Empty chair threatened in California

California TV station KTVU reports (view report for local coverage and reaction) a very unusual display in Morgan Hill, California: a chair holding two watermelons draped with a noose.

Photo Empty Chair, Watermelon, and Noose

Nearby was a sign made to look like a teleprompter.

image

Also nearby was a Romney for President sign.

For those not familiar with the racist implications of the watermelon, I recommend the image collection here.

About Dr. Conspiracy

I'm not a real doctor, but I have a master's degree.
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22 Responses to Empty chair threatened in California

  1. Walt Tuttle says:

    Racist pigs.

  2. Bob says:

    If Obama’s white mother and grandparents were alive and making the occasional public appearance I wonder how much of this would be going on. Or alternatively, if Obama’s father had been Kenyan but white would Birtherism even exist?

  3. foreign(birth)er says:

    Genuine foolery, or a provocative comment on the rMoney sign…?

  4. Mitch says:

    Just goes to show, not all the racists are in the South.

  5. BillTheCat says:

    I live right near Morgan Hill, it’s the first area that is “country” outside of the main bay area, so it attracts people like that. Sickening. Guy must be in hell living in the most liberal area of the country….good.

  6. bob j says:

    foreign(birth)er:
    Genuine foolery, or a provocative comment on the rMoney sign…?

    There is nothing provocative about the display. Do you even understand what the display means? It is a disguisting display of racism that is allowable in this great country.

  7. JPotter says:

    “provacative” as in “having the capacity to provoke”, as you have demonstrated. Without add’l information or explanation, this could well be a comment on the depths wingnuts have sunk to, an attempt to link rMoney to wingnuts.

  8. Joe Acerbic says:

    Why, oh why are African Americans so beholden to the Democratic Party and believe the false claims about republicans as racist…? /s

  9. JPotter says:

    Having watched the clip, nvm, he’s (the property owner) is an idiot.

    I trust the local Reds have requested he give his furniture a rest.

  10. AnotherBird says:

    These people have to get over their disillusion.

  11. The Magic M says:

    Bob: If Obama’s white mother and grandparents were alive and making the occasional public appearance I wonder how much of this would be going on.

    It doubt it would change a thing. Obama has dark skin, that’s enough for any racist, no matter how many white ancestors he has. (I’m pretty sure racists would also hate a black child of white parents whose dark skin colour is due to some DNA mutation oddity.)

    Bob: if Obama’s father had been Kenyan but white would Birtherism even exist?

    Maybe (some wingnuts search for anything that would disqualify the President they don’t like, and skin colour isn’t the only reason the birthers hate Obama), but it would be a much smaller movement due to all the racists dropping out.

  12. Pat says:

    Oh yeah, well go back to your San Diego estate and your Boston townhouse and your Vermont estate and the others too numerous to list!

  13. JPotter says:

    Bob: If Obama’s white mother and grandparents were alive and making the occasional public appearance I wonder how much of this would be going on.

    It would be worse.

    Bob: Or alternatively, if Obama’s father had been Kenyan but white would Birtherism even exist?

    Of course it would. No matter what his traits are, Obama is not one of Them, not a member of thier party, therefore he is all that is wrong in the universe.

    AnotherBird: disillusion.

    disillusion? Shouldn’t that be … us …. something else? They are afflicted with at least one illusion.

    __________________

    What the heck kinda of chair is that (Victorian lifeguard)? Who makes a noose from such cheap yellow rope? Why two watermelons? If the nutter unaware of the invisibility of black lettering on a transparent substrate in the outdoors?

    Has the Secret Service made a visit yet?

    Yet another example of what seemed impressive in a nutter’s headspace looking very silly in realspace.

  14. For the benefit of readers not familiar with racist attitudes in the United States there is a popular stereotype, at least in the South, that African Americans have a special affinity for watermelon. See:

    http://neveryetmelted.com/wp-images/ObamaWatermelon.jpg

    and the collection here:

    http://www.lipstickalley.com/f33/princess-frog-376238/index4.html#post9402129

    bob j: There is nothing provocative about the display. Do you even understand what the display means? It is a disgusting display of racism that is allowable in this great country.

  15. US Citizen says:

    Given the language tense, I’m guessing that’s Romney’s “teleprompter.” 😉

    Funny tho… he identifies with the “blacks eat watermelon” stereotype.
    But ostensibly, he’s white and bought those melons to eat.
    That would be hypocritical.
    So if he didn’t intend on eating them, one can only imagine what other use he intended for them.

  16. Keith says:

    Bob:
    If Obama’s white mother and grandparents were alive and making the occasional public appearance I wonder how much of this would be going on.Or alternatively, if Obama’s father had been Kenyan but white would Birtherism even exist?

