I don’t consider myself to be an uptight person. I’m far from it, in fact.
I also enjoy Halloween and dark humor as much as the next guy, if not more.
Tastelessness? Yeah, I’ve been known to venture into that territory on occasion as well. What a surprise, right?
Having said all those things, I should also tell you I still believe there are some lines that just should not be crossed.
And I’m thinking the folks at Kings Island may have done just that.
Not just crossed them, mind you, but jumped up and down on them. Repeatedly.
According to a story posted on the Web site of Cincinnati television station WLWT, the amusement park had been planning go to to extra lengths to shock visitors to this year’s edition of its annual “Halloween Haunt.”
Those include the use of live animals in one of the attractions, and, even more distastefully, a “graveyard” featuring skeleton displays representing recently deceased celebrities.
Among those who were to have been represented, according to park spokesman Don Helbig, were Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ted Kennedy, Ed McMahon, Steve McNair and Heath Ledger.
There was a picture of the Farrah display accompanying the article. The skeleton sported a blonde wig and was posed exactly like she was in the famous 1970s pinup poster, and even sports a red bathing suit like she wore in that iconic photo.
One word comes to mind here: Sick.
Lest we forget, Fawcett fought a long, painful and courageous battle with a rare form of cancer. Anyone who saw the television special that detailed her struggle knows what a horrific toll the disease and the treatments she received for it took on her body and how wan and emaciated she looked toward the end.
And Kings Island was thought it would be honoring her memory by displaying a skeleton dressed as her? That’s just unbelievably wrong. She was, after all, a real person, and, to the best of my knowledge, she never did anything to be disrespected in such a manner.
Even worse was the McNair display. The skeleton representing the former Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens quarterback was holding a football helmet with a hole in it. Draped across its lap was a female skeleton clad in a skimpy negligee.
Did the idiots who conceived this twisted little display stop to consider that McNair — who, as you will recall, died a horrific, violent death at the hands of a crazy woman with whom he was having an affair, who also committed suicide — left behind two young sons who no doubt still miss their father terribly?
How do you think those kids would feel were they to actually visit the park and see their dad portrayed in such a manner? How would you feel if you were in their shoes in such a situation?
Michael Jackson, I’ll grant you, might actually have appreciated what Kings Island was planned, given his taste for the macabre and given the fact that he actually played a zombie version of himself in a music video once upon a time.
Overall, though, one has to wonder: Have we really become so jaded, so cynical, so benumbed to violence and death, that it takes something like this to jolt us?
Apparently so.
I do have to give Kings Island credit, though _ as soon as complaints over the display began surfacing on the Internet and on Cincinnati-area talk-radio stations, the park announced it was yanking the display.
That’s good news, although I still can’t fathom how the people in charge there could have possibly thought it was a good idea to begin with.
KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.
