If nothing else, Slate’s “Dear Prudence” is always good for a laugh as clueless people write in for relationship or etiquette advice and then they get SHUT THE HELL DOWN by Prudie. Take this fine entry from last week’s column in which a married woman with children pondered whether or not she should expose an affair she had with a married man years earlier, who was now running for political office on a conservative platform she found offensive — even though it meant jeopardizing her own marriage. I’ll spare Prudie’s response in lieu of my favorite gif ever.
So, while I thought that was one of the most ill advised Dear Prudence columns I’ve ever read, this week’s takes the cake. Please, please, please let this turn out to be a hoax:
I live in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, but on one of the more “modest” streets—mostly doctors and lawyers and family business owners. (A few blocks away are billionaires, families with famous last names, media moguls, etc.) I have noticed that on Halloween, what seems like 75 percent of the trick-or-treaters are clearly not from this neighborhood. Kids arrive in overflowing cars from less fortunate areas. I feel this is inappropriate. Halloween isn’t a social service or a charity in which I have to buy candy for less fortunate children. Obviously this makes me feel like a terrible person, because what’s the big deal about making less fortunate kids happy on a holiday? But it just bugs me, because we already pay more than enough taxes toward actual social services. Should Halloween be a neighborhood activity, or is it legitimately a free-for-all in which people hunt down the best candy grounds for their kids?
—Halloween for the 99 Percent
Did she really sign off “Halloween for the 99 Percent?” I think she really did that. You can read the whole response here, but basically Prudie tells her to stop being such an entitled dickhead. Maybe “Halloween for the 99 Percent” will bring her next hard take to a different advice columnist. “Dear so and so, our corporate office keeps insisting that we contribute to this ‘Toys for Tots’ charity drive, and I don’t want to sound selfish, but I already buy toys for my own children. Shouldn’t taxpayer money cover this sort of thing? —Literally the Grinch.”