    They went after Clinton in the same way and there was certainly nothing ‘non-white’ nor foreign about him. And they spent tens of millions of your tax dollars to find out what every American knew about him before they cast his vote: that he was a womanizer and that he believed, just as most Americans used to believe before the internet came along, that a persons sex life should be a private matter between him, his lover, and his wife.

    So yes, I suspect they would be “going after” Obama in this vicious way, no matter what color his skin was and no matter where his parents were born.

  17. Keith says:

    Dr. Conspiracy: For the benefit of readers not familiar with racist attitudes in the United States there is a popular stereotype, at least in the South, that African Americans have a special affinity for watermelon.

    And fried chicken.

    KFC got into trouble a couple of years ago, in Australia no less for running an ad, set at a Cricket match between the West Indies and Australia. The West Indian fan (a black guy) leans forward and offers the Australian fan (a white guy) a piece of chicken out of his KFC family bucket. It was actually a feel good kind of ad, “everybody enjoys a good cricket match, enjoy it more with KFC, and lets have a good game” kind of thing.

    The dung hit the fan over the opinion that a black guy eating fried chicken is a racist stereotype. KFC took the ad off the air, of course, the ad had ceased to be useful after being subject to such a stupid attack. But words escape me to describe the idiocy of reading way too much into completely innocent situations.

    Having said that, the watermelons and the noose on the chair is not an innocent situation, it is loaded with very specific iconography and has nothing to do with “lets enjoy a good game and may the best man win’.

  18. ZixiOfIx says:

    Bob:
    If Obama’s white mother and grandparents were alive and making the occasional public appearance I wonder how much of this would be going on.

    Yes, probably, as long as Mr. Obama’s father was still black. Michelle Obama is alive and fine, and nothing stops them from trashing her without mercy. The latest birther slime is that she married Mr. Obama even though he is actually gay and on the “down low”. Because, you know, as the birthers are saying, successful heterosexual black men want white women. Only a gay black man would ever stoop to marry a black woman.

    Birthers are vile.

    They have no shame. They don’t know what the bottom of the barrel looks like. They are garbage. They are scum.

    Or alternatively, if Obama’s father had been Kenyan but white would Birtherism even exist?

    Probably not. He wouldn’t be black, so there would be no need to personally trash him and his family.

    This is more about the scary black man thing than anything else. Not policy, not politics, not elections, not anything to do with the law or the Constitution. Proof is that so much of “birtherism” is about whether Mr. Obama’s mother took naughty pictures with a black man or whether he’s gay or whatever, not about the law or the Constitution.

    Obama is black, his mother was white. They hate him on account of it. So much of it has nothing to do with where Obama was born and everything to do with dragging him and his family through the mud because his white mother dared to sleep with and produce a child with a black man.

    They’re out to trash him any way they can. I’m a former Republican, and this eats away at my basic sense of what is right and wrong. A good chunk of the Republican Party hates Barack Obama because he’s black. That is wrong and will never be right.

    This is a huge part of why I left the GOP recently. Republicans can claim that they aren’t all racists, and that’s true, but as long as there are so many who are allowed, who are given money and prestige, there are too many for my comfort. Mitt Romney’s campaign is full to the brim with birthers. Voting for Romney when he willfully benefits from birtherism would be wrong.

  19. The Magic M says:

    ZixiOfIx: He wouldn’t be black, so there would be no need to personally trash him and his family.

    Still, attacking the family has always been a common MO. See if you can paint the father as a womanizer or the mother as “loose” (and imply this somehow transfered to the child), or allude that maybe the mother isn’t the mother or the father isn’t the father so you can “legally” call the guy a “bastard” etc.

    ZixiOfIx: because his white mother dared to sleep with and produce a child with a black man

    That’s the core. That’s why they hate him more than any “pure” black guy – because he is the product of what the Nazis called “Rassenschande” (to them, an “Aryan” woman sleeping with a Jew was worse than being Jewish herself), and a successful product to boot.
    That’s why I believe some of them may even be telling the truth when they say they’d have no problem with one of their black pet candidates, like Alan Keyes or Herman Cain.
    Because the real enemy of every racist isn’t the person belonging to another race, but the persons who “mix” races.

  20. JPotter says:

    The Magic M: but the persons who “mix” races.

    … thereby threatening the cozy little invented dualities they’re reveling in. Grey is awful skeery to a black & white mentality.

  21. Karen says:

    Nothing wrong with that display.. I live in San Francisco and I think I’ll put out something similar in front of my house.

  22. Karen: Nothing wrong with that sign …….. I live in San Francisco and maybe I’ll put up a simialr one
    Nothing wrong with that display.. I live in San Francisco and I think I’ll put out something similar in front of my house.

    Conservatives lack intellectual curiosity, so they resort to crude and vulgar means of expression. The Tea Party is a religious movement of vulgarians.

    Nothing surprising.

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