked, yes.
Absolutely.
Yes.
She is an expert in early childhood education, and she basically sent an email in response that questioned what she and some other students from within that residential college in particular perceived as an intrusion into the expressive rights of college students that compromise their autonomy.
Now, that is a quote from FIRE.
I don't always trust FIRE, but most of the people covering this case that I found were these kinds of edgelord publications.
I know FIRE pretends to be objective, but I really don't see that all the time.
I'll just read the original email that the Intercultural Affairs Council sent out to the school.
It's very gentle, I thought.
But I'm going to read it because these guys just had such a fit over it.
So here goes.
Dear Yale students, the end of October is quickly approaching and along with the falling leaves and cooler nights come the Halloween celebrations on our campus and in our community.
These celebrations provide opportunities for students to socialize as well as make positive contributions to our community and the New Haven community as a whole.
Some upcoming events include Haunted Hall Crawl and Costume Ball, Grove Street Cemetery Tours, YSO's Halloween Show.
However, Halloween is also, unfortunately, a time when the normal thoughtfulness and sensitivity of most Yale students can sometimes be forgotten and some poor decisions can be made, including wearing feathered headdresses, turbans, wearing war paint or modifying skin tone, or wearing blackface or redface.
These same issues and examples of cultural appropriation and or misrepresentation are increasingly surfacing with representations of Asians and Latinos.
Yale is a community that values free expression, as well as inclusivity.
And while students, undergraduate and graduate, Definitely have a right to express themselves.
We would hope that people would actively avoid those circumstances that threaten our sense of community or disrespect, alienate or ridicule segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.
The culturally unaware or insensitive choices made by some members of our community in the past have not just been directed toward a cultural group, but have impacted religious beliefs, Native American slash indigenous people, socioeconomic strata, Asians, Hispanic, Latino, women, Muslims, etc.
In many cases, the student wearing the costume has not intended to offend, but their actions or lack of forethought have sent a far greater message than any apology could after the fact.
There is growing national concern on campuses everywhere about these issues, and we encourage Yale students to take the time to consider their costumes and the impact it may have.
So if you're planning to dress up for Halloween or will be attending any social gatherings planned for the weekend, please ask yourself these questions before deciding upon your costume choice.
Wearing a funny costume?
Is the humor based on quote-unquote making fun of real people, human traits, or cultures?
Wearing a historical costume?
If this costume is meant to be historical, does it further misinformation or historical cultural inaccuracies?
Wearing a cultural costume?
Does this costume reduce cultural differences to jokes or stereotypes?
Wearing a religious costume?
Does this costume mock or belittle someone's deeply held faith tradition?
Could someone take offense with your costume and why?
We are one Yale and the actions of one affect us all.
So in whatever fashion you choose to participate in Halloween activities, we encourage everyone to be safe and thoughtful during your celebration.
Sincerely, the Intercultural Affairs Committee.
Now, I apologize that that was a bit long, but I felt like it was important to read it because it's really just gently nudging people to think about being inclusive.
It's not really scolding or anything like that.
So yeah, what did you think about the letter, firstly, before I move further?
Well, again, it seems eminently reasonable to me.
As you say, it's quite gentle, it's persuasive, it's just asking people to consider these issues.
This is the cultural conversation that they desperately, they don't want us to have.
But it is just a conversation.
Right, so this letter was specifically talking about, like, you know, blackface, like, seriously offensive costumes, right?
Now, I don't 100% agree with everything that they said in there, because they talk about, like, you know, never make fun of deeply held religious beliefs, and while I have I had to rethink the way that I do that, especially in regards to the religion I grew up in and left on a Western stage, only because it is a Western stage.
And then what I'm saying escapes to bigots and then is used and weaponized against people like me and people that I care about.
However, I don't think that it is a given that you should never, ever, ever, ever Make fun of someone's deeply held religious beliefs.
Of course, in the West, we must always be careful that sometimes religion and racism can intersect.
And in those situations, you must absolutely be cautious about, I guess, poking fun at a minority in a situation where it could be used to hurt them and harm them.
Portray them as stereotypes and whatever.
But like, you know, a lot of people wear like Pope costumes and nun costumes.
I don't think those are the same thing.
Now, in response to this very specific letter from the Intercultural Affairs Committee that was talking about these really offensive costumes.
Erica Christakis responded.
Now remember, she is also a co-master of the residential college, so she's supposed to be responsible for their lives outside of the classroom and just like their general mental health and well-being on campus.
This is just a part of her email.
I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative, Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious, a little bit inappropriate or provocative or yes, offensive?
American universities were once a safe space, not only for maturation, but also for a certain regressive or even transgressive experience.
Increasingly, it seems they have become places of censure and prohibition.
And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves.
Are we all okay with this transfer of power?
Have we lost faith in young people's capacity, in your capacity to exercise the self-censure through social norming and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you?
She also passed along a message from her husband.
Saying... Nicholas says, if you don't like a costume someone is wearing, look away or tell them you are offended.
Talk to each other.
Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.
Now, these are people that are like your go-to grown-ups on campus, on your residential They're supposed to be helping you have a more safe and healthy time at the residence.
And then you see that in response, To a very gentle letter asking people to just consider that maybe their pastime might be, like, racially or culturally insensitive.
Specifically to that, she responds, well, why?
Why?
Just look away.
I mean, isn't university a place where, you know, people can have free expression?
