So What is The Difference?
It started with an effigy of Sarah Palin hanging from a noose in Hollywood – the press chuckled and asserted “freedom of speech”.
“The sheriff made this clear: This is a country that has freedom of speech and we protect that right even when we think it’s idiotic and stupid and in bad taste and wrong to do,” said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for Los Angeles County Sheriff.
Now that the same is being done with Obama, a surprising different reaction.
Obama effigy found on U. of Kentucky campus
“College spokesman Carl Nathe said the effigy was found Wednesday morning. Police immediately took it down. A faculty member said he saw the effigy with a noose around its neck, hanging from a high tree branch.”
Officers with both the University Police Department and the Lexington Police Department are investigating the incident, and the Secret Service has been notified, Todd said. 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. Todd referred to the incident as a “despicable act.”
“We certainly believe in political expression, just not in this form,” he said.
Surprised?
October 29th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
[...] So What is The Difference? It started with an effigy of Sarah Palin hanging from a noose in Hollywood – the press chuckled and asserted “freedom of speech”. “The sheriff made this clear: This is a country that has freedom of speech and we protect that right even when we think it’s idiotic and stupid and in bad taste and wrong to do,”[...]
October 29th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Ummm, let me take a crack at it. 200 years of slavery? Is that the right answer?
October 29th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
As opposed to the hanging of women?
Both are terrible things – and the media ignoring the Palin hanging is reprehensible.
There is a real double standard.
October 29th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
ooh boy you’re stirring a hornet’s nest here.
October 29th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
The difference between the two actions is the symbol of a woman on a noose does not represent the symbol of a black man on a noose. The latter carries a lot of cultural baggage, and would be socially unacceptable for that reason alone. Both of them are pretty vile images, but don’t pretend that a noose on Barack Obama’s neck is the same as a noose on Sarah Palin’s neck.
October 29th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
“symbol of a woman on a noose does not represent the symbol of a black man on a noose” should be “symbol of a woman on a noose does not represent THE SAME THING AS A symbol of a black man on a noose”.
October 29th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
So it’s OK to hang, torture women as long as they are Republican?
No cultural baggage there.
The point is the media ignores, or pokes fun at the Sarah Palin hanging display. When it happens the other way they throw them in jail.
October 29th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
The same thing with the Godiva rides for UBC engineers. When we tried to go non-sexist by having both a girl and a guy, we were told a girl on a horse is on a pedestal for all to see in her shame, but a guy on a horse is a symbol of power.
Don’t disturb the left with ideas like “equality”, they’re too busy re-crafting the world to consider minor points like that.
oh, and “anon”, I’d urge you to look up some of Thomas Sowell’s writings on slavery. The anglosphere is just about the only part of the world where slavery is not currently found, and yet it tries to hold itself responsible for what was once seen as the normal state of being for everyone but citizens of the strongest state. There must come a point at which we are all equal, or the constant back and forth of revenge for past actions will cause more wars and ensure that racism can never die. If the effegy of Obama is wrong, then so is the effegy of Palin or Bush having the same thing done to it. This universally applies unless you think that Obama isn’t human, he’s a Black Man, and is therefore held to a different standard. I chose to consider him first and foremost a human.
October 29th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Remember the lynchings?
Perhaps an ACTUAL side-by-side photo comparison may shed some light as well.
How about analyzing the facts before making a knee-jerk reaction/photoshop.
October 29th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
See this is exactly why his holiness Obama is getting the free ride in the media. To dare question his motives, policies, or actions is to risk being labelled a racist and white america is so petrified of that stigma that they’re willing to risk handing the keys to the country over to a socialist political neophyte and his wingnut running mate.
Be careful what you wish for, America… change is coming – but I don’t think you’re gonna like what the changes are…
October 29th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
[...] Update: So What is The Difference? [...]
October 29th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
What about lynching would you have us remember, that the Democratic party from the southern states voted against making the Dyer anti-lynching bill law in 1922? Or would you have us forget that extra-legal mob killings happened in many places but we’re only allowed to remember some of them because they were because of race? Check out the ones in Washington State, they were more like the rest of the country in that the victims were white. But we’re not supposed to remember that anymore are we?
I will grant that the Klan routinely used it against “enemies” regardless of the victim’s skin colour. Which party currently has a former grand kleegle as a sitting senator?
Sorry, but the above comments stand
October 29th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Slavery? Is like the Holocaust whereby the entire of humanity has to grieve for eternity to make the current unaffected feel secure? You can’t pay a debt to somebody you don’t owe money to and expect that takes care of the people that really were stiffed.