I see your Sarah Palin effigy

And I raise you two Obama effigies. Today's orchestrated mass outrage in Greater Right Blogstantinople is over this Halloween display that features Sarah Palin hanging in effigy. For the record, I think it's in bad taste and I don't condone such expressions of imagined violence no matter who the target may be. However, the apoplectic fits of the A-list wingers ring a bit hollow, and yes I'm talking about you Ms. Malkin.

I don't seem to remember the coordinated blogburst of outrage when the man in Ohio got a early start on the Halloween season a couple of weeks ago and hung Obama in effigy, with a Star of David painted on his head. I didn't see any appalled posts on the hanging of Obama in effigy on the Oregon campus of a "Christian" college. I don't remember any condemnations of the numerous hateful portrayals of Obama that have risen repeatedly from McCain supporters and even directly from official GOP organizations. I do remember the many scoffing posts about why such incidents are not really racist.

Hanging in effigy is a time honored tradition that dates back centuries. The NYT has an article archived from 1854 regarding the practice and wisely counseled even then that such symbolic violence is a waste of purposeful indignation. Further, given the long history of blacks being hanged by white men, I would suggest that the effigies of Obama are the more incendiary and dangerous as they roil old racial resentments. But either way, given the charged nature of this presidential race in particular, all instances of the practice should be discouraged equally, instead of being used as a partisan tool attempting to manufacture some sort of false moral equivalence.

I expect no better from Malkin but I'm disappointed to see Ed Morrisey and Jazz Shaw stoop to her level. They used to be better than that.

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]