Like, to me, that feels like minimization to a huge degree.
What do you say, Caitlin?
Oh, I have some thoughts on the rhetoric.
Do I sound okay?
Yeah.
So she does two things in this email.
She takes something that was very specific in the original email, a list of insensitive things that people should think about whether they would feel comfortable doing it.
And she makes it more vague.
Elsewhere in the email, she's like, well, I went to Bangladesh and I got a sari.
Is it wrong of me to wear the sari?
Isn't that okay?
So she's conflating cultural appreciation and participation with explicitly racist depictions.
She's like, yeah, I didn't like category of things that the email is about in a dishonest way.
And then she also is making more specific claims because the email was very vague.
It was about like, you might feel regretful later.
So think about it.
That's the biggest consequence they can think of.
There's no like, you will get punished, you will get pulled up by the campus cops, or like, you will get taken into your dean's office and disciplined.
There's, there's like, there's no actual specific punishment listed.
But she is saying, oh, there is censure.
This is like, we don't trust students.
And the words that she uses are actually quite Yeah, absolutely.
That's a really good point there.
I didn't think about that, but absolutely.
That's another way that they used to blur the lines, right?
So I think the concept of widening and narrowing is really useful here because she widens where it's convenient and she narrows where it's convenient.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's a really good point there.
I didn't think about that, but absolutely.
That's another way that they use to blur the lines, right?
Sort of like Amat and Bailey, they'll present something really like, "Hey, this is just regular," that everyone would agree.
Like, can this person eat Indian food or can this person wear a sari?
Everyone would be like, yeah, what's wrong with that?
If you went to Bangladesh and you wanted to support a local artisan or business, there's nothing wrong with that.
But then she's applying it to this letter where they're specifically asking people, you know, maybe don't do blackface.
And she's like, well, just look away.
Yes, and it's not easy, isn't it?
When you see a costume that somebody else is wearing and it's offensive to you, it's that easy.
You just look away.
You don't worry about it.
The existence of the costume, the existence of people who think the costume is permissible, or fine, or funny, or whatever, that's not a problem.
It's just about how you personally feel about it.
So if you just ignore it, Problem solved, hey.
Or maybe in the most case scenario, you can just go and talk to the person wearing it.
Because that's always going to go just fine, isn't it?
Somebody from a, for instance, maybe a marginalized population is going to go up to somebody else wearing a costume that's insulting or appropriative to them, and they're just going to say, hey, excuse me, I wondered if I could have a word with you about... And that's going to be fine.
Nobody's going to overreact to that.
Nobody's going to be in danger or anything.
This email is from a different planet, isn't it?
But it's polite.
It's a tone thing here, I think.
They seem to think that they're entitled to have no angry reaction to this, despite the fact that it is, obviously, A political intervention, it's calculatedly and deliberately a political intervention into these issues from a, as Caitlin just said, it's distortive of the issues, it's damaging, but they're entitled to have no adverse reaction to it because it was all done very politely and politely unreasonably.
They got the tone correct, so how dare you be angry about this?
Yep, that's exactly it, and The point that you make about, you know, maybe a marginalized person not being entirely comfortable going up to someone who's wearing an offensive blackface costume.
Uh, like that, that's just, they have some serious blinders on, right?
Like that comes from a huge place of privilege to just say that, why don't you just go talk to them or look away?
Because you've never experienced the pain that comes with that.
You know, you've never experienced the danger that comes with that.
It's just that 99.9% of the time that someone does encounter, like, something racist, like a costume or, you know, a microaggression or something like that, they are quiet.
They do look the other way, because they don't want to be the problem, right?
And so, like, they're inventing this really intense idea of, like, everybody That will encounter your racist costume as if you're just going to be mauled all the time by people who are offended.
But people are quiet all the time because they don't want to get themselves into a situation where they're now getting attacked for being too aggressive.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I watched a bunch of the videos from that time today and a lot of them are clipped.
Um, so if you, there's like so many videos of this situation out there.
Firstly, he's like standing in the courtyard, Nicholas Christakis, and he's surrounded by a bunch of students who are clearly very visibly upset.
But you see that a lot of the clips begin from where someone is like shouting at him very loudly and very angry.
And they don't begin from say the person before who was very calmly explaining to him that look, I don't necessarily think you're a bad person, you know, but you just have to try and understand from our perspective how this looks that you're minimizing our pain and I think that you should apologize for that.
They're very calmly and rationally explaining it to him, but those are not the videos that are at the top of the search, you know what I'm saying?
I only know that because I think I watch like 10, 15 videos from different angles with different timestamps, and some of them start sooner, some of them start later, but you see that the most popular ones are starting from where, you know, this person is screaming at him in his face.
And I admit, it is...
It is an uncomfortable looking situation because he's very calm throughout.
He's trying to talk to them nicely.
But what the, the sentiment of what him and his wife put out there is really assholic.
You know, he may not be shouting at them.
He is the grownup in the situation.
These are like, you know, 18 to 20 something, 21, 22 year olds.
Right?
So of course he's going to be the more calm and reasonable one for one.
Yeah, and he's got the tone thing down.
They've got the tone thing down, obviously.
And he's choosing to have this conversation in this...
This place in this this context as well.
He doesn't necessarily have to and yeah, I mean you google this Christakis Halloween scandal or whatever it's it's pages and pages and pages of Cancel coach culture out of control students over sensitive hysteria about inoffensive, you know That's what you get pages and pages and pages.
