In case you're a functional human being, and not a constantly simmering pot of barely contained, Daily Mail-reading moral outrage waiting for the chance to boil over, here's a story about some kids being stupid that most people will find genuinely offensive:
Two students at the University of Chester went to a fancy dress party as the Twin Towers, complete with exploding plane motif. They won a prize for "best costume."
Obviously, this is distasteful. Repugnant, even. I'd go so far as to say that they both deserve a slap and to be ostracised completely by their peers. To my mind, they dug the hole a lot deeper with their statement, which ran:
"We never meant to be offensive, but we apologise if any offence was caused. The idea was to depict a serious, modern-day horror that happened in our lifetime and was not intended as a joke."
This is obviously a cowardly attempt to avoid blame and recrimination when they suddenly realised that most people don't find mass death within recent memory particularly funny. Go back and look at the picture - is that two young ladies making a serious political point about terrorism, or two pissed tarts feeling smug about how "edgy" they're being?
The brain-shattering stupidity of the average student aside, however, a serious point has inadvertently been raised. Namely, at what point does it become alright to laugh at a subject? Prince Harry was pilloried in the press for turning up at a party dressed as a Nazi, but it's worth bearing in mind that he arrived at that party thirty seven years after Mel Brooks released "The Producers," which deals in part with an all-singing, all-dancing celebration of the Third Reich.
What's the difference? Is it that The Producers was deliberately meant to offend? The same argument could be made for Harry's costume. Is it that Mel Brooks is a Jewish war veteran, and Harry is a member of an unelected ruling class of German descent? Somehow, this makes it feel like Brooks has earned the right to make the Nazis a subject of fun, whereas Harry, long removed chronologically, is still somehow too close to the subject for most people.
The only possible defense I can see for the University of Chester students is that, if they are eighteen years old, they would have been six years old at the time of the 9/11 attacks. They probably don't remember, and honestly may not fully grasp the horror of the event because they're young and too ignorant, which once again speaks volumes about the education system of which they are still currently a part.
By this same logic, much like Prince Harry, they haven't earned the right to make jokes, yet. Whilst I'm all for making jokes about basically anything, a key point is that a joke should actually be funny. In times of crisis, gallows humour sees a lot of people through. This means that even during the worst circumstances imaginable, people are making jokes about them. These people, however, are actively involved in the situation and as such aren't going to cause any offense. They've also earned the right to trivialise their experiences, if indeed they can, simply as a coping mechanism.
Dressing up like an historical atrocity isn't funny in and of itself, and it takes a special breed of pinheaded, vacuous bitch to think otherwise. Whilst there is not, and should never be, a law against wearing a costume of any kind in public, those who choose to wear unpleasant or insulting costumes, slogans, placards or insignias should be prepared to be pelted with fruit and heckled by others.
They sure as shit don't deserve to win gift certificates, as the girls above did, and in case anyone else finds that morally insulting, the competition was held in a club owned by the Stonegate Pub Company, which means I won't be going to the Cider Press on Gloucester Road for a while.
Or to Chester University.
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