i don’t know anyone who thinks the palin effigy was funny.

i also don’t know anyone who denied that it happened, or that it was done by a mccain plant, or any of the other excuses that y’all for calls for violence from mccain supporters

Zim,

The original CBS coverage of the Palin/McCain display did not say anything about the investigation. The reaction shown by the news spot showed one person saying it went too far, and another person (the last, which is strategic in news to leave the viewer with that point of view) saying it “made him laugh”. The idea was communicated that while it upset some people, it did not rise above political speech (even as “art” it would be political speech, which is very much more protected than plain art).

There is also a difference in the outcome:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hlnR7kQP7tXQKA0872BAweYKqPFQD9454DIG0

The two that did the Obama effigy were arrested for disorderly conduct. (While the materials were said to be stolen from a frat house, I have to wonder if the campus would have put pressure on the fraternity to insist the material was stolen … if it wasn’t, the fraternity might have been told they would have no standing on campus, and that the members would face the same discipline as the two that did the prank.) Also, instead of it being just a political statement, the president of the university said it was racially motivated … clearly not what I would draw from the fact that the two that did it said they did it after seeing the Palin display. If it were “turn-about is fair play” then it wouldn’t have mattered racially who the Democrat was, they would have done the same thing. But this is typical double standards in play — call it racial because the liberals see everything in terms of race. Using a double standard based on race is bigotry. If blacks can criticize McCain without being called racist, but whites cannot criticize Obama without being called racist, that in it self if racism.

If the president of UK had said this is unacceptable because the University disapproves of that degree of political speech without concern for who it is that is the object, and that they deplore the depiction of Palin, then it could rise above racism on the UK’s part. They could have objected to the use of the campus facilities (as long as it is uniformly applied). If they said nothing concerning the Palin/McCain display, then students could easily have figured that the university did not disapprove of such a display.

That said, I think it was folly for the two who did it. If it had been private property (their own private property) and had been with their own material, they might have been able to make a much better point with the reaction. Namely that there is a double standard in this country and that the double standard is not acceptable. As it is, the guys in California are probably laughing their heads off at the guys in Kentucky over the fact that Democrats have freer speech that Republicans.