If you just google that the keywords that's obviously the Exactly.
Exactly.
But I think I think it's, you know, maybe students are maybe some students are overreacting or something.
But it's interesting, isn't it, that we have on the one hand, we have this.
Well, students should be allowed to try things out, maybe be offensive.
And you have Bill Maher, for instance, saying, oh, yeah, be be a bit offensive, be a bit gauche.
It's fine.
It's good.
Until students and young people start doing and saying things that these people don't like, whereupon it's.
Well, how dare you say that?
Well, yeah.
Yes.
If college is a space for free speech and encountering every viewpoint and being young and putting yourself out there and making mistakes maybe, then why this hysterical intolerance of young people getting angry and passionate about... It's because they're supposed to get angry and passionate about the things that you want them to care about and think the things you want them to think and they're not being obliging enough to do that.
They're concerned about the fact that a sociology professor and a professor whose job is to be a student safety liaison, they're this clueless about this issue.
Well, I think that's pretty important.
Right.
If you just Google this story and you read the basics from any of these IDW-adjacent writers, even in The Atlantic or The New York Times or whatever, You won't get the full story, right?
Like, there's context that's missing that you won't get unless you really go looking for it in different publications.
So firstly, Yale is, or was, at the time these articles were written, I think 2015 or 2016, just 7% of the students are Black.
just 7% of the students are Black.
Black faculty even scarcer, and their share of total faculty positions has been virtually unchanged since the 1970s.
That's from Vox.
And I, and I looked it up now.
Apparently the percentage of students that are black is even lower now at 6.4%.
So that's a bit of context at how, how much of a minority they are and how unsafe it could make them feel when people that are supposed to be responsible for their safety and life outside of The classroom are being edgelords saying that, you know, well, why shouldn't students do blackface costumes?
Just to even oppose such a mild letter, just to even put yourself out opposing this, it's such a dick move, right?
And the other thing is that during Halloween weekend that year, Yale's Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity allegedly turned away a black woman student Saying that the party was for white girls only.
An incident that the fraternity disputes, but at least three students describe that to Susan... I can't pronounce the last name.
I'm not going to try.
Susan of the Washington Post.
Um, and that's also from Vox News.
So, like, that's important context.
If students are going through, like, really racist incidents, and then on top of that, figures of authority are saying, well, why shouldn't people do blackface?
It's pretty fucking horrific.
Yeah, and it doesn't give people confidence that there's going to be any sort of understanding from sociology professors, for instance, if these people want to question the wider and the deeper issues that stuff about costumes is kind of the The sticky-out bit, you know, on the surface layer of everyday life, you know, is this costume appropriate or not?
That's about age-old, you know, it's about structural, still-existing, age-old historical injustices, you know.
What confidence can you have in a sociology professor, for instance, who has those sorts of incredibly glib attitudes, that you're going to get any kind of traction talking about those more important issues?
I don't know.
Talking about Halloween costumes.
But I don't think anybody really thinks that talking about Halloween costumes is the most important thing.
This is another criticism that people get.
Oh, you're talking about Halloween costumes when you should be talking about these other issues.
I don't know that anybody thinks... well...
Halloween costumes are more important than those issues.
People are just... Halloween costumes and stuff like that, it's one of those ways in which people try to, I think, it's one of those ways people try to get a handle on these wider issues.
And it's kind of, you raise it only to be smacked down like this.
I think people find that pretty telling.
Yeah, I mean I can only imagine what kinds of Halloween costumes we're gonna see this year with the conflict in the Middle East, and I bet you, I bet you anything, there will be a lot of really insensitive, awful costumes.
But this is how, like, you push for awareness on these issues.
Why shouldn't people do that?
Yeah, and it's at times like this, with what's going on in the Middle East, that you really see how How touchy and prescriptive and hysterical the mainstream can be about what is or isn't acceptable public discourse and what is or isn't offensive.
Step out of ideological line on any of these issues and the consequences far dwarf, you know, being shouted out by some students.
Yeah, absolutely.
And they often say the students are being coddled if they ask for kind of sensitivity towards racial and cultural issues, right?
But what about the students that are being coddled because they can't stop being fucking racist and culturally insensitive?
Those are the students that, like, these guys push for the coddling of constantly.
Do not inconvenience them in the slightest.
That's right, don't even suggest to somebody that might be considering wearing an insensitive, insulting costume that degrades somebody else's culture, don't even suggest to that person that maybe think twice about that, because that's an outrageous attack on them.
Yeah, man, it hurts their little feels.
You can't do that.
You can't hurt their precious little feelings and make them, you know, self-reflect.
You can't do that.
Yeah, it's almost like some people's feelings matter and other people's feelings don't.
Hmm, very interesting.
So the students wrote an open letter to Erica Christakis and I thought it was really well done.
I'm just going to read a couple paragraphs from that if that's okay, just because I want like the whole feel of this to be out there.
And it took me like reading like 15 articles to get all these little pieces because they're not all together in one article.
I guess also because it was being reported One by one as these things happened, and I'm going back and looking at it all.
But yeah, I thought it was important to include this too.
And it's not all, it's not the whole thing, so it's just chunks that I thought were important.
In your email, You defend the right to wear racist or marginalizing costumes as free speech and accuse the Intercultural Affairs Committee of imposing bureaucratic restrictions on the student body.
