Dave Barry's Spectacular Satire

Dave Barry: Your Child Deserves A Halloween Costume By Calvin Klein: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/30/2469698/your-child-deserves-a-halloween.html

Dave Barry is definitely one of my favorite authors. Not only is he hilarious, but he also uses his humor to get his point across. In this article from 2000, he satirizes the Halloween experience, especially the process of selecting a costume. In the beginning, he sarcastically compares picking an awesome costume for your kid with how good of a parent you are. He then uses extreme exaggeration to show how other parents make their kids' costumes, and uses parody, showing the script for a morning news show with a crazy parent talking about their kid's costume. Next, he describes how boring Halloween costumes were when he was a kid, and contrasts that with how crazy they are now. He follows that up by sarcastically listing all of the weird choices for costumes that kids have if they buy one from a store. Lastly, he lists some exaggerated safety tips for the actual trick-or-treating, like carrying a fire extinguisher, not letting your kids go out at night, and checking to see if their candy is safe to eat by eating it. Barry is very sarcastic throughout the article, and he easily gets his point across that Halloween is a crazy holiday.