Operation Misery: Month 8, Week 4, Day 6.

Sub-titled: "I May Have Spent Too Long Around Drag Queens."

Yesterday (31/10/13) marked the Pagan festival of Halloween. Here in the UK we don't really celebrate Halloween as an event. That's because in what seems very much like a formal attempt to impose Protestantism on the nations Catholics and Heathens we instead celebrate November 5th. Sometimes known as "Bonfire Night" or "Guy Fawkes Night" this marks the anniversary of the failed 1605 attempt by Catholics to assassinate the Protestant King James I by blowing up Parliament during its state opening.

Traditionally in the weeks running up to November 5th British children build effigies of Guy Fawkes and then go door to door demanding money (historically a penny) for their efforts. This of course fills a nice Trick or Treat shaped hole and mimics the way that wars between Catholics and Protestants were funded at the time. On the night itself everyone celebrates by letting off gunpowder filled fireworks in an effort to mock Guy Fawkes' failure to light the fuse on the gunpowder underneath Parliament. Finally we build big bonfires and chuck the effigies on them to commemorate the rather gruesome way that Guy Fawkes and his fellow plotters were executed for treason.

Funnily enough this quaint little tradition hasn't really caught on outside of the UK so in most of the rest of the western world Halloween reigns supreme. This is particularly true in the United States where having sold their souls to the devil long ago they will happily embrace any excuse to get people to spend money.

The traditional US Halloween celebration begins in the early evening when children go trick or treating. This involves the children door to door dressed in elaborate costumes to offer householders either the opportunity to give them a treat in the form of candy or allow them to trick them by playing a small prank on them - toilet rolls in the bushes is apparently a classic. After the children have gone to bed the adults come out to play going to elaborate and drunken costume parties. Particularly in vapid places such as Hollywood this gives all the young starlets and tartlets the opportunity to try to outdo each other and have vicious little swipes at each other through their choice of costume. For example last year Lady Gaga was incredibly rude about Rihanna.

Although they are in Barbados this year Rihanna and her crew decided to celebrate Halloween by going dressed as Mexicans. More specifically they went as Mexican Gangsters with an attempt to hide the racism behind the fact they were Zombie Mexican Gangsters. I thought this was a fantastic choice because it not only portrayed Rihanna and her crew as Mexicans which are core to the immigration reform debate it also brought up the fact that a significant proportion of illegal immigrants from South American generally bring with them a lot of drug related violent crime. That is one of the significant reasons that particularly Tea Party Republicans object to more immigration from South America. However I feel it was brought up here in an attempt to mock and circumvent a genuine concern by portraying it as racist.

The true beauty of Rihanna's Halloween costume came though from the preparation work the US Establishment (CIA etc) had put into it. A few weeks ago Rihanna's 'love rival for the affections' (personally I prefer the term " fellow victim") of Chris Brown Kerruche Tran did a similar Mexican Gangster themed photo-shoot to promote her fashion label. This meant that with the help of Melissa Forde a lot of people assumed that Rihanna's choice of costume was an attempt to have a dig at Kerruche Tran. This prompts a lot of speculation that Rihanna and Kerruche Tran are engaged in something of a B*tch Off for Chris Brown's affections. Personally I think Melissa Forde went in too hard because I suspect that having actually had to put up with Chris Brown over the last few months Kerruche Tran may well be at the point where she'd be happy to let anybody else have him.

The confusion created by any potential conflict between Rihanna and Kerruche Tran suited the handlers objective perfectly though. That because rather then trying to create a direct comparison between Rihanna and immigrants the handlers are instead trying to build an almost subconscious connection between the misery Rihanna experiences and illegal immigrants in the minds of US voters.

That way a wave of emotion is created that drives through immigration reform without anyone having the worry about pesky little details such as the associated crime and the driving down of US wages and living standards that large scale immigration creates.


(Originally Posted) 16:05 on 1/11/13.