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Gadhafi set to resurface as Halloween costume

The weekend's news out of Libya sends me on a pilgrimage to the basement, where a musty corner reveals a plastic bin packed away in the 1980s and marked “Burt's stuff.”

I pry off the lid and stare directly into the bruised and bloodied face of my “Moammar Gadhafi Football.” My girlfriend (now my wife of 23 years) bought it as a gift for me in 1985 because it was so goofy. Who puts the likeness of an African dictator on a football? Although, now that I think about it, I probably would have bought an Idi Amin pigskin in the 1970s if one were available.

My adult sensibilities were neither sensible nor sensitive when I was in my 20s, and that lingered almost until the end of my 30s. Two months after Princess Di died when her speeding car crashed into a wall in a Paris tunnel, I committed an egregious affront to human decency by serving up “Diana Wallbanger” drinks for a “news of the year” Halloween party.

Today, however, I find a novelty item designed to turn a murderous dictator into a sight gag or a beverage mocking a young mom's fatal car crash to be in extremely poor taste.

There are, of course, plenty of Americans to pick up the mantle of bad taste.

“Celebrate the return of the biggest villain of the 1980s that wasn't in a ‘Rocky' movie with the Gadhafi mask,” reads one pitch for an $18.95 mask of the dead dictator. Even before Gadhafi's death, Internet merchants were hawking Gadhafi masks as the must-have Halloween costume for 2011. They apparently now are more popular than the Osama bin Laden masks, which got a bump from his death in May, but can now be found on clearance for $15.97. Still, a dead bin Laden probably will do better this Halloween than the Saddam Hussein get-up, complete with a noose, which has been hanging around since Halloween 2007.

Celebrity masks are the lazy, hot and itchy approach to Halloween, but the suburbs will sport plenty of homemade Gadhafis and bin Ladens this Halloween.

“People still do it. That will be anyone in their 20s and 30s all the way up to people in their 50s,” says Orrion Ferguson, a co-owner of the Costume & Magic Outlet in West Dundee. “That kind of falls into the terrorist category. People will do them.” Some want to add gore to their get-up, “and we'll sell them the makeup to do that.”

That costume can offend on many levels.

“But you go where your client wants to go,” Ferguson says. “Halloween is supposed to be scary, and seeing these terrorists walking around is supposed to put a chill down your back and remind you of how good we have it.”

Some of those 50-year-olds planning to be Gadhafi or bin Laden might be lucky enough to simply alter their Ayatollah Khomeini costumes from 1979. For real-life scares, we simply need to remember that Khomeini's demise set the stage for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has yet to achieve Halloween costume status.

The Mar Ray Costume Shop in Palatine, which pulled all its sheik costumes from the shelves for the first Halloween after Sept. 11, 2001, to prevent people from dressing as bin Laden, approaches Halloween costumes in a more “family” style.

“Ours are more traditional. They are not the bad things. They are the good things,” explains manager Cheryl Larson, who says Mar Ray's supply of long robes, tunics and head drapings are more popular after Halloween. “We still have them, and we use them at Christmas for shepherds.”

While dead dictators may be more popular than Charlie Sheen this Halloween, one tyrant never makes the annual transition from real-life scary to Halloween scary — Adolf Hitler.

“No, no, too much baggage there,” Ferguson says. His shop doesn't carry anything with Hitler's likeness or even the infamous Hitler mustache.

“Well, we carry them,” Ferguson says of the mustaches. “But they're called Charlie Chaplins.”

Even before his death last week, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was being hawked as a must-have Halloween mask for 2011. Courtesy of Costume Kingdom
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