November 14, 2007
Winner of Worst Halloween Costume Ever: The MBTA
MBTA employees are not endearing themselves to the public this week. First there was the driver on the C Line who injured a passenger by hitting the brakes at a bad time. She expressed her concern by going out for a smoke. Then there's the creep who made fake passes for the blind, which he sold to people who could see.
Now there's the bonehead who wore a noose to the MBTA office for Halloween. According to Dave Wedge, Jaime Garmendia claimed his getup was based on a Pagan ritual and wasn't intended to be an insult. How could he not have known what else a noose stood for? A person really must be tuned out of current events if he hasn't heard about the Jena Six and the appearances of nooses at Columbia University and the University of Maryland.
It gets worse. Garmendia claims he wore it to work in a different department last year, and no one had a problem with it. What's worse, the fact that this dude wore a noose two years in a row without realizing it might freak people out, or the fact that no one at the first office even noticed?
In defense of MBTA employees, the Improper Bostonian had a sweet portrait of Green Line driver Jimmy Holliday, who appears to be sane and reasonable. If you know of other sane and reasonable T employees, please, please restore our faith and let us know where they are!
Image from the "Diversity Day" episode of "The Office" from nbc.com.
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So I don't really understand all of the anger over this costume. My heart bleeds at least as much as the next massachusetts liberal, but by all accounts this guy did nothing to antagonize African-Americans. Yes, the noose has a very charged history for African-Americans and to use that symbol as a form of intimidation is absolutely despicable. What happened in Jena, and countless other places where nooses where put in a place to intimidate is so maddeningly hateful that it leaves me speechless.
At the same time, this noose was around his own neck, and to say that the noose is only a symbol of racism kind of takes away from the countless people who've been hung over time in Europe, Latin America, and South America. And again, it was around his own neck. Maybe I'm just white, and can't relate and I'm just being callous but the noose has never been solely a symbol of racism.
I completely agree with the above comment. The writer is obviously as ignorant as I because I must be out of touch with society and social issues as well. I did not here of the Jena Six hangings until I read the article about Mr. Gramendia in the Globe.
It seems the only person who was discriminated in this event was Mr. Garmendia, who has freedom of religion to celebrate the MExican religious holiday of "The Day of The Dead". The kid wore this same costume last year and no one was offended by it. This was blown completely out of proportion. It was Halloween!!!! I saw people walking around in Devil and Angel costumes, but no atheists moaned that it offended them.
Let us not forget that being hung by a noose was a common way for white criminals in the wild west to be killed as well as witches in Salem. I believe most of them were white too.
Poor kid.