The interviewed officials who are more familiar with the laws then most of us claim it isn't a hate crime because it is a part of a halloween display, although in bad taste they added.
Now if Obama's was placed in a similar fashion with pumpkins and dangling ghosts around the tree, the view would probably be similar..... however:
....Whitmore said that potential hate crimes are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. If the same display had been made of a Barack Obama-like doll, for example, authorities would have to evaluate it independently, Whitmore said.
"That adds a whole other social, historical hate aspect to the display, and that is embedded in the consciousness of the country," he said, adding he's not sure whether it would be a hate crime. "It would be ill-advised of anybody to speculate on that."
More black people have been hung by the neck from trees in the past then white people, and the difference between this situation is that McCain and Palin were in a halloween display that looked like this:
^ Hanging from a house.... while McCain:
^ Isn't hanging but trying to do some wierd mind meld pose.
Along with many other halloween ornaments. If they were both hanging, then you might have a case, but the expression of this display to me seems to express something totally different then race/hate crime.... more like how McCain has pretty well threw her to her death in the media.
However Obama hanging from a tree.... well that's different, esspecially since just about a month or two ago, two black students in a school whom regularlly hung (no pun intended) around a tree, arrived there one day to find two nooses hanging from it.... in the States of course.
And besides... I'm white and I don't feel the halloween display is at all racist or a hate crime.
