Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro were delicious at Jillian Manus-Salzman's latest charity bash.
At her "politically incorrect" themed benefit for the Stanford Cancer Center earlier this month, the California philanthropist had her conservatory transformed into a hall for "Irreverent Dictator Tributes." A cheese model of Hitler and a vegetable Castro bust stood next to an ice vodka luge of George W. Bush that poured red and blue cocktails from the ears.
Her decorators and caterers also transformed rooms in her San Francisco Bay-area home into a "Betty Ford Clinic," where guests snacked on cookies shaped like Valium pills and Prozac capsules, and "Dick Cheney's Hunting Lounge," adorned with fake taxidermic human heads and staffed with waiters serving quail. The bathroom was renamed "Larry Craig's office" in reference to the U.S. senator arrested at an airport restroom last year for lewd conduct.
The event, which raised $600,000 (U.S.), was a massive hit with guests, Ms. Manus-Salzman said. And despite the high-society attendance, no one complained of being offended by the evening's risqué humour.
"All I heard was, 'This is just what we needed,' because everyone could all let their hair down," she said. "Really, I think that's the spirit of it - it's okay to be politically incorrect sometimes, and sometimes you have to be."
From the upper crust to the college fraternity set, politically incorrect parties have become a popular forum for those looking to push buttons and poke fun at societal taboos.
MySpace, YouTube and Facebook are rife with entries dedicated to politically incorrect-themed parties in which guests are dressed up as caricatures of class and racial stereotypes. One YouTube clip shows a partygoer dressed as a country bumpkin and another wearing a large sombrero and an exaggerated mustache, while posters on the wall bear such slogans as "So you're a feminist? How cute!!!" and "My SUV loves Iraqi oil."
But the line between what's considered funny and what's foul can be a treacherous thing to negotiate. Politically incorrect parties have sparked outrage at several U.S. colleges, including Macalester College in Minnesota, where last year one student dressed in blackface and another attended as a Ku Klux Klan member.
Student parties at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., and South Carolina's Clemson University have also raised alarm among students and faculty members over racial stereotypes.
Partygoers, however, say the chance to dress and act in ways that would normally be considered inappropriate is the very appeal of these events. Taking cues from the intentionally offensive comedy of South Park, Family Guy and Borat, they're testing the boundaries of what their peers will tolerate.
Brian Flasch, 39, of Vancouver has attended multiple politically incorrect parties, including a trailer-trash party at which guests dressed up in men's white undershirts or revealing halter tops, and a Betty Ford Clinic party, where partiers came as their favourite drug-addicted celebrities.
The parties weren't intended to make light of serious issues, he said - they were just harmless fun.
"In everyday life, we don't have a time to let go. You have to be polite, you have to say the right things," Mr. Flasch said. But at these parties, "people can say what they want, and there's no negative feedback."
Still, anything that derogated people's beliefs or religion, or that made fun of issues such as child molestation in which innocent people are seriously harmed, was off limits among Mr. Flasch's friends.
"There are some subjects that you can't make light of," he said.
At a recent staff party at the bar where he works, Chris, 30, of Whistler, B.C., saw one colleague dressed up as a pedophile in a trench coat, while another came as a disabled volleyball player. Two others dressed up as the twin towers of the World Trade Center with model planes crashing into their sides.
