Strange fruit.
Obama was hanged in effigy on the University of Kentucky campus today:
UK President Lee Todd said he was alerted about the incident by a professor who was riding his bicycle to campus around 7:30 a.m. The effigy was found on Rose Street, near the university's Mining and Minerals building. Todd said it is not known whether a student or someone else was responsible. "It's a very embarrassing situation that has happened on our campus, regardless of who did it," he said.Embarrassing?
(H/T: Sullivan.)
P.S.: NUTS TO THE RIGHT, NUTS TO THE LEFT.
Sarah Palin was hung in effigy at the West Hollywood home of a gay couple last week. There are extremists on both sides of the aisle, but let's be real. That's a lot different, as Sullivan notes, than an effigy of a Black man hanging in Kentucky. A lot different. And Black Republicans...remember that these are the people you're lining up with. Unless the GOP can separate itself wholly and cleanly from its race-baiting past and instead of exploiting racial tension, excise it wholly from its person, they'll never have my understanding, let along my vote. But here's the thing - they clearly don't want it.
Obama has to explain himself on everything from the Second Amendment to abortion rights, clearing his path to independents through concessions to the Right. But when has McCain, other than his half-ass and late apology at that Memphis motel, felt a duty to address the needs of African Americans? Shit - at least the Constitution stated that we were 3/5ths of a human being. The GOP treats us as less, and it's reflected in incidents like this.
(Cross-posted at 1,369 lightbulbs.)
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There was a discussion about this the other day, and while both acts are reprehensible, there is a big difference between the two.
I doubt that anyone in West Hollywood felt the least bit threatened by the Palin effigy and John McCain rising from the chimney. Perhaps disgust or revulsion from the bad taste the incident represents.
I doubt one could say the same for the African American students of the University of Kentucky.
October 29, 2008 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was the one arguing about the need to make the hanging of an effigy of ANY political figure an automatically and universally reviled act regardless of anything else.
I say this fully aware of the obvious historical facts regarding lynchings. It's actually because of such history that I take the position I do: I don't think ANY human being deserves the barbarous treatment being implied and demonstrated here. I dare anyone who has seen the photos documenting the history of lynchings in America or the witness testimony (always made even more powerful when delivered by people you know or are related to who personally lived through such times and events) to suggest that somehow such acts are less barbarous, less despicable, less reprehensible if the victim is not African-American.
Also note that the fact that hangings were once an accepted form of justice in this country and remain so in many places elsewhere in the world desensitizes many people to the sheer brutality of the act. I'll leave the argument of whether this is a just form of execution (or if any execution can be just!) for another forum and time. But the concept of someone being rounded up and tortured, burned, hung, etc by some crazed mob dispensing vigilante justice (racially motivated or otherwise) is another matter entirely and one I can't countenance.
October 30, 2008 12:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't go splitting hairs here. Both are equally unacceptable, and equally reprehensible.
Whether it's KKK or gay gay gay, it's wrong to even differentiate.
Politically speaking, you've got your head so far up there, you could do your own colonoscopy.
In fact, the queens in WeHo gave the racist thugs in Kentucky political cover. Thanks, Mary. Thanks, Miss Thing. Now get lost. What you did or started was not only morally wrong, it was the political equivalent of crack smoking dumb!!!
October 30, 2008 10:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
You know, it wouldn't break my heart to have these "Republicans" feel some deep-in-the-heart fear. Existential fear. Run home and hide under the bed fear. It might just scare some civility back into their sorry selves.
October 29, 2008 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Or they might panic and be inspired to emulate McVeigh.
October 30, 2008 1:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
On the other hand, blacks might burn their neighborhoods down if Obama loses?
October 30, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that once the election is over and John McCain stops try to scare the hell out of everyone and Senator Obama takes the helm and they realize he is not a Muslim, not the antichrist, that he does good things... this will get better... it will be disillusioning for those able to take it in.
I feel sorry for McCain/Palin followers because they really are being lied to, used, manipulated, seduced into fear and rage... (I know some of them are going there too easily on their own but many are putting their trust in McCain/Palin and being manipulated by their sleaze).
It makes me want to fight all the harder to give them a better chance for a better future too.
October 30, 2008 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't kid yourself. The better Obama does, and the more popular he becomes as President when the economy turns around, the crazier the wingnuts will become. It will only confirm them in their beliefs that he's a Muslim sleeper agent, lulling the country into a sense of false security with all that peace and propsperity and improvement in public discourse before he reveals his true self and imposes Sharia on the whole country.
I've long been one to talk smack about people who were stuck in the 1990s politically, but that's one lesson of the 1990s I fully expect to see repeated. The better we do, the crazier people who like Malkin and Coulter and Cavuto will become.
