With Election rapidly approaching and Halloween creeping up in a few hours many people have begun to combine the two occasions in quite disturbing ways. Effigies of Palin and Obama have sprung in several locations causing quite a stir. Most of the effigies were of the candidates hanging and one was of a doll with a knife in the neck. The effigies have naturally started conversations about racism after some people with the effigies began being prosecuted or disciplined for the action.
No action was taken towards the man who hung the Palin effigy from his roof but legal actions were taken towards one University of Kentucky student and another man hung an Obama effigy from a tree on the campus. Do both deserve to be prosecuted, only one, or neither? I think that all the effigies should be forced to be taken down. They promote negativity and are in no way funny or amusing when it clearly is something that promotes violence.
I think that this was an article that belonged to be on the homepage of USA Today. People need to be aware of the things that are going on so that discussions about racism, hate, and violence can be addressed. USA Today was smart in making sure that they placed a comment section on this story since it is obviously on a topic that people want to discuss. I think the packaging of the story would have been better if there were pictures of the effigies so that individuals could analyze them and the context in which they were displayed. A video interviewing viewers of the effigies and the individuals who displayed them might also have been helpful.
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1 comment:
This is touchy. If the effigies were really disturbing, the website would have been criticized for running them. But I agree they should have.
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