* Updated *
The Halloween party may be over during which University of Pennsylvania student Saad Saadi wore a suicide bomber outfit to the home of University President Amy Gutmann, but the controversy surrounding this "costume jihad" incident is not. Following tepid apologies offered by the student and the president, Winfield Myers and Michelle Malkin remain hot on their trail. So does JMK. Other cutting commentary includes that of Hugh Hewitt and Victor Hanson, plus my own counter-jihad Halloween costume, a Homeless Suicide Bomber, all linked in a previous post. Update (11/5): The Jerusalem Post on the controversy.
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Ms. Gutmann's concise statement (as of 7:58PM PST):
Each year, the president hosts a Halloween party for Penn students. More than 700 students attend. They all crowd around to have their picture taken with me in costume. This year, one student who had a toy gun in hand had his picture taken with me before it was obvious to me that he was dressed as a suicide bomber. He posted the photo on a website and it was picked up on several other websites.
The costume is clearly offensive and I was offended by it. As soon as I realized what his costume was, I refused to take any more pictures with him, as he requested. The student had the right to wear the costume just as I, and others, have a right to criticize his wearing of it.
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My thoughts:
In her "statement" (which in no way pretends to be an apology), Ms. Gutmann appears only to have changed costume rather than show up dressed for work as an Ivy League president. Her new costume is that of a traffic cop waving the public past an accident, declaring, "Move along, folks, nothing to see here." Her summary statement refuses to directly address the many concerns bloggers and other critics have raised regarding Mr. Saadi's "costume jihad": in sum, What are the moral limits to Halloween attire during wartime? This would require Ms. Gutmann a) to take a stance on what is morally acceptable in terms of society (not merely in terms of her personal sense of the suicide bomber costume) and b) to recognize that the United States and/or its strategic Middle Eastern ally, Israel, are at war with Hamas, Fateh, and Hezbollah (whose martyrs and/or soldiers Mr. Saadi's costume most closely resembled). That she shies away from asserting either of these is not becoming of her office. A concerned public has a right and an obligation to press her for clarification.
While I sympathize that Ms. Gutmann may have been caught on camera in an unguarded moment, here are two anecdotes that inform how I judge her statement. The first comes from being a tourist in France shortly after a terrorist bombing there. Riding the Metro alongside policemen who toted automatic rifles instilled in me pretty quickly the respect that that kind of weapon demands. And that's without having handled one myself. I suspect that only someone without any firsthand experience of weapons would dimunitively characterize a plastic replica of an AK-47 as a "toy gun." The other anecdote is the shock I received a few years ago during another American holiday, a Thanksgiving dinner I shared with a Palestinian-American family. After the meal, we were relaxing around the apartment when a two-year old came toddling into the living room with a keffiyeh-style headband wrapped around his forehead. (This is nearly identical to the costume prop Mr. Saadi wore; someone had just dressed the little boy up in it, obviously.) Perhaps there's a debate to be had about how one man's mark of a terrorist-in-training is another man's symbol of national pride. As with the submachine guns on the French subway, however, when you get even a glimpse of the real implements of the real War on Terror you start to consider both the implements and their symbols with unprecedented gravity. I suspect that Ms. Gutmann (as well as Mr. Saadi) have been largely sheltered from the implements of this war, and hence are significantly challenged when it comes to responding to concerns about the "costume jihad" with the gravity those concerns deserve.
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(Note: Mr. Saadi's apology, posted late last night on one of his own web sites, has been removed as of this evening. The full text of it appears at Ms. Malkin's original post this matter.)
Related: Judith asks, "Who Gets the Last Laugh?" Indeed. Plus, a comment I left at Never Yet Melted.
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