Sunday, October 28, 2007

Private Citizen Boycotted by NAACP

There was a time when Freedom of Speech was protected in this country, especially on private property. Sadly, that no longer appears to be the case. While newspaper organizations claim they can print national secrets under their guaranteed first amendment rights, the NAACP has decided that it gets to decide how people decorate their houses for Halloween.


In LaGrange, Georgia, the McCann family decorated their house for Halloween. The decorations included a display with three scarecrow-like figures: one was white, one was a space alien, and one was some sort of monster. Mrs. McCann likes to decorate for the holidays. During Christmas, she says you can see her decorations from miles away. However, this year, because her Halloween decorations include a noose, the local NAACP has picketed her home, and is trying to boycott her business.


Mrs. McCann has a display on her private property. This isn’t at her business, at town hall, or at the local school. She has a Halloween display that includes a noose, so the NAACP is bent out of shape. Her display doesn’t include hanging any minorities (unless you include “space alien” in that category). Mrs. McCann’s display might be offensive to certain people, but Christmas decorations are offensive to some, as are too many American Flags in a given place (like in Spiderman 3). Boycotts like this one by the NAACP are used primarily to extort money from businesses and attempt to grab any media attention the organization can get. These boycotts have little to do with the people they are boycotting or any attempt to improve society.


The McCann family is expressing their celebration of the holiday and exercising their First Amendment rights. The McCann’s have said they aren’t going to take the display down; they feel like they are within their rights to have it up. I agree. Just because a noose is involved in a display doesn’t make it offensive, no matter what the NAACP may claim to believe. The McCann’s are trying to celebrate a time of year they find exciting. I think they should be allowed to do that without having to worry about boycotts and pickets.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The NAACP is suffering from the same problem the womens rights groups are. Success. Now that women and minorities have the same legal rights as everyone else, these groups are running out of causes to champion. A few years ago a hand-full of womens rights advocates appeared at the Augusta National Golf Course to protest the private clubs men-only membership policy. This was a social and media non-event. The NAACP is doing the same thing in this case. Now that their civil rights work is virtually done, they are trying desperately to justify their existence. Since there will always be something that offends someone, they will have some excuse, however lame, to continue.

romi41 said...

That's really interesting; what about halloween displays that contains graves and grim-reapers and "hatchet-wielding" killer types? Or Freddy/Jason mock-ups? Is that any less offensive than a noose, if in fact, we are deciding that a noose is offensive? How is it even possible that the NAACP has a leg to stand on here? It's HALLOWEEN people!! Lighten up!

Anonymous said...

I would actually go further. Not only is the noose not offensive, it shouldn't matter if it was.

This is private property, these people should be allowed to put up Nazi flags for Halloween if that's their thing.

Nobody is forcing people to look at it. I'm sure if the neighbours didn't like it they'd have mentioned something themselves by now, so who does it bother?