I cannot tell a lie, even at the risk of my professional reputation in polite liberal-media company. When I read yesterday that New York congressman Mike Lawler — who faces a serious reelection challenge in a key swing district — had been accused by the New York Times of wearing blackface as part of a Michael Jackson costume for a college Halloween party in 2006, my first thought was “Did he have to whiten his face?”
Because I did that once! No joke, I seriously did: I didn’t wear blackface, mind you, I wore whiteface. During my younger and more esoteric days, I once went impromptu (and with no better last-second ideas) to a college Halloween party swathed in a stiff black leather jacket, with agonizingly spray-coiffed hair and one of my pupils massively and disturbingly dilated with ophthalmologist eyedrops, all done up in pancake makeup borrowed from the girls next door — as the cover of David Bowie’s 1977 album “Heroes”. (The only one who got the joke that night was the girl I was trying to impress, so for at least one Halloween I too was truly swimming like dolphins could swim.)
What I’m trying to say here is that I can appreciate a genuine tribute to musical heroes myself. But I was still a bit worried about Lawler, because keep in mind: This picture was taken in 2006, and at that point Michael Jackson was two and a half years from death, scandal-tarred, and whiter than a wraith of the Welsh moors. So in that sense, I almost have to give Lawler credit for choosing to salute MJ’s Thriller glory years instead.
I confess that I’ll never know what it is that inspires people to wear ridiculous costumes and then pose in front of cameras for the cruel and unblinking eye of posterity. (You will notice that no photographs exist of my own adventure above, or of me during college at all for that matter.) But given that Mike Lawler was a college kid a year after Robert Downey Jr.’s Oscar-nominated turn in Tropic Thunder, and wearing (fairly mild) bronzer in what is obviously a tribute rather than an insulting caricature, he has nothing to worry about. (That his race in his Dutchess County–centered New York congressional district is extremely competitive is the only reason you’re even hearing about it now.)
No, this isn’t a scandal at all, and the easiest way to prove that is by summoning the ghost of former Virginia governor Ralph Northam and his old fraternity photographs, where — folks, you really need to click the image to grasp the difference here — it remains unclear to this day whether Northam is the guy in Al Jolson blackface or the guy in the Klansman hood. What it is, perhaps, is a warning to all future politicians that I took to heart somewhere back when I was 16 years old or so: If anyone is around to take pictures, you will surely live to regret your stupid Halloween costumes.