Displays vs. Plots To Kill
‘K. Do you see anything wrong with the Chair of the TN GOP suggesting equivalency between the white supremacist plot to assassinate Barack Obama and murder African-American children, and a Halloween display with Sarah Palin hanged in effigy?
Links here: http://www.loudoundemocrats.org/?p=1004
Ouch. While I can understand being appalled at the Palin display and how some may see it as a threat against Sarah Palin and John McCain, I do not think it is on par with a couple of guys who were legitimately plotting to harm Obama and other people.
That said, I think that using both as examples of hate is not out of line. While I don’t see a couple of idiots thinking hanging Palin in effegy is “art” or “humorous”, I don’t exactly find it hateful (more dumb) but can understand how other do see it as hate and how no one side has a monopoly of it. That it is the example chosen in this instance I think makes light of what these skinheads were plotting but is not something nearly on level with schemes to murder and assassinate.
So was the TN GOP Chair wrong? Not entirely. It’s not exactly apples to oranges, more a granny apple to an old, rotted, way past edible red delicious apple. Both are apples but neither are even close to being the same beyond that.
(This is a response to “Ask Me Something”, a feature where you the reader gets to ask me the writer a question and I answer it. Feel free to join in.)
Thanks for the reply. While I don’t substantially disagree, here’s a new (and sadly, not unexpected) development. This morning an effigy of Obama was discovered hanging from a tree on the campus of U Kentucky. Andrew Sullivan, I think, gets it right:
“This was done to an effigy of Palin too, in Los Angeles, to the shame of those morons who did such a thing. But a black man hanging from a tree in Kentucky has real resonance.”
An “equality” that is ahistorical is false.
Anyone trying to say it’s the same thing is clearly trying to mislead. While the person doing the Obama in effigy may not have personally meant anything racial by it, there clearly is a context for many Americans and I’d be hard pressed to believe anyone (especially in Kentucky) saying they are unaware of such an association.
Certainly hanging anyone in effigy is tasteless and unnecessary, it’s one thing when it’s Palin and another thing when it’s Obama and not because of politics.