Editorial: Obama effigy in Georgia shows little progress

By: Editorial | Opelika Auburn News
Published: January 05, 2010

We’ve seen them many times before: effigies of U.S. presidents either burned, hung or dragged through the streets of foreign cities. They are mocked, spat upon and remind us just how hated our nation is in some lands.

That’s why it’s so confusing and disappointing to have a disrespectful effigy of President Barack Obama hung from a building in Plains, Ga.

Saturday morning, a large black doll was found hanging from a building in the city’s downtown. The doll was hanging by a noose — just like the embarrassing Southern lynchings of backward years past — near a red, white and blue sign reading, “Plains, Georgia. Home of Jimmy Carter, our 39th president.” The doll was described as having Obama’s name on it.

It’s a shameful display of citizenry, not only in the heart of small-town America, but in the heart of the South — portraying the hanging of America’s first minority president. For years, the South has attempted to overcome the stereotypes of bigotry and hate.

Our region of the nation is mocked for being narrow-minded and backward. We make strides toward advancement with corporate development, growth of major cities and technology – then a fool puts the South back into the 1960s.

For those who are not aware, Plains is roughly a 90-minute drive from the Opelika-Auburn area, in southwest Georgia.

America is the land where citizens have the right to voice their opinion through freedom of speech. They can burn a U.S. flag if they want or protest the government that protects them and their freedoms.

When a person creates a hideous mockery of a U.S. president — any president, sitting or past — and hangs the effigy for all to see, that person is mocking the United States of America and the freedoms it stands for.

Take your protests to national marches. Take your protests and disagreements with the president through the Internet or letters to the editor.

One can greatly disagree with a president’s policies or agendas, and by no means does one have to like the president, whomever that might be.

When a citizen mocks the president through effigy, it sends a laughable message to the rest of the world.

And when a simulated lynching is done in the heart of the South, it tells the rest of the America that our corner of the nation has plenty of reason to remains the butt of jokes.