Hypocrisy: Effigy of GOP Rep. Found Hanging with 'Stop the Hate' Sign
Nothing says “opposing hate” quite like hanging a disturbing effigy in a tree.
The left constantly pushes a narrative that conservatives are bigoted, bitter haters of women. Yet if a shocking Halloween “decoration” found in Tennessee is any sign, it may be the other side that needs to look in the mirror.
On Thursday, WZTV-TV in Nashville reported that an effigy alluding to Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the Tennessee Republican currently running for re-election to Congress, was placed high in a tree in the town of Shelbyville.
Marsha Blackburn Dummy Hanged in Effigy in Tennessee https://t.co/0olRTVgcmW
— Big League Politics (@bigleaguepol) November 4, 2018
“The dummy had a GOP outfit on, a white dunce hat, and a Marsha Blackburn sign hanging from it. Under that, there’s a sign reading ‘Stop the Hate,'” the station’s Kathleen Jacob explained.
Effigies have a long history of being connected to violence, hate and racism. That’s especially true in the South, where they evoke imagery of lynchings from the Democrat-backed KKK in decades past.
“It was very disturbing to see a human-like object hanging from a tree,” said local resident Billy Grimes, who has lived in the area for nearly a decade. “It’s an intimidating message they’re sending.”
Grimes told WZTV that the disturbing image was very close to an elementary school. “I didn’t want the children or the school to have to see that type of thing,” he said.
Sandy Still, the chairperson of the local Republican party, immediately had a similar thought.
“My heart, when I saw that, the first thing, there’s a school down that road and we’re showing our kids hatred,” she said.
The station reported that it reached out to the owners of the land where the effigy was found, but the owners were just as shocked as everyone else. It is likely that the hateful message was put up without permission.
More shockingly, it’s been done before.
“It happened in the (2012) Romney/Ryan election. They had him hanging in the tree covered in red paint and signs on there with slashes through it, that kind of thing. And then Trump, we had the same thing hanging there,” Still said.
“To me, it says we can’t settle our differences when we’re civil to each other, that we have to put up hateful things to scare and intimidate people,” she added.
Out of fairness, it should be noted that without knowing who put up the effigy, it is possible that it was not a leftist who did it. Taking the message at its word, though, it sure looks like an attempt to disparage the Republican candidate and spark division just days before the midterm election.
The real irony, of course, is that whoever wrote “Stop The Hate” on a fake body hanging from a tree is deeply hateful themselves. But like the effigy itself, this kind of hypocrisy has happened before.
Just last week, Blackburn was screamed at and called a “white supremacist” by a mob of leftist protesters. Even worse, they verbally attacked her in the middle of a moment of silence that the congresswoman had requested out of respect for victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack.
How’s that for true hatred?
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