You deem the call for sensitivity censure.
One which you say comes from quote-unquote above, not from the students, as if the repeated requests of many students of color do not count.
To equate the suggestion of the IAC, a committee created to challenge bias and promote cultural awareness, respect, and appreciation on campus with an institutional exercise of implied control over college students, further erases the voices of the students they stand to protect.
The contents of your email were jarring, disheartening.
Your email equates old traditions of using harmful stereotypes and tropes to further degrade marginalized people to preschoolers playing make-believe.
This both trivializes the harm done by these tropes and infantilizes the student body to which the request was made.
You fail to distinguish between the difference between cosplaying fictional characters and misrepresenting actual groups of people.
This is what Caitlin was saying with the widening and the narrowing.
In your email, you ask students to quote unquote, look away if costumes are offensive, as if the degradation of our cultures and people and violence that grows out of it is something that we can ignore.
We were told to meet the offensive parties head on without suggesting any modes or means to facilitate these discussions to promote understanding.
Giving quote-unquote room for students to be obnoxious or offensive, as you suggest, is only inviting ridicule and violence onto ourselves and our communities, and ultimately comes at the expense of room in which marginalized students can feel safe.
To be a student of color on Yale's campus is to exist in a space that was not created for you.
From the Eurocentric courses, to the lack of diversity in the faculty, to the names of slave owners and traders that adorn most of the buildings on campus, All are reminders that Yale's history is one of exclusion.
An exclusion that was based on the same stereotypes and incorrect beliefs that students now seek to wear as costumes.
Stereotypes that many students still face to this day when navigating the university.
The purpose of blackface, yellowface, and practices like these were meant to alienate, denigrate, and to portray a people of color as something inferior, Yeah, that's splendid.
I think that says it all, really.
on college campuses only reinforces the idea that this is a space in which we do not belong.
Sincerely concerned Yale students, alumni, family, faculty, and staff.
So I thought that was pretty well done as well.
Yeah, that's splendid.
I think that says it all, really.
I don't have anything to add to that myself.
Yeah.
And then I also noticed while looking up this story that Nicholas Christakis went on Dave Rubin to talk about this.
Not back when it happened.
And Sam Harris!
And Sam Harris, yes.
But Dave Rubin should be discrediting for, like, anyone.
And he went on Dave Rubin.
In 20-fucking-19, like, by then, Dave was beyond, beyond embarrassing, you know what I mean?
Like, Sam Harris still knows how to hide his, like, horrendousness to a point where a lot of people that aren't looking carefully enough miss it, unfortunately, and that's why I do a miniseries on him and focus on him, but Dave Rubin is, like, obviously embarrassing as fuck.
Anyone that would go on Dave Rubin's show in 2019 is not a credible or serious person, honestly.
And he describes himself as a classical liberal on Dave Rubin's show.
What a fucking joke.
I think I remember that, actually, and I think I remember sort of...
Ruben, that year, making a bit of a thing about Halloween.
I mean, these people, as we say, these people talk about this same stuff every year at the same time.
They always do the Halloween stuff every time.
But I think Ruben did a couple of videos or something that year.
I think he was on a kind of a Halloween kick.
But it's just the same old stuff.
It's just, you know, all the always offended mob and all that just, all that same crap.
Complaints about the always offended mob coming from the always offended mob.
The always offended, yeah.
Yeah.
The irony.
But yeah, I thought that that story just captures so much, right?
There's the professor being shouted down and captured in so many videos.
And then there's like the very polite discourse and the, uh, you know, various emails, uh, back and forth.
And it's just, it's really all that douchiness distilled, uh, Did both the Christakis' leave the university?
Yes, but on their own.
Yeah, so they did the same thing that Brett Weinstein and Heather Hying did at Evergreen.
They both jumped ship, presumably when they realized they had a new career as sort of right-wing culture war influencers.
Perhaps, yeah.
I think the complaint was that Yale didn't defend them enough, or vigorously enough, even though they did say that they stand up for free speech or whatever, but they also said that they value the culture of diversity and inclusivity, and that was apparently, you know, not cool.
You hear the narrative over and over again about this academic and that academic being hounded out, and it's never true.
Oh god, I'm completely blanking on her name.
The TERF professor over here in Britain who got supposedly cancelled for being gender critical and then immediately had a book deal and went on every television program.
What's her name?
I can't remember.
It doesn't matter.
Caitlin would know.
Yeah, it is the same story across the different types of bigots.
They always use it to Do the right-wing circuit, and, you know, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Sam Harris, and get more and more opportunities from it.
Of course, they always say, you know, well, in this situation, Nick Kristakis was saying, you know, we stood up to defend those offensive Halloween costumes, but these are all, like, costumes we would find offensive ourselves!
Yeah.
Of course, your perspective is standard and basic, so nobody else's should differ from yours.
Yeah, they're just such principled warriors.
All right, it's your turn.
What do you have?
My turn, aren't we?
Well, you've just presented us with a well-researched and serious story.
I'll do another comedy one then.
I'll do a story from the Daily Wire.
Twix Halloween ad features transgender child suggests violence against those who disagree.
Acceptable.
A new Halloween-themed commercial for Twix candy bars that features a cross-dressing child has social media fuming.
In the ad, a young boy in a princess dress opens his front door to find a mysterious new nanny, a goth-looking witch.
This is their writing on his doorstep.
