“I do believe this was a hate crime,” Charleston Police Chief Gregory Mullen told reporters. The comments were applauded by observers glad to see authorities not mincing words when talking about the mass shooting. The FBI and the Department of Justice quickly announced that they have opened up a hate crime investigation for the shooting. The only issue is: South Carolina is one of only five states in the nation that doesn’t have a hate crime law on its books.
Images, and the words that oftentimes accompany them, have a tendency to take on lives of their own. The mustache sported so famously by Hitler represents many things. It represents fear, violence, extermination, destruction, hate. The very fact that someone would use an image as loaded as that of Hitler to make a statement about an economic policy is irresponsible. That being said, the policies born from economic theories have had huge impacts on the lives of millions upon millions of people.
If relatively simple songs are being underanalyzed, we also lose the power in more complicated expressions of protest in songs like Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” The song’s triumphant chorus, which chants “Born in the U.S.A.,” often overshadows its darker verse.
Professional baseball faced a similar postwar influx. More than 500 major leaguers and 4,000 minor leaguers had swapped jerseys for military fatigues during the previous four years. Two former big leaguers, Harry O’Neill and Elmer Gedeon, plus more than 100 minor-league players, lost their lives.
