Thursday, October 25, 2007

Jena's gift to the world: Lynch-mob chic

Just think, the high-school kids who started the hottest fashion accessory for White Power Nation only got a suspension after they hung those first nooses from Jena (La.) High School's "white tree."

But their sick handiwork has struck a sick chord among whack jobs and redneck idiots across the land. The latest noose sighting is just across the state from Jena, as reported by The Shreveport Times, is at the LSU Health Sciences Center:
A worker found a noose hanging at LSUHSC-Shreveport on Wednesday morning, the same day the new LSU System president made his first visit to the campus. The rope was in a break room and had a noose on both ends, hospital administrators said.

Only certain workers can enter the room, a prepared statement says. Chancellor and Dean John C. McDonald would not say who can enter.


System President John Lombardi, who took the helm in July, likened hanging the noose to a hate crime. He said the act is "reprehensible and will not be tolerated." A federal investigation is ongoing, McDonald says in a release. LSUHSC administration refused comment on any other specific questions. The Western District of the U.S. attorney's office did not return a
Times phone call for comment.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING as personal -- or private -- sin. Sin is a cancer; it metastasizes.

Sin is a big rock thrown into a tranquil pond; there are ripples.

And if the sin is ugly enough, and if a community puts up with it enough -- enables it enough -- it can have "legs." It can run amok. Just like those nooses hung from the "white tree" in a Louisiana backwater called Jena.


UPDATE: Here, from the USA TODAY editorial page Oct. 5, is one of the best things I've read on the whole Jena mess.

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