What kind of dick do you have to be to desecrate James Meridith’s statue at Ole Miss?
The probe into the weekend desecration of the statue of civil rights icon James Meredith on the Ole Miss campus is now a federal investigation.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has joined the University Police Department in pursuing the case and considers the actions of two alleged suspects “a hate crime,” said University of Mississippi spokesman Danny Blanton.
The FBI is investigating, at the request of the university, prosecution as a hate crime in violation of U.S. Code 18243, Blanton said. It prohibits intimidation of a race and makes it a crime to deny equal opportunity and access through intimidation, Blanton said.
“That has prompted them to assist in the investigation,” he said. University and FBI officials are conferring on the investigation this morning, he said.
What did they actually do?
University of Mississippi officials said today they’re hopeful they’ll have in custody soon two men suspected of sullying the campus statue of civil rights icon James Meredith early Sunday by placing a noose around his neck and draping the statue with a flag containing the Confederate battle symbol.
Some Ole Miss alums are not amused.
Perhaps it’s a Southern thing, but we euphemize these acts of campus hatred so quaintly — an “incident” — as if they were some sort of verbal faux pas. ”Incident” implies something accidental, unpredictable, a one-off occurrence. The type of thing that might become funny after the statute of limitations for embarrassment has passed.
I can remember back to my sophomore year when we had the Deke incident. Next came the Michael Hudec/YouTube incident. Then the KKK incident. The Election Night incident. The Laramie Project incident…
At a certain frequency, incidents cease to be incidental. They become habits.
I know there is a cultural divide in this country, but you don’t see progressives desecrating Confederate statues or Northerners doing anything equivalent at their universities to what goes on semi-regularly at Ole Miss.
At least it is being treated as a very serious matter by both the school and the Feds.
