Happy Halloween

PJ: A little Halloween political humor courtesy of Slate Magazine.

The Republican War on Trick-or-Treating
The right doesn't want our kids to take handouts.

By Dahlia Lithwick

This week, Republicans in Congress have decided to take some time off from taking time off to announce a bold new jobs initiative: As part of the effort to reward the nation’s hardest working job creators, and punish the “growing mobs” of whining, entitled, spoiled youngsters who have taken to the streets with their irrational, socialist demands, House GOP Leader Eric Cantor this afternoon announced that America’s problems will be solved by a forward-thinking congressional initiative. Quoting himself in a speech that he almost gave last week, Rep. Cantor explained that “Republicans believe that what is fair is a hand up, not a hand out.” And that’s why Republicans today declared war on trick-or-treaters.

It’s become increasingly clear to the Republican leadership that growing mobs of masked youngsters, overrunning America’s pristine public thoroughfares with their unreasonable demands for free Skittles, are both frightening and disruptive. “If you give a kid a candy corn, he’ll eat for a day,” explained Cantor, in unveiling the new program. “But if you take away his candy corn and make him grow his own sugar cane, he'll grow up to have a job you will eventually send overseas.”
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Probably nobody has done a better job of identifying the real villains in this country than Rush Limbaugh, who has taken a strong stand against the “perpetually lazy, spoiled rotten" kids who are out there trick-or-treating each and every year. It’s the “juveniles and spoiled brats” screwing up this country and it’s time to stop giving them free stuff. And make no mistake about it. These roving bands of misfits and thugs want your stuff. Just ask Bill O’Reilly. It starts with those small packets of Smarties, but if you take your eyes off the little succubi for even a nanosecond, they’ll soon be hoofing it down your front walkway with your decorative planters.

Or, as GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain recently put it to the Wall Street Journal, describing these gangs of restless children and their malicious efforts to blackmail the wealthy in exchange for candy: "Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have candy and you're not rich, blame yourself!" Another GOP contender for the presidency, Michele Bachmann, who has, by her latest estimate, been a mother to 30,000 children, spoke out in favor of the new bill this afternoon to say that nobody should be catering to a class of people who are not even able to “pick up their own trash." “When America’s children can do their own taxes, they can get tax credits," Rep Bachmann explained, “until then, they should stop ringing doorbells and get busy putting other American children back to work.”

Cantor’s proposed ban on Halloween will be replaced by a tax cut on candy for any American who eats more than a million pounds of candy per year. Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who first floated the idea of doing away with Halloween back when they proposed a national ban on global warming, have argued that the best way to ensure that American children get candy is by giving more candy to the Koch brothers. Reached for comment at a super-secret candy conclave full of super-secret guests—including, if we were to name-drop just a few, Willy Wonka, Baby Ruth (in town anyhow for a Federalist Society conference), and the Three Musketeers—the Kochs would not explain their antipathy to trick or treaters. But well-known anti-trick-or-treatist Glenn Beck was on hand to explain the economic theory behind cutting candy to the poor while offering candy breaks to the rich.

“See that chocolate fountain,” explained Beck, pointing delightedly to a chocolate fountain. “See how all the rich creamy chocolate at the top eventually pours down to the bottom? Well that’s what makes America so great. And if America’s youngsters want free candy on Oct. 31, the best way for them to get it is to stand at the bottom of the Koch Brothers’ chocolate fountain with a Dixie cup.”

Cain went further, explaining on Face the Nation that America’s trick-or-treaters are simply “jealous" Americans who "play the victim card" and that their childish efforts to launch a class war by intimidating the honest candied-class into giving them free things should not be rewarded. Sarah Palin, reached for comment at her home in Alaska, had yet another suggestion for America’s greedy young people. “Drill baby drill,” she hollered, explaining to Greta Van Susteren that the United States is doomed unless it can wean itself off its dependence on foreign candy, by drilling into the untapped caramel reserves of places like ANWR. Palin was immediately offered a $20 million endorsement by the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.

In unveiling today’s jobs initiative, known by its official title Defense of Our Tasty Snacks (or DOTS), Cantor went back to his recent talking points about his grandmother’s generation and how American children, by asking their grandmothers for free candy, have slowly corroded the American Dream. It’s only by locking our doors to the freeloaders and the lazy, the spoiled and the entitled, the masked and the sippy-cupped, that America can become great once again.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2011/10/the_republican_war_on_halloween_trick_or_treating_kids_shouldn_t.html