Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Hangings in America
The recent degeneration of political discourse in the form of effigies of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and now twice reported effigies of Democrat Presidential candidate Barack Obama are a sad commentary on the state of America.
Chad Michael Morrisette, the creator of the Palin effigy that has hung since the weekend, says its art and humor. At the same time he acknowledges that such an image is distasteful and offensive, "The image of a hanged black man is a lot more intense than the image of a hanged white woman, for our country and the history of our country," he told a local station.
Yet the effigy remains despite outcry from local official as well as across the nation. The local sheriff says there’s no law against “bad taste” while the FBI responded, "It's clearly distasteful, but it doesn't appear to be a violation of federal civil rights statutes." A special agent with the Secret Service says, “incident seems to be a harmless, though unusual, Halloween display.”
Meanwhile, effigies of Obama have had brief appearances at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and at George Fox University in Oregon. Both effigies were immediately taken down, there were no references to free speech or art, only offered apologies and disgust.
The students who allegedly confessed responsibility for the GFU incident will be punished according to school officials while the president of KU, Lee Todd, “says that he plans to personally apologize to the Obama family on behalf of the university and that he is ‘personally offended and deeply embarrassed by this disgusting episode.’"
Why the disparate difference in response to these equally despicable acts of feigned violence? Do we in America, in the interests of “tolerance” fail to understand the significance of the act of hanging someone in effigy? Is good taste, or conversely abhorrent behavior, solely dependent on the political position of the one so depicted?
Perhaps so. The Islamic world well recognizes the power of the image of hanging one in effigy. We have seen images almost ad nauseam of President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Many Americans have found these images disgusting and disturbing, yet we have never heard outcries against them from those on the left who now find such images of Obama offensive.
From this lack of response one can infer that as far as the left is concerned, it is just fine and even acceptable practice to disparage, demonize, and disgustingly depict anyone on the right, or for that matter anyone who disagrees with the left.
"We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty." - G. K. Chesterson
Labels: effigy, election, liberalism, Obama, offensive, Sarah Palin, tolerance, values
