"Disgusting," a friend commented on my Facebook profile when the social networking web site publicized my becoming a Barack Obama supporter. I stared at that word for several minutes, dumbfounded. I could not decide how to feel or how to react. I felt a number of conflicting feelings simultaneously, mostly because that person had been my best friend for the last four years and typically had respect for my decisions. I placed my fingers over the keyboard, paused, then pulled them back. I stared at that word again. "Disgusting." It bewildered me. I did not know what to make of it. I went to type a response again, but once again my fingers hovered over the keyboard without moving.
Truly and honestly, I do not get this seeming hatred being directed toward President-elect Obama. I hear it time and again on the news wire, and now I find it among my own social circle. In Kentucky, two men hung Obama in effigy, dangling from a tree with a noose around its neck, recalling the historical images of blacks being lynched in the South. At George Fox University in Oregon, four students were punished for hanging a likeness of Obama from a tree. In Redondo Beach, California., a woman hung Obama in effigy from her balcony with a knife in its neck. In Tennessee two white supremacists were arrested for planning the assassination of Obama. In Clarksville, Indiana, a man had hung Obama in effigy from a tree. In Rexburg, Idaho, a number of elementary school students were chanting on the school bus, "Assassinate Obama! Assassinate Obama!" Also in Idaho, the Bonner Country sheriff and a Secret Service agent will be investigating a man who put up a sign in his yard that said "Free Public Hanging" with a noose hanging in front of it and the name "Obama" just below it.
It is even in my limited social circle. "Disgusting," the comment pointedly stated. I do not understand it.
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