My opinion regarding this is probably skewed, because a good friend of mine who is a staunch conservative sent me a photo of his Halloween costume this morning by email. He rigged it out of computer parts and stuff to look like a suicide bomber and he wore it at work that day. He had an added prop, a book with a fake book jacket which was "Jihad for Dummies."
It cracked me up, because I know him and I know how much he hates the terrorists. I told him he was lucky he wasn't emailing me from Guantanamo today, but it did amuse me, especially with the book prop.
It was ridicule, not sympathy for the terrorists. Maybe this situation here was slightly different. I don't know. It's normal to hate the terrorists, but it's not always wrong to ridicule them, either.
Imagine if he had been seen by someone who lost a loved one to a suicide bomber in Iraq or Israel.
Being the political person that I am, I think that an effort should be made to publicize this and hang it around Ed Rendell's neck. Swann could use some help.
It's not wrong to ridicule them, no. My sense of this "costume" incident though, is that it isn't serious, it's the sort of non-thinking that unfortunately goes on alot at schools nowadays. It's my opinion they thought that it was, as he put it, a 'scary' costume, but it's also obvious they thought it cool and fun to mimic a terrorist.