October 30, 2008 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
What a typical load of self-regarding crap! If the left hangs someone in effigy, it's just as deplorable as if the right does it. Doesn't matter who it is.
One act is not more deplorable than the other. They are equally deplorable.
Why?
Because all humans are created equal. It's what Americans strive to realize in our government (not that we're successful at it), and it's a fundamental tenet of Christianity.
No ifs or buts. It's an absolute. No need to split hairs.
But if we can't grasp that quintessential concept by now, then we are going backward, not forward.
Apparently, Scientific will never get it, because to him, Obama counts more than other people. It's the flaw in all of his arguments.
It's never been Obama's argument, however. Thank god.
P.S.: Reading Andrew Sullivan makes you stupid.
October 30, 2008 9:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Right. It's absolutely not legitimately possible to believe that these incidents are in any way morally differientiated by the fact that black people were subjected to a century of brutal political, social and moral repression by a continuious campaign of state-sanctioned terrorism, and that the hangman's noose was the primary tool and most important symbol of that campaign.
Similarly, its just as reprehensible to scrawl a Swastika on the side of a church as it is to do so on the side of a synagogue. No moral distinction between those two events because the Christians are going to have exactly the same emotional response as the Jews.
And casually threatening a man with rape is just exactly as bad as threatening a woman because, after all, it will have exactly the same emotional impact on both of them and will thus be equally damaging.
And telling a young healthy person he should be is just as bad as saying that to someone who's elderly or handicapped. Anyone who thinks differently is spouting self-regarding crap because everyone is exactly equal.
And, indeed, stealing a dollar from a rich guy is just as bad as stealing a million dollars from a charity. No moral distinction between those acts whatsoever.
October 30, 2008 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Edit: "telling a young healthy person he should be euthanized"
October 30, 2008 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Doesn't matter who it is.
One act is not more deplorable than the other. They are equally deplorable.
Why?
Because all humans are created equal."
Agreed.
October 30, 2008 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's always different, isn't it? Hang a woman in effigy, but not a black man? Give me a break. You need to get your clock fixed. The only good thing I can say for the gay couple that put up the Palin spectacle is they didn't put her under a dryer too long or make her wear tight shoes.
October 30, 2008 10:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, of course they must be equally deplorable! Sheesh!
I am honestly astounded by the comments here by those that fail to see a little, teensy bit of a difference. No amount of geographical, cultural, historical factors to distinguish the two, nosiree! None at all! Nada!
October 30, 2008 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's not so much a failure to see the factors that would distinguish the two but rather a refusal to allow any distinguishing to take place. By setting up a different standard for one, you give cover to the extremists on the other side to justify their acts.
October 30, 2008 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
He doesn't have to set up a different standard. He already has one. He is about to enter a world where the Democratic Party 's enlightened 50% of the electorate will govern the stupid, racist and violent 50% who didn't vote for Obama. I wish him the joy of it.
October 30, 2008 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
As I stated above, "while both acts are reprehensible, there is a big difference between the two."
That difference being that the reprehensible act of the gay couple in West Hollywood can hardly be construed as a statement meant to terrorize all of the white people in their neighborhood.
That difference being that there is no way to disassociate the Obama effigy from the history of racial intimidation of the South, and that whoever created the effigy, had in mind the added effect of terrorizing the African American students of UK, as well as the local population.
By the way, did I fail to mention that they are both reprehensible? To argue that the UK act is less reprehensible because a rich gay couple in Hollywood did it too, is absurd. You're trying to equate a regional act of intimidation, with a local act of reprehensible stupidity, but can you really argue that all of the women of Hollywood now feel threatened by their neighbors?
October 30, 2008 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
How do you know the all of anything anywhere feel or don't feel anything? People are responsible for their own feelings. Stop projecting.
October 30, 2008 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why, oh why, won't you say they're both reprehensible?!?
In all seriousness, I appreciate Atreideshawk's point that discussing how they're different can be seen as defending the indefensible, thus giving cover to those on the right who would do the same to Obama. (Or maybe that's not his point. Maybe it's just that those who do the effigy lynching on the left give cover to those who would do it on the right. Of course, no one is defending those who did the effigy lynching on the left, whether they think there's a difference or not.) What I can't understand are those who can't see how they're different.
October 30, 2008 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course we are aware of history and historical differences. But what we're talking about is giving aid and comfort (and excuses) to the enemy. It's an argument you don't want to have. You should have the sense not to rise to the bait.
A simple DON'T GO THERE should suffice.
October 30, 2008 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
One way they're different is that Palin was hung in effigy first.
October 30, 2008 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right.
October 30, 2008 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink