Happy Friday! It’s Halloween Eve, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will dress up as a rancher. The Agriculture Department will close its annual farmers market season with recipe sharing and an antique cider press demonstration. Young children from a nearby day care center will trick-or-treat through the halls of the Department of Veterans Affairs like they do every year.
There’s nothing terribly scandalous scheduled (that we know of so far), and we invite government employees with Halloween office parties to Send The Eye photos, party gossip and winners of best costume contests. We’ll feature them later Friday or early next week.
Now, with a wink of The Eye to Al Kamen — and the shenanigans regularly featured in his “In the Loop” column — let’s briefly recall Halloween trouble of year’s past:
• The Racist Homeland Security Costume: An Immigration and Customs Enforcement employee was suspended in 2007 for wearing a costume that drew complaints from other workers as racially insensitive. The outfit of dreadlocks, dark makeup and prison stripes was deemed “most original” by top officials at a Halloween party.
• Al and Tipper as ‘Beauty and the Beast’: A Kamen classic from 1995: “The Walt Disney Co. — after receiving a request from Vice President Gore and his wife, Tipper — rushed to produce custom-made ‘Beauty and the Beast’ costumes for the Gores to wear at their annual Halloween party for the press.” (See the photo above.) Disney sent outfits with the Gores’ precise measurements to Washington, along with the costume designer and a makeup artist. The Gores never asked for a bill from Disney, but eventually received one for $8,365.
• Tehran, 1979: As Kamen wrote in 2005, “On Nov. 4, 1979, just a few days after Halloween, militant Islamic students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Various parts of the embassy were still decorated with ghosts and goblins and other scary stuff. So when the hostages were taken to a room with decorations, the Iranians asked what this was all about. One hostage explained, apparently closing the culture gap. “You do this to your children?” a confused militant asked.
REMINDER TO FEDERAL EMPLOYEES: Send your Halloween photos, gossip and costume winners to The Eye
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.