Member Questions

I think that if you want to put up signs on your lawn, who cares? What I think is very stupid is what I saw the other day. It was an insurance company that had two giant McCain/Palin signs plastered on the store entrance. I don't care if it was an Obama sign. It's completely stupid to mix politics and business. I heard numerous people state that they would never get insurance from that company. I'm sure that many people would feel the same even if it had been an Obama sign. No matter how strongly you feel about a candidate, it's bad business to alienate customers because of religion or politics.

Signs, are fine it is a choice. What scares me is this. I was on a ride in the country looking at the leaves the other day as I came up on a trailer. There was a big rock with a confederate flag painted on it and beside that was a lawn chair with a stuffed person in the it. It had an Obama mask and a watermellon in the lap a bucket of kfc beside it and a sign saying: Here is your 1st watermellon chicken sucking mf 1st president. And a mccain/palin sign beside it. I was so upset. I am so glad that my son doesn't ride past this on his bus. I took my husband by it later and he was as shocked as me..Some one had put a Obama/Biden sign beside the Mccain/Palin one. I was told to take a picture and send it to the paper but I wouldn't want to give this person the satisfaction.

Olive,
I think if you really look and study, you'll find several types. There are those, for both parties, who'll vote strictly for the party, regardless of who's running, and they put signs up and don't care what/who it is. There are those who (and I've seen several around here) support the person, not the party and there are signs showing that in their yard. I've seen several homes that have a Republican sign for the man who's running for the House of Rep., and Democratic signs for the Senate candidate and presidential candidate. Then there are those who bullet vote or mix vote and no signs. We have 2 homes on our block, 1 Dem, 1 Rep., side by side, and the 2 families are the best of friends and both have signs in their adjoining yards.

I've never had the need to put a sign in my yard. Course I'm also a product of a "mixed" political marriage, and tho my hubby is a Moderate Republican, he declares he's a Druid (if asked ). The older I get, and the more the GOP panders to the xtreme right, the further I move the other way. I don't like extremists....on either side. It's totally counterproductive and simply, imho, makes one the exact thing that they're supposidely opposed to.

SKL brought up a good point, and a MAJOR pet peeve of mine. If you DO put a sign up, then take the friggin' thing down right after the election. I don't care if they've been tacked to a light pole - TAKE THE THING DOWN! It's over, it's done with. TAKE IT DOWN.

Ok....off my soapbox and back to my lunch

As I said, stupid is as stupid does and wilfull ignorance is the worst stupidity of all.

From the Oct. 21st issue of the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Obama sign replaced with rebel flag
Chesterfield probes theft of political sign from minister's yard

Tuesday, Oct 21, 2008 - 12:09 AM Updated: 08:51 PM

Leroy C. McLaughlin has a new Obama sign in his yard. Someone took his old one and put up a Confederate flag. Photo By: CLEMENT BRITT/TIMES-DISPATCHArticle Tools
By OLYMPIA MEOLA
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
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.

__________________________

Now, sign vandalism is on both sides, BUT this is not only vandalism, but is a hate crime. There is NO excuse for this, but unfortunately because of certain rhetoric being aimed at the uneducated and stupid, it gives rise for these kind of things to happen.

Wow, that is terrible about sign vandalism. It's just something I feel torn about. We have a yard sign and a bumper sticker for Obama, and my husband is the one who really wants to display them. I'm okay with it but I worry that it might offend people. On the other hand, I do think signs might help encourage people to become more politically informed or aware. Well, I hope they do...

I don't have a sign, but several of my neighbors do...of both. However, we've had a rash of vandalism in our neighborhood. A lot of the Obama signs have been stolen or defaced. In fact, a short piece was done on one of our local TV stations about it. Stupid people being stupid. Or as Forrest Gump said,"Stupid is as stupid does."