Here we go again. Two Kentuckians face some kind of criminal charges for hanging Barak Obama in effigy. They claim it was in response to a California hanging of a straw Palin. Thank you MSM for inventing a symbol we didn't need.
Right down the street from me, there is something in a white sheet hanging from a basketball hoop by a noose. It's Halloween. Fortunately for them, its race is indeterminate, all ghosts being white as far as I know.
Seeing that not long ago, criminals of all sorts were hanged by the US government and seeing that the most treasured symbol in these United states is a Roman torture implement upon which people were hanged, I demand that the invented symbolism of certain knots be declared null and void. If it's legal to say "hang him" it's legal to hang a bed sheet stuffed with straw regardless of whose name is on it and particularly on Halloween. Jesus has been hanged in effigy for at least 1700 years and I'm fully in support of our right to blow off steam by hanging politicians of every variety in a symbolic way without being accused of advocating hanging them in person.
Is it ridiculous that it's the noose we obsess about and not the crime? Is it ridiculous that it's OK to burn a straw man, blow him up, throw him off a cliff, but not to hang him if and only if the scarecrow represents a black person?
Damned right it is.
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6 comments:
Amen ...
These laws simply perpetuate the us-them dichotomy ... Racism will always exist as long as we have these types of laws.
Mr. McCain has voted at least twice on an amendment to the Constitution making it a crime to burn or "desecrate" the U.S. flag. At the same time, he's on record supporting states' right to fly the Confederate flag, on free speech grounds presumably. So, it doesn't surprise me that there is confusion on where the line is drawn on what's a free or legal way to express one's views in this "free" country. Like so many other things, I suppose the principle gets adjusted based on where most of your potential constituents stand on the issue in question...
Well said RR.
In the elite's continued insistence on balkanizing America, they create laws that make everyone a hypersensitive baby just looking to be "offended".
Pretty soon it's going to be a crime to think anything that isn't sanctioned by the State. Wasn't there a movie about that - the Minority Report?
The stupidity is typified by Palin who tells us that criticizing her criticism of Obama may be violating her first amendment rights.
But my point is that if we insist on protecting other people's symbols, allowing them to designate anything as meaning what they say it means, we are in fact holding freedom hostage.
If a cross, to me, calls up images of the inquisition, why can't I insist all crosses be taken down? If a hanged man is a symbol of Jim Crow, why not banish the Tarot cards?
There's no end to this nonsense and sometimes a Halloween decoration is just a Halloween decoration.
And even if it isn't a Halloween decoration and was meant as a racial taunt, it still should be protected.
I believe there's a difference between telling people to commit a crime - to incite to riot or to do something dangerous and expressing an ugly sentiment.
Hanging someone in effigy is on the permissible side, in my opinion. Advising people to lynch someone is on the other side.
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