First off, a little DBTG update (that’s an acronym for this column; rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?). My last DBTG column centered around Todd Henderson, a rich guy complaining about not having more money. I pointed him out as a Guy Not To Be (GNTB, for the acronym fans) because if you’re already rich, you should never complain about not being richer especially when the economy’s in the tank and most everyone else is struggling to, y’know, live on a daily basis. Well, Mr. Henderson quickly apologized, deleted his post, and quit the blogosphere altogether. You would think that the brouhaha he faced would dissuade anyone from committing the same blunder.
You’re a silly person. You see, now we have New York Times columnist, N. Gregory Mankiw, complaining about not having more money to give to his kids. To be fair, he mostly said that rich people need incentives to work, and higher taxes would stifle that incentive. Right, so if you’re highly talented and make a lot of money because of it, you’re not going to continue to do a good job when you’re taxed a little more out of nothing but pride? And you’re not going to work more to make up that difference? So, Mankiw is not quite as stupid as Henderson, but he’s still a rich person complaining about not having more money in this economy.
Now on to this column’s GNTB: Rich Iott!
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about him, and if you don’t remember his name, you’ll undoubtedly remember him as the guy who dressed up like a Nazi Waffen SS for fun. Mr. Iott doesn’t dispute this since it’s impossible to when there’s a clear photo of him smiling with a bunch of other Nazi cosplayers. But he says it’s all about historical reenactment and how this “small country from a strictly military point of view accomplished incredible things.” They took over most of Europe and Russia, and that was “incredible.” Historically, militarily speaking that is.
Now, if it was all just an reenactment of World War II battles for historical and educational purposes, then that’s one thing. But as the Atlantic article points out, the Wiking group (the name of this reenactment crew) has really sanitized the Waffen SS that they don’t even look like the monsters they really were. Basically, it’s like in a Civil War reenactment, the Confederate soldiers pretended to be super nice and respectful to blacks.
So, okay, maybe dressing up as a sanitized Nazi for reenactment purposes for fun still might not be enough to outright call Mr. Iott a Nazi sympathizer. Except now we got some context of what re-enactors are like from someone named karoli at Crooks and Liars:
I'm going to share my own personal experience here. I was married to a Confederate Civil War Re-enactor for 10 years, and it is far more than an "interest in...history." They choose the side they're sympathetic with, for starters. They research the period, the uniforms, the attitude, and the social climate surrounding the period. They don't just re-enact it. They live, eat, breathe and admire it.
They will argue strategy, tactics, nitpick historical authenticity, and political implications for hours. It's costly, requires not only an investment in weapons but also in authentic costumes and other pieces. You can find them scouring antique shows looking for photos, letters, memorabilia, and other pieces of that time period.
Does this make Mr. Iott a Nazi? Well, the jury’s still out on that. But I’ve seen people at comic book conventions dress up in intricate costumes as their favorite characters. They have to make their own costumes, and they invest a lot of time in these things, and they don’t just do it for the heck of it. If you’re going to spend hours of your precious free time making a costume, or finding old authentic Waffen SS uniforms and equipment, you’re pretty damn well interested in the person or group your cosplaying as.
Yes, Mr. Iott does dress up as other non-Nazi people in other historical reenactments, and that’s fine, too. But none of them have the stigma that a Nazi has. I don’t think I have to explain this, but apparently, I do. General life rule for living: never dress up as a Nazi for fun!
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