Obama decorative headstone is poor tase

Halloween is upon us, and that means decorations which have begun to rival, at least in terms of scope, Christmas, appear routinely on our streets and in our shops. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, so long as they are kept to within at least some bounds of civility. Given that most of the season's decor is macabre, that can no doubt be a chore. But, we believe anyway, the effort ought to be made, and can be made successfully. Indeed, that the effort really must be made when decorations are public.

Which brings us to a complaint by a neighbor about a home in Oklahoma which adorns its lawn with gravestones as part of its, well, we suppose celebration would be the word, Halloween fun. That itself isn't the issue: fake headstones are all over the place in October these days, and most of them (the ones which ask, Izzy dead?, for example) are innocuous enough. Yet these folks have amidst their front yard graveyard a stone which says across the top "Obama" with fake blood running down its face, and a question mark rather than a date of birth or death. The homeowners say it has been there for years and meant as a joke about the President's birth, and thus a question about his eligibility to be President. A new neighbor feels it is too disrespectful of our Chief Executive.

We have to side with the neighbor on this one. We are no fans of the President but he is the President just the same. Anything that hints at the wish of his death, which a fake tombstone by its very nature surely must, is in taste too poor to be displayed. This isn't to say that the force of law should be used to remove it, of course. But it is to say that people ought to police themselves better about whatever they put on public display. And if it's on even your own property but well in view of passers-by, you have an obligation to be considerate of that.

We would apply this principle to any President, so it is wrong to apply it with regard to Barack Obama. Good taste should never be set aside, even with so eerie of a holiday as Halloween has become in these United States.