When some neighbourhood girls question why the boy is wearing a costume when it isn't Halloween, he looks sad.
Immediately after, the pair visit a park where a bigger boy asks the cross-dressing child why he's dressed like a girl.
When the boy answers, dressing like this makes me feel good, the ostensible bully responds that he and his nanny look weird.
At that point, we're getting to the real evil now.
Listen.
At this point, in a sequence that suggests violence against minors is a reasonable response to having a different point of view over transgender ideology, The nanny uses her magic power to call up a windstorm to blow the bigger boy away.
The implication is that he may be gone forever.
Can you believe that Twix was actually advocating for the murder of children just because they disagree about transgender ideology?
It's amazing.
Wow, that is really fucking far-fetched.
Like, what?
And then you go down the article, of course, and you've got an outraged quote from J.D.
Vance, and you've got an outraged quote from Chris Burstkirk, and an outraged quote from Southern Baptist pastor and professor Denny, but, you know, they've gone around and asked all these people, what do you think about Twix threatening children with death if they don't believe in transgender ideology?
Everybody's very outraged about it.
I'm just going to try and summarise what I understood from that, because it seems so ridiculous.
Sorry, can you summarise?
The advert, as far as I can tell, it features a trans girl kid, and she gets a new Mary Poppins-style nanny, who's a bit gothic or witchy or whatever.
The girl is being bullied by an evil sort of Dudley Dursley type who's going against the authoritarian transgender ideology by pointing out that she looks silly in a dress whereupon the sort of witch nanny just makes the bully disappear and the Daily Wire are interpreting that as like the Twix Corporation or whatever the chocolate company is called saying that yeah if people disagree
With the transgender ideology.
They should be killed by witches, presumably.
Can you imagine if, like, in every magical reference, that's what the interpretation was?
Like, if you make someone or something disappear, then that means you're advocating for their murder in, like, a fantasy magic witch thing?
Well, it's pretty clear, isn't it?
Obviously, what they're saying is that people should have to swear on a copy of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, that they fully abide by transgender ideology, or they'll have to be put into a concentration camp.
I mean, it's pretty clear to me, I know.
Still waiting for Jordan Peterson to be fucking dragged off the pronoun jail, and that has not happened, unfortunately.
Yeah, I know.
It hasn't happened yet.
No.
So what else have you got?
What else have I got?
Okay, I have got a story from 2016 that Sam Harris was pretty sad about back when he had Twitter.
This is about a professor from the University of Oregon There was a Washington Post article titled, At the University of Oregon, no more free speech for professors.
And Sam Harris, of course, tweeted this out because it's very, you know, you can imagine what a tragic story of stifling free speech this might be.
Yeah, that's catnip for Sam.
Yeah.
Okay, so guess what?
This University of Oregon law professor And former chair of her department's diversity committee, apparently violated anti-racial harassment policies by wearing blackface at her Halloween party, an investigation has found.
So this professor, Nancy Schertz, She was white.
She claimed that she was portraying one of her favorite authors, a black man, and that she had been unfamiliar with the term blackface.
This is in 2016.
Okay.
This is a professor, a law professor, who is the former chair of her department's diversity committee.
Claims that she was unfamiliar with the term blackface.
She's an instructor at Oregon for 34 years.
So she had a party where she had 25 guests at her house.
But they were mostly law students and fellow instructors.
She, you know, talked about the party in class and she had announced that she was going to be dressed as the title of a book.
Now, I was reading this law blog called Above the Law by Joe Patrice.
I'm just going to read a couple of quotes from there.
So this book that she, you know, she's dressed as the title of was Black man in a white coat.
The professor later said her costume was inspired by Damon Tweedy, the African-American author of a best-selling memoir about conflicts of race and medicine.
So she chose this book to dress up as the title of, this book that talks about racism, and she chose to do blackface for that costume.
Shocking hell!
The amount of cluelessness!
Okay, so... Yeah, from the Law Blog.
An account of racism in the medical profession, and without noting any possible irony, decided the appropriate way to honor this work would be to caricature the author.
I mean, she wore black makeup on her face, on her hands, and an afro-style wig, even though the author himself is bald.
I just, I just, I can't believe it.
She was, uh, this is crazy, right?
It's crazy.
So she was put on like, I guess, uh, leave or paid leave while they did the investigation.
But guess what?
The very next year she was back at, uh, Oregon teaching a class about women and law and intersectionality.
Um, like here's the description of the, Women in Law course.
This seminar examines the effects of law on women and women on the law from historical, doctrinal, and theoretical perspective.
It explores feminist method, the difference dilemma, the omission of women's voices, with a focus on intersectionality with race, class, and sexual orientation, equality analysis, pregnancy, and the workplace fetal rights, rape, and battered women who kill and are killed. rape, and battered women who kill and are killed.
I mean, it just, like, it could be the onion, you know?
This professor that was the chair of a diversity committee decided to honor this book that she really liked about race and racism in the medical field and decided to do blackface to honor it.
And now she's back at the same school teaching a class on racism because she was cancelled.
You know, it makes me think that maybe legal academia could do with having some sort of theory about race, an almost a critical theory to do with race.
Yeah, that is an interesting idea.
Perhaps.
Perhaps they should.
That is stunning though, isn't it?
I found one part of it really interesting, which was that she chose to portray Damon Tweedy, who is famously bald, by putting on an afro wig.
Right?
It's just wild.
And then she claims she has never heard the term blackface.
