New Haven School Bans Clowns... For Halloween... Because They're Too Terrifying?

That’s it. We’ve ruined it. We can’t have nice things. We are OFFICIALLY at the point where we have released the Pterodactyls to kill the bats we released to deal with the rats. The only thing left is the giant meteor and then the peace that comes from endless sleep.

Let me try to walk you through how New Haven public schools got to the point where they banned clown costumes for Halloween:

* “Creepy Clown” sightings have been on the rise in communities all across America. Apparently, people are dressing up in clown costumes and standing there, menacingly, or chasing people. Also there have been increased “hoax” reports, with teens calling police and telling them that clowns are menacing the town.

* Police have had to step up patrols. Hey, the more police chasing clowns, the fewer police available to open fire on me for having a broken taillight.

* Whatever good, clean, public-disturbance fun the kids were having was ruined when some jerks started upping the game by making generalized threats on social media.

* One of the terror clowns called himself “New Haven Clown” and made threatening Instagram posts about local high schools.

* I, Jack, The Pumpkin King, sighed mightily.

* The New Haven public school district banned clown costumes and (wait for it) “symbols of terror” for Halloween.

I went through all of that so you could follow along with the logic of this ban, to the extent there is any. This is not the “PC Police” helicoptering in and declaring war on Halloween. There was a threat, they’re trying to handle it.

And yet… it’s probably the most stupid way possible of dealing with the threat. It should go without saying that CLOWN COSTUMES are not threatening the good students of New Haven, a PERSON is. As Richard Kimble might say, “YOU FIND THAT MAN,” you don’t need to outlaw the use of prosthetic limbs. What if the clown man dresses up as Cookie Monster and does something horrible on Halloween? What are you going to say then? Ban Sesame Street costumes next year?

And don’t even get me started on “symbols of terror.” What does that even mean — in the context of Halloween, no less? Here are some costumes that would terrorize me this year:

* Police officer
* Donald Trump
* “Killary”
* Pretty much any kind of Frog
* Debt collector
* Curt Schilling
* Jose Fernandez (too soon)
* Hitler (unless Hitler had a “Make America Great” hat, then it’d be funny)
* Bill Cosby
* Obama Bin Laden
* Osama Bin Laden (again, subject to the hat choice)

Please tell me, which one of those costumes will be banned? More to the point, define ANY rational basis for banning some, but not all, of those?

Look, Halloween is an incredibly stupid holiday that is LITERALLY about scaring children. Some people go the extra mile and use it for straight-up social intimidation, while others think it’s just a fun time to promote cultural stereotypes in hopes of getting laid. You can’t police it all. You can’t make all the ouchy things go away.

If you are easily offended, stay home on Halloween and put a sex offender sign in your yard so everybody leaves you alone.

It’s terrible that some people are out there, threatening schoolchildren. But banning clown costumes isn’t going to bring you one step closer to catching the bad guy.

New Haven School District Prohibits Clown Costumes [NBC News]

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Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. In 2008, he dressed up as Jesus, and when asked he said, “I am Barack Obama, my child.” It’s the only time he actually got Halloween right.