Life imitates “South Park”: Hitler costume in school

The TV show “South Park” is usually brilliant satire of real life and current events. But rarely does life imitate the craziness of South Park.

Yesterday, in Brooklyn, it did.

A high-school student wore what was believed to be a Charlie Chaplin outfit to school for Halloween. But after the child removed his overcoat and bowler-style hat when arriving at school, he was actually wearing an Adolf Hitler costume! D’oh! Link

Granted, he did NOT win the costume contest.

From the AP (Link):

Walter Petryk, 16, defended his costume Tuesday, insisting it was a satire of the Nazi dictator.

But some students and officials at Leon M. Goldstein High School were not impressed.

School administrators ordered the junior honors student to remove his beige coat bearing a red swastika armband or possibly face spending the day in the office, Petryk told the New York Post for Wednesday editions.

Petryk refused, saying his parody was protected by his right to freedom of expression.

Petryk’s stepfather, Howard Bloom, who is Jewish and lost relatives during the Nazi genocide, told the Post he was initially “very disturbed” by the costume but nonetheless defended his stepson’s rights.

“If he had wanted to advocate my genocide, I wouldn’t have allowed” the costume, Bloom said. “That wasn’t the spirit in which he was doing this at all. He was doing it in the spirit of Monty Python and Mel Brooks.”

In a famous early episode of South Park titled “Pink Eye”, the porky Eric Cartman wore a Hitler costume to school, which caused the school principal to freak out and show Eric the educational film “Dressing Like Hitler in School Isn’t Cool.” Eric didn’t quite get the message.
The principal made efforts to put a sheet over Cartman’s head to turn him into a ghost and hide the racist costume. However, Cartman ended up looking like a hooded Klu Klux Klan member. Not an improvement. (more on the episode at Wikipedia)