Yeah.
She should have gone as the book Invisible Man, and then she could have just not gone to the party.
Well, it was in her house.
But yeah, would be nice.
And guess what?
She is the free speech hero that they were all rallying around.
Like, no free speech for professors on University of Oregon campus.
Like, come on!
How is that a free speech issue?
That is an inappropriate in-the-workplace issue.
Yeah, and again, she's not being arrested.
She's suffering professional consequences for having made a catastrophic professional misstep.
That's how it's supposed to work.
And not permanent consequences.
She's back at work teaching a class about race and women.
For fuck's sake, what kind of consequences is that?
Without warning the students, they just found out when they saw their schedules.
Oh gosh.
Which is what happened with Komarov after the sexual harassment scandal at Harvard, right?
He just showed up like, I'm ready to teach!
Oh gosh, can you imagine?
These are the victims of cancel culture.
Almost makes you wonder whether cancel culture is as cancel-y as they say it is.
Yeah.
It seems like every time you get these stories and then they don't follow up on them.
I found one, I was looking around on the Blaze website for stuff about Halloween to bring here and there was one about this teacher at a college, Washburn College, I think it was called, and she got in trouble for going to a Halloween party as Michael Jackson.
And the Blaze article is teacher, professor under investigation, charged, being looked into, all these dramatic terms.
What they mean is she's not being looked into by the police, she's not been charged with a crime.
Somebody said they weren't comfortable with the costume, that's what they mean by charged.
The college authorities are looking into whether she Whether she made an inappropriate behavioural move.
That's what they're talking about when they say being investigated.
And all that turns into a great big load of stories.
You Google it, alongside the Blaze story, all the usual suspects have done stories on this.
There's no follow-up stories.
You go to the college website, she's there, she's teaching.
Because of course she is.
Like, let's think about this.
Michael Jackson had a lot of very credible allegations of insane, horrific pedophilia, you know?
Absolutely, there's that as well, yeah.
It's a reasonable thing to question.
But my point is just that it was used by the right-wing gristmill, and then you don't get a follow-up, which is that Presumably she got a brack on the knuckles and everything went back to normal.
Yeah, and that's what tends to happen, but they don't kind of tell people that.
They just pretend like the world is ending at that moment, and that person was cancelled forever and ever and ever, and their life was destroyed, but no, it wasn't.
It wasn't.
You know, thinking about these things has really made me think about, and I know Caitlin and I were talking about this,
yesterday or the day before about uh john ronson's book uh are you being or or what's it called are you were you publicly so you've been publicly shamed yeah are you being publicly shamed yeah something like that so you've been publicly shamed and i had john ronson on my podcast um on in 2016 maybe 2017 and he seemed like you know he's a very nice and polite and reasonable guy but
I admit I didn't know him that well at that time and I've been following him since then and just occasionally I catch a glimpse of like him retweeting like Kathy Young or someone really horrendous like that and it's been more than just like a handful of times now that he's expressed support or defended people that
I know in my, uh, sort of, uh, radar are horrifying people like reactionary and right-wing and bigoted and MRA.
And so then I'm like rethinking that whole book because back then I thought it was like, you know, an earnest comment on how out of hand things can get online.
But now it feels like it was coming from a very ideological place, even though he is someone that tries very hard to not be ideologically one side or another, just more centrist-y.
So yeah, I've been thinking about it, and maybe I'll read it again and see what I think about it from a 2023 perspective.
Yeah, let's do a book club.
I want to read it again, too.
Yeah, yeah, we should.
I feel really bad.
I want to apologize to Jon Ronson, because I did silence him, I think.
Because like a week ago, he tweeted positively about the coddling of the American mind.
And I just like, commented that I was disappointed yesterday.
And now that post is gone.
And I'm so sorry, I censored you, Mr. Ronson.
Oh my gosh.
Oh, yeah, that was some hardcore censoring you did there by saying you're disappointed.
You're publicly shaming your mob.
Don't do it.
Or, you know, just you should be free to express your opinion, too.
Hey.
No, I think it's pretty clear that I'm not allowed to because it's on the wrong side.
Yeah.
It's the wrong kind of opinion, so I shouldn't be.
Because it's intimidating whenever I express it.
That's right.
We have a very cute sounding listener on here.
Oh yeah, sorry.
She's asking me to open a bottle of nail polish, which I will not be doing.
Why are you silencing her?
That's, you know, free speech.
Let her take the nail polish to your couch.
It's Halloween.
It's time for young people to experiment.
That's right.
Can she not be transgressive?
Is that not allowed?
Exactly.
Let her stop silencing the poor child.
Let her have her freedom with an open bottle of nail polish on your furniture.
What are you, some kind of snowflake?
Alright Jack, let's see, what else do you have?
I found one that's a bit more recent than my other ones.
That's from just a couple of days ago at Fox News.
Superintendent cancels Halloween, bans costumes in schools citing DEI and potential harm to students' dignity.
New Jersey governor complained on social media.
Seriously?
We can't let kids celebrate Halloween?
Give me a break!
Um, and it's a, it's a, you read down into it.
I mean, the headline is really all there is for, um, their audience to consume.
You know, they don't expect them to read down.
You read down into it and it's just, um, It's a nothing story.
It's just a guy that decided that in their school district they're going to have generic autumn decorations instead of Halloween stuff.
They're not banning Halloween parties.
