Critics demand Missouri lawmaker resign after saying vandals should be 'hung from a tall tree with a long rope'
A Missouri state representative drew scorn Wednesday, with the head of the state Democratic Party calling on him to resign, after he seemed to call for a lynching on social media.
Rep. Warren Love, R-Osceola, posted a link to an article describing vandalism discovered Wednesday to a Confederate monument in Springfield National Cemetery.
This is totally against the law, Love wrote. I hope they are found & hung from a tall tree with a long rope.
Stephen Webber, the chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party, called for Loves resignation.
This is a call for lynching by a sitting State Representative, Webber tweeted. Calls for poltical (sic) violence are unacceptable. He needs to resign.
House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty of Kansas City said that while vandalism is a crime, its punishment is not extra-judicial murder.
In calling for the lynching of those who vandalized a Confederate statute in Springfield, state Rep. Warren Love invoked a form of political violence used throughout the South to keep African-Americans subjugated for generations following the fall of the Confederacy, and for that he must resign, she added.
That was an exaggerated statement that, you know, a lot of times is used in the western world when somebody does a crime or commits theft. Thats just a western term and Im very much a western man. You know, I wear a coat. You know, I dress western. And, you know, Im the cowboy of the Capitol.
He said Confederate monuments were low-hanging fruit. He said activists are also turning their attention to statues and monuments of other historical figures, such as Christopher Columbus and Thomas Jefferson.
At what level would they be satisfied? Love asked of activists.
In a February Facebook post, the Pitch, a Kansas City news site, reported he shared a blog post calling President Abraham Lincoln the greatest tyrant and despot in American history. In a House committee hearing in January, during debate on a prevailing wage bill, Love referred to the black Negro.
Love told the Post-Dispatch on Wednesday he is not a racist.
Listen, Ive got good friends in the Capitol, Love said. Me and Tommie Pierson (a black St. Louis County Democrat) was co-captains of a softball team. And you can ask anybody in that Capitol. I probably have a better relationship with the minorities than anybody up there at the Legislature.
I play softball with them, Im good friends with them. I, you know, I sit on the same side of the aisle with them and theyre on my softball team, Love said.
I am definitely not that word, Love said of the word racist. I dont even like to use that word.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...cle_ce20f2a9-41e1-547c-a3ba-7fe380923905.html
"Black friends", check. Treating the label "racist" as if it were the N-word, check.