Seasonal cancel culture

NEWS AND OPINION:

The judgmental crowd has not taken a day off on Halloween. HBO host Bill Maher has noticed that protests against certain types of costumes for cultural or political reasons are still a factor. Dressing as former President Donald Trump, Elvis, coronavirus, monkeypox, British royalty or ethnic characters are discouraged on “forbidden costume lists” published by several news organizations.

Enough, Mr. Maher said.

Anything to do with the “overturning of Roe v Wade” also made one of the lists.

“If Halloween is too much for your fragile sensibilities and you’re worried about seeing someone wearing something that’s on the forbidden costume list, just stay the [expletive] home. Every year we go through this [expletive]. Lists of costumes you better not wear, lest the night of irreverent dress-up spiral into something that resembled fun,” Mr. Maher told his audience.

Halloween was now home to “Cancelvania.”

He also had a message for those news organizations which were promoting these lists.

“Here’s an idea clickbait websites: I won’t tell you how to harvest and sell my personal data and you don’t tell me what I can wear on Halloween,” the host said.

“Halloween is supposed to be outrageous. It’s a festival of the sacrilegious and a celebration of the grotesque. From zombies to ghouls to bobbing for apples in other people’s saliva. Yet, every year, there’s a new list of offensive things we shouldn’t do on the day that’s all about being offensive,” Mr. Maher noted.

Nov. 1, he advised, has turned into “All Scolds’ Day” — when post-Halloween critics pounce on those who wore something questionable.

Then there’s this summation to consider on Monday.

“Bidenflation is all trick, no treat,” advised the Republican National Committee in a lengthy analysis of the rising cost of Skittles and Starbursts (their prices up by 42% and 35%, respectively) and pumpkins. That cost is up by 8%, according to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.

“Why is Halloween so expensive now? If a witch broom is $50 then it better make me fly,” tweeted one distraught mom recently, according to Newsweek.

Another fine mess

“The Biden administration was not handed an economic mess, but it created one. It did not save the economy, but sent it into a stall. It has not made people’s lives better, but made them demonstrably worse. The numbers prove it,” reports The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation.

The rate of inflation when the current administration took over: 1.4%, with real wages on the rise.

“In just 18 months, Mr. Biden managed to push inflation to over 9% and prices were rising nearly as fast in a single month as they did in the entire year before Mr. Biden took office,” the Daily Signal summarized.

“The average worker has seen prices rise so much faster than wages that it has been the equivalent of a 5.5% pay cut since Biden took office. That may not sound like much, but it adds up to more than $3,000 a year in lost income,” the publication said.

Joe Pinion’s opinion

Let us spend some time with Joe Pinion, a former Newsmax host and Colgate University football player turned Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate candidate in the state of New York. He is now challenging Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who has been in office serving as a congressman or senator since 1981.

Mr. Pinion has left his role at the Florida-based news channel to run for office.

“I quit my job to run for U.S. Senate and went back to Yonkers, New York. And told my mother about it. She cried, but as I told her and I’ve told people all across the state, there are some things worse than not having a job. It’s called not having a country,” Mr. Pinion told Spectrum News 1, a 24-hour local news channel.

“I trust the voters that they will recognize that if they hold up a mirror to their own lives and ask themselves a question — are they better off today than they were 42 years ago when Chuck Schumer went down to D.C. or 24 years ago when he was elected to the United States Senate — I think the answer will be, they are not,” Mr. Pinion said.

He is the first Black candidate nominated by either major party for the Senate in the history of New York state.

“I’m not here running to make history, but it is important to note that perhaps that might be part of the reason why one out of three black children lives in poverty in a state that is supposed to be so progressive, perhaps that might be part of the reason why three out of five children in the Bronx live in poverty, why the poverty rates in Buffalo are absolutely out of control,” Mr. Pinion advised.

“Pinion believes he can win by forming an uncommon coalition in which not just Republicans but disenfranchised Democrats, Blacks and minor party voters who want change and will look to him,” wrote Ryan Whalen, a Spectrum New political reporter covering New York state.

Never a dull moment

“A newly discovered, “potentially hazardous” asteroid almost the size of the world’s tallest skyscraper is set to tumble past Earth just in time for Halloween, according to NASA,” notes Live Science analyst Ben Turner, who pored through the space agency’s technical descriptions of the event.

“The asteroid, called 2022 RM4, has an estimated diameter of between 1,083 and 2,428 feet — just under the height of Dubai’s 2,716-foot-tall Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. It will zoom past our planet at around 52,500 mph, or roughly 68 times the speed of sound,” the new organization advises.

Poll du jour

42% of likely U.S. voters agree that “things are going very badly” in the U.S. today; 66% of Republicans, 50% of independents and 13% of Democrats agree.

31% overall say things are going “somewhat badly”; 22% of Republicans, 32% of independents and 39% of Democrats agree.

20% overall say things are going “somewhat well”; 8% of Republicans, 15% of independents and 37% of Democrats agree.

6% say things are going “very well”; 4% of Republicans. 3% of independents and 11% of Democrats agree.

Source: A CBS News/YouGov Battleground Tracker survey of 2,119 registered U.S. voters conducted October 26-28.

Follow Jennifer Harper on Twitter @HarperBulletin.