They're not telling kids they can or can't do anything like that.
And when you read between the lines of what these local school district officials are saying, it sounds to me a hell of a lot like they just don't want to run the risk of becoming another one of these news stories.
You know, it's Fox News and outlets like that that turn local schools into these gigantic news stories when one person wears something that another person criticizes.
So, I think that's pretty telling.
Yeah, and let's not forget, who are the original cancelers of Halloween?
It's like religious Christians, right?
Who find it offensive and demonic or whatever.
That is Fox News' audience.
Well, that's a really interesting thing about the Wrights' attitude towards Halloween, isn't it?
Because they've really got a split personality about it.
Because while one half... Exactly!
The kind of stuff we've been, you know, like the Bill Maher thing, like, yeah, it's time to be offensive.
How dare you snowflakes tell me that I can't get out there and wear an offensive Halloween costume?
Or they're doing that thing we were talking about before, the Stephen Crowder thing, where it's like, yeah, Halloween's all about capitalism, et cetera.
You know, kids going out there and getting stuff.
The other half of the right are all, no, that's a satanic festival.
And it's about the devil trying to steal your soul.
You know, the version of Halloween that you get in Jack Chick Tracts.
Yeah, yeah.
My first experience with those in Canada was really something because in Saudi Arabia, I mean, we did not see those.
And Islam is not proselytized in that way.
So we did not even see like an Islamic equivalent to those.
So when I came to university here, it was really weird because my neighbor in the dorms was like this hardcore evangelical
Christian, and she would try to recruit me all the time, and my friends were like, all these like, I don't know, they would leave jokey messages about worshipping Satan on my door, and she would not appreciate that, and she would slip in some of these sweet little Jesus comics under my door, and I was like, what the fuck is this?
They have comic book shit about this?
It was really bizarre.
They are, I mean, apart from the fact that several of the tracts over the years were Halloween themed.
Jack Chick did several of the tracts that were actually about Halloween, some of the classics.
I think the all-time sort of classic, the one that's about Dungeons and Dragons being a satanic conspiracy, I think that's kind of a Halloween one.
But apart from that, there's the other association with Halloween, which is that hardcore Baptists, evangelical Christians in America, they give out Chick tracts instead of candy to kids that come around trick-or-treating.
And that must be a real bummer.
Yeah, that must be a real bummer.
So upsetting!
Yeah, talk about ruining Halloween.
That's fucking cruel.
That's worse than getting raisins or whatever.
I did think about getting a classic Jack Chick and sort of performing it for the space, but I don't know if that would have worked.
You need the pictures.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I would hear you perform it.
I would enjoy it, I'm sure, in your fancy voice.
But maybe next time?
Yeah.
I'll do it all in the Richard Dawkins voice.
Absolutely.
That was great.
You will always be my go-to British voice actor.
Whenever I do Douglas Murray quotes, I will be coming to you.
Yeah, so Halloween stories, they're a bit repetitive now, and I'm sure we'll get some awful ones after Halloween this year.
Unless, unless, by some miracle, people are actually starting to realize, like, you know what, this is not a hill I want to die on.
That is the first thing that I think about this Christaka stories.
Why did they want to stick their necks out for Opposing a letter that just gently asked people to just be more considerate.
Because every year you were seeing, in the early 2010s, like, it was constant.
These stories about insensitive Halloween costumes on campus.
That was, like, happening all the time.
And people did not want those stories to be happening on their schools.
So, naturally, they were trying to prevent that from happening.
Well, a lot of these emails are reacting to something that happened last year, too, where they're like, hey, can we not do this again?
Yeah, yeah.
But how could they?
It's just I don't know what it is about blackface that these guys will not let go.
That is not a way to expand your mind intellectually, right?
That's another thing that they talked about is like university is supposed to be a place for children to explore and expand their minds.
And it's like, no, I think you and your wife need to expand your minds and learn about the history of why these things are as painful.
As they are.
Like, are they not aware that most learning is not first-hand?
Like, you don't have to personally experience every consequence to learn about it.
You can teach each other, and you can learn from past mistakes of other people.
Right, right.
I mean, I don't know.
These people, IDW types, seem to have a hard time with that.
If it's not affecting me, it's not my problem.
Much like the flatterers, they have to have proof in front of their eyes that the Earth is round.
They can't rely on astronauts, scientists.
Right?
That's such a funny comparison, because this is the rational crew, and they would be so upset by that comparison.
But yes, I can see the similarities.
But you know, I am interested in hearing you guys' take on the religion aspect of Halloween costumes.
Like, I personally think, sure, when religion and race cross over, you gotta stay away from those costumes.
So do not do things that mock minority religions.
But outside of that, I don't see a problem.
What do you think?
Am I being too New Atheist-y?
I mean, it certainly will get in the way of my plans this year of being Sexy Pope, so... Ooh, that's a fun one!
No, I'm just kidding.
I'm being Anna from Frozen because I have a four-year-old girl.
Oh yeah, you can't be going as Sexy Pope with your kiddos, right?
That would be weird.
Yeah, but you know, I have done, like, none costumes, and some of my, like, most fond memories of Halloween have been with people in costumes.
Like, I don't know, one time there was, like, 70s Jesus.
One time there was, like, just weird stuff.
One time there was, like, a satanic priest.
I enjoy those costumes, I must say.
I don't know if that makes me an edgelord, though.
I don't think so.
