A hanging chad took on new meaning in Los Angeles, California on Wednesday. ChadMichael Morrisette, 28, my neighbour on Orange Grove Avenue in West Hollywood and a professional window decorator, was suspended from a black SUV in effigy, hanging from a noose with a crude sign around its neck: "Chad, how does it feel?"
Morrisette has lived on the block for a couple of years now, but he's across a busy street and we don't have a dog to walk. My husband met him for the first time on Tuesday evening. He had noticed Morrisette and his partner Mito Aviles adding bats to their Halloween display, which had been all over the local news like a particularly virulent rash that evening, reports galore about their Sarah Palin effigy dangling from a noose. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann that day called Morrisette "today's worst person in the world". Parents at my son's preschool read the story on the Drudge Report, and one told me our neighbours "had gone too far".
Since moving in, Morrisette and Aviles's elaborate Halloween and Christmas decorations have been consistently innovative, greatly enjoyed by my family, but not political. We hadn't noticed that the man and woman we'd watched Morrisette and Aviles install more than a fortnight ago were John McCain and Palin. (In my defence, her glasses were all wrong - though the red vintage Neiman Marcus coat was, in retrospect, a nice touch.)
Yesterday, the news media reported that we, the neighbours, were up in arms. Helicopters circled overhead all day. We hadn't seen anything like it since our other neighbours Paris and Britney went to jail and hospital respectively. It was exciting and, yes, I admit, perversely thrilling.
Perhaps roiled by local news reports that they were supposed to be acting annoyed, a clutch of souls took action mid-morning, unfurling billowing blue banners in front of the house, hoping to block the scene from passing motorists and foot traffic. "We're hoping to defuse the situation," said "Matthew", a spokesman, without evident irony. "The image doesn't represent what we understand to be the citizens of the United States, the people of West Hollywood, the gay community. We're here to just put out a counter protest. Not even a protest. There's no hate or outrage or politics. We're really just making a statement. It's election season. We're allowed."
A British expat who has lived in Los Angeles for 25 years did not want to give a name. "I love West Hollywood but I want it to represent positive change. We're not Republicans, but we think this is hateful."
Jennie O'Donnell, friend and neighbour of Morrisette and Aviles, said she knows the pair from the dog-walking circuit but didn't notice their display until Monday when she says the pair trimmed their hedges. When they wouldn't answer the door, she wrote them a note, and they chatted. "It's art," O'Donnell said Morrisette told her, "and when you make good art it's going to offend people. I can't take responsibility for how people react." O'Donnell persisted. "I said, 'Can you alter it? Put her on a broomstick? Not kill her?' He said: 'Sorry lady, I'm not taking it down'."
Word was that the FBI and Secret Service visited but determined that no crime had been committed. My husband showed a local news crew his footage of sheriff-mania, when a bunch of local officers pulled up but were unable to do much except insist that the aggrieved neighbours not block the pavement. The news crew paid $100 to air about five seconds of this "exclusive home video" plus his voice as he filmed it. (Friends who failed to Tivo in time have caught it on Facebook.)
The City of West Hollywood created a hotline for calls from offended residents, had to hire extra staff to cope and later presented Morrisette and Aviles with an inch-thick stack of "outraged" emails. Jeffrey Prang, the mayor, released a statement calling for the couple to take down their decor. Something of a local celebrity, Melrose Larry Green, an acolyte and occasional participant on no-longer-so-shocking Howard Stern's satellite radio show, showed up. He bills himself as your "favourite street-side orator", used to shout "Good morning, murderer" during OJ Simpson's murder trial and has published a book titled Why the Clintons Belong in Prison. He was bearing a McCain-Palin T-shirt and a "We love you Sarah" placard.
There is no doubt that had a hanging Obama been depicted it would not have lasted a day here. As Larry Tompkins, purveyor of the Morrisette effigy, pointed out: "The subtext beneath hanging anyone in effigy we know well from our own history in America. It brings to light a lot of negative images, and if someone did that on Barack Obama, you'd better believe the NAACP would be out here marching in the streets."
He has a point. Effigies are not inherently nasty or even tasteless, but this one was, particularly coming hot on the heels of a cardboard Obama hanging from a noose at an Oregon university a month ago (which saw the suspension of four students for up to a year) and another at the University of Kentucky on Wednesday. That effigy was immediately removed by police, and the school's president, Lee Todd, "personally offended and deeply embarrassed by this disgusting episode", said he would apologise to the Obama family. Two years ago, the hanging of nooses from a tree in Jena, Louisiana sparked a controversy that led to one of the largest civil rights demonstrations in the south in years.
While hanging effigies of black men in America's south denote a different, much more unsavoury image than does anything swaying from rafters in West Hollywood this time of year, there is inevitably a double standard at play here. An Obama effigy plus noose would be removed without question. White woman plus noose equals art, self-expression.
Michael Antonovich, the LA County supervisor, asked: "Why is that not considered a hate crime? If there was an African-American hanging from a tree, would that not constitute a hate crime?" He also termed the installation "totally reprehensible" and "odious".
The National Organisation for Women was understandably perturbed as well. "It is a shock to the senses for those of us who work to stop violence against women to see such a public depiction of violence," said its president, Kim Gandy. "This has no place in a civilised dialogue. If you oppose Sarah Palin's policies, say why you oppose them."
Back in WeHo, Prang returned. "It's a circus," the mayor announced, rather superfluously. "There are helicopters circling, there's protestors. I'm concerned about their safety, the safety of the neighbourhood and the city." Prang then spoke with Morrisette and Aviles, who removed the effigy mid-evening on Wednesday.
John McCain remains, however, emerging from a chimney, flames lapping at his neck yet eliciting not a flicker of protest.