JEEPERS AND GOLLY! This is big. Huge! Not..The MSM is gonna' play this for the rest of the week. All the essential elements in place: elderly Black minister...Virginia...Rebel flag. Yep. Hollywood couldn't stage it better.
Posted on 10/22/2008 10:48:52 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Leroy C. McLaughlin finished his workday on Friday and was cooking dinner when a family member phoned.
The 4-foot-by-8-foot Barack Obama campaign sign that McLaughlin had posted in the front yard of his Chesterfield County home was gone.
A Confederate flag hung in its place.
Surveying the scene that night, McLaughlin, 78, a Baptist minister and an Army veteran who lived to see the first black person nominated to a major-party ticket, had a message for whoever left the flag, viewed by many as a symbol of racial oppression: "I love you, and God does, too."
That same night, someone drove by honking and shouting, according to McLaughlin's family.
Yesterday morning, in the 15 minutes that a reporter and photographer were inspecting a new sign with McLaughlin, a small car sped back and forth past his house three times. Occupants rapidly beeped the horn and appeared to shout "No change," apparently a reference to McLaughlin's new sign. Like the one it replaced, it says: "Vote for Change, November 4th."
McLaughlin seemed unshaken.
"I've been praying for them, because we're all going to be charged with what we do," he said. "It's sad that we've grown and we want to keep fighting with something and can't be peaceful and thankful."
Sometime Friday between 7:30 and 9 p.m., someone ripped the sign from its wooden posts just a few feet off Bailey Bridge Road near Manchester High School.
A family member returning from Manchester's homecoming football game saw the Confederate flag and alerted McLaughlin. He was fixing dinner near a tapestry montage that features the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., between the Statue of Liberty and a waving American flag.
McLaughlin went outside to find an outraged neighbor on his front lawn tugging the flag down. He told him to leave it, and they called police.
Chesterfield police spokeswoman Ann Reid confirmed that police are investigating the sign's disappearance as a larceny. She said the sign was taken Friday night and replaced with a 3-foot-by-5-foot Confederate flag. Chesterfield police are holding the flag as evidence.
Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for Democrat Obama's campaign in Virginia, said there have been other incidents in Virginia and across the country "that have had racial overtones."
"I think on both sides we see overzealous supporters," he said. "We urge both our supporters as well as those of Senator [John] McCain to disagree in a respectful way."
Gail Gitcho, a spokeswoman for Republican McCain's Virginia campaign, said: "We have had reports of vandalism and theft of both McCain and Obama campaign signs on personal property throughout Virginia. It is sad and disappointing that this has happened across the state, and the McCain campaign strongly condemns these actions."
McLaughlin's 4 acres along Bailey Bridge Road are a wooded holdout among sprouting subdivisions. Since 1964, he has lived in the house he partially built by hand, and he still grows vegetables in rows alongside his home. He has trimmed hair in the same Richmond barbershop for 50 years and served as pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Cumberland County for two decades.
He said yesterday on a break from making pear preserves that he isn't pushing for a particularly severe punishment for the perpetrator. He didn't raise his voice when discussing it; now that he has replaced the yard sign, he'll be watchful.
He says he wants whoever took the sign to get a talking-to about trespassing and taking property that doesn't belong to them -- and about the significance of the symbol they left behind.
"I feel like this is somebody with a lot of hatred in their heart," he said. "It's our job to help the guy try to do better in life."
Contact Olympia Meola at (804) 649-6812 or omeola@timesdispatch.com.
Staff writer Michael Martz contributed to this report.
Let me be the first to say I am shocked, and saddened.
I’m tellin’ you folks! POISON IVY! Here’s my post from an earlier vandalism thread:
“The kid next door has poison ivy on his hands and arms big time. So I know he’s the jerk that ripped up my McCain sign. He can’t figure out how he got it. I asked him how he got it, then told him I’d be cuttin’ my own grass from now on. I put up another sign while the kids were in school. Rubbed it with more Poison Ivy. I’ll bet the kid rips it up again! Bwaaaa!”
SHould have been replaces with the USSR flag
It was a terrible thing to do. If it was a McCain supporter, it was also a stupid thing to do as it adds another brick on the load of moral guilt that the other sides wants all Republicans to carry. I just don’t believe that it should be assumed that that it was a McCain partisan that did this.
Maybe they were still upset about this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_family_murder
I’m going to cultivate a patch of poison ivy (heaven knows there’s enough here!) just for this purpose!
No one can accuse the average Obama voter of being particularly bright.
I wish I knew where to find Poison Ivy around here! I don’t have to worry, my McCain sign has stood proudly for about a month now.
The winds are brutal here today, and a lot of McCain signs have flown away. The only consolation is that the one Obama sign in the neighborhood (4 doors down, grr!) has also flown away.
I did look around for it though to return it. I’m not cruel!
And what if it’s a “Tawana Brawley Special”, a hoax to make the opposition look bad ??
Hard for me to believe a mccain supporter is going to do this in a black neighborhood.
Have a feeling this will turn out like the reporter that lied about the “kill him” shout earlier this month
The media is ignoring the McCain sign vandalism and theft.
An RNC disrupter has been charged with a bomb plot there.
A pizzeria owner in Michigan is encouraging sign theft (trade a McCain campaign sign for a free pizza).
The national media is supressing these stories. As they did in 2004.
Let me be the one calling BRAVO SIERRA and Agent Provocateur.
Or replaced with a Cuban sign or a Che Guevera sign! Much more appropriate! Or a black power sign with the big fist.
Sounds like a typical Obama stunt. Put up a rebel flag yourself and then call the press.
How all the details fit in so well with the leftist fairy tale can’t help but make one suspect that the incident is too good to be true.
Do you feel the same about all the McCain/Palin signs that have been vandalised? Could those perpetators actually be Republican McCain supporters?
“...McLaughlin, 78, a Baptist minister and an Army veteran...”
Hmmm, a Baptist minister AND an Army veteran and he’s an Obama supporter.....
something just doesn’t sound right!!!
Maybe, anything is possible. But I do not think that the vandalizing of McCain signs attracts such attention. And the addition of the rebel flag in this incident is just such a detail that leaves me full of doubts. This is a drama that seems too good to be true for the Democratic cause.
I can’t think of a single Republican I’ve ever met that would do this and, even if I did, not as it’s described. It’s a cliche’s cliche. Even if someone got so sick of seeing an Obama sign every day that they actually went and took it (absolutely wrong regardless and should be prosecuted), following that up by hanging a Confederate flag would just be retarded. It serves no purpose whatsoever; it makes no point; it requires premeditation instead of just being in a fit of passion; and the consequence of committing a “hate crime” would be severe. Republicans aren’t this stupid.
It just fits the “Hey, look, the South is still racist. The South is full of Republicans. Those racist Republicans must have done this.” premanufactured story too well. I’m surprised it wasn’t a burning cross with a pointy white hood that fell off during the escape lying next to it. Sounds like a setup to me.
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