Nobody's telling people they can't dress up as Dracula because it'll upset Romanians.
You know, this isn't happening in the real world.
So, I don't know.
Right, right.
Right, I think we just, you know, you have to use your own sense when you see these lists.
Some of these things might be silly, right?
Don't do this.
Like, I saw one that says don't dress up as the COVID virus.
Yes, that could be insensitive, but I just, I wouldn't put it in the same... I don't know, what do you think?
Yeah, just bring that one on me.
I mean, I wouldn't do it, so... Yeah, I guess I wouldn't do it either, but... I mean, it just seems pretty obvious to me.
People are at a Halloween party, maybe they, you know, There's going to be lots of people there who lost somebody to the pandemic.
I don't know, somebody walks in.
I don't know, it just wouldn't even occur to me to do that.
Should people be allowed to?
Yeah, I suppose, theoretically, yeah, they should be allowed to.
But again, nobody's carting people off to prison because of their costumes.
People are being criticised.
That's what's happening.
But then, yeah, of course, there are real world Implications people have lost people to that virus and it's not it's not funny.
It's not a joke, but well, they would have you believe that all lefties think the same way and have the same boundaries and those boundaries are ridiculous and That's not the case.
I think it's a It's a very, your mileage may vary situation.
However, there are some very clear no-nos, right?
We should all be able to agree that blackface, brownface, dressing up as any cultural stereotypes was just like, you just shouldn't be.
But actually, there just shouldn't be like a debate about this anymore.
We should Get to move beyond that.
Just don't fucking do it.
I do think that, uh, it's pretty funny how everything has been like turned into a sexy costume now.
I, I'm pretty sure I've, I've seen like a sexy poop emoji costume and, uh, yeah, it's just, it's just not very sexy to me, the idea of that.
So I think that's pretty funny.
Do you remember when the big panic about Halloween used to be, like, sexualized costumes for children?
A few years back, that's what it was all about.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was the right probably.
Probably, yeah.
It always is.
Well, yeah, as I said, they're the original cancelers of Halloween, which people often fail to mention.
It's kind of in the spirit of Halloween, really, because Halloween's about enjoying the idea of Monsters, isn't it?
And that's what the right are doing.
They're having a great time imagining the left as these monsters that are out to get them.
Out to get them by asking them to just be a little bit more sensitive to other people different from them.
Like that is just, that is monstrous to them.
That is truly horrific.
But if anyone else has any comments they'd like to make, anything else they want to chime in with, now is the time.
You guys were talking about the religious aspect of cancelling Halloween, and I have a vendetta against the dude who wrote Purpose Driven Life, whose name I can't remember, because I lived in that town where he had his first megachurch, and he cancelled Halloween when I was like 8 or 9, and I didn't get candy because of Rick Warren, that was his name.
I didn't get candy because of Rick Warren one year, and I still have a vendetta against him.
So I want to cancel Rick Warren if that's possible.
That's the request.
Absolutely.
We'll cancel him right now.
I mean, Caitlin is the ultimate cancelling authority, so I'll ask her to do it.
Yeah, I'm on it, dude.
Anything for you, Mustache Bob.
Yeah, also I go as Castro like every year since I moved to Florida, which is super easy because I can get OD cream clothes super cheap at a military surplus store and I have cigars anyway.
And the only issues I've ever had with that are people telling me, sir, that you can't smoke in this Barnes and Noble.
And one guy thought I was stealing Valor.
So I don't think it's like a real issue, people canceling people over their Halloween costumes.
Yeah, I think unless it's like really crossing the line, I don't, I don't think it's as bad a problem as they try to make it out to be.
Like, if you were to go by these stories, like, you'd be terrified of Halloween.
The left is forever canceling Halloween and Halloween costumes.
And that's just not the case.
I mean, I, I personally, Halloween is my favorite holiday so much that, I mean, we have Halloween decorations from like October until Through Christmas in my house.
Christmas is always Halloween-y in my house.
So, I don't know.
I don't know these Halloween-canceling wokes.
No, I've never met any of them either.
I am actually terrified, though, but that's only because I live in Florida.
That is fucking terrifying.
That's fair enough.
I mean, yeah.
I would be terrified.
Yeah.
You should dress up as, like, Ron DeSantis.
The issue with that is all my suits fit.
You should just, like, get some ill-fitting suit from, like, Value Village and do some really evil things.
And that will be your costume.
Or go as a banned book.
Oh yeah, you could do that.
Since I have a toddler, my costumes for the past few years have not been as interesting as they once were.
This year I'll just be like wearing a t-shirt with a little jack-o'-lantern printed on it and that's about it, unfortunately.
Embarrassing that I have to admit that publicly, but this is the truth.
I just wear even more black than usual, which is already quite a lot of black.
Maybe a t-shirt with extra skulls on it, you know, in addition to the normal number.
That's my Halloween costume, really.
Excellent.
T-shirt with skulls on it.
Always good.
All year round.
More skulls than usual.
I'm normally wearing a black t-shirt with skulls on it.
It's just for Halloween, I put more on.
Yeah.
No, this is good.
All right, everyone.
If there's no other comments, then we shall conclude this very spooky, scary space about cancel culture.
Okay. - Ah!
Oh my god, woke us!
Try not to have nightmares, everybody.
Diversity!
Oh my gosh, it's coming for me!
feminism all right everyone Have a good Halloween and be safe and don't be right wing!
