That’s it. Right there. That’s the noose.
If you are saying to yourself, “No. That’s a bungee cord,” you are obviously wrong. The Daily Beast (think Newsweek) ran with the story and the photo without question. So did The Root and a few others.
In the Daily Beast’s account, Takiya Lawson-McCants had been harassed by her coworkers at her job in Alabama and had “found a noose hanging in a tree in her backyard.”
In journalism - work with me here - you would think that if a subject sends along an image of something she claims is a noose that is not, in fact a noose, perhaps the subject’s accounts of other events may also be problematic.
You would think, right?
Nope.
Out the story went.
The lesson here is that journalists are no longer researchers, fact finders or information gatherers, they are storytellers.
So a bungee cord is a noose if it tells a good story. Reins are a whip if it tells a good story. A door pull is a noose if it tells a good story.
A few years ago at Michigan State University a student found a noose outside of her dorm room.
Big news, right?
News organizations ran with it and the college president, Lou Anna K. Simon released a statement reading, "I was distressed this morning to learn of a racial incident in one of our residence halls. I want to recognize the courage it took for the student to report this incident."
The police were called.
The noose turned out to be shoelaces.
“Officers located and spoke to the student who lost both of the shoelaces, which are packaged in a way that someone could perceive them to look similar to a noose. The student who lost the shoelaces lives on the same floor as the student who made the original report,” MSU spokesman Jason Cody said in a statement.
Oh well, then. It’s over, right?
Nope.
The president of the college still condemned the crime that did not happen with the noose that did not exist and the media was happy roll with it.
“I want to be clear: This type of behavior is not tolerated on our campus,” Simon said. “No Spartan should ever feel targeted based on their race or other ways in which they identify. A noose is a symbol of intimidation and threat that has a horrendous history in America.”
That might be an appropriate statement if a noose was around but it wasn’t.
But it was too tasty for academics and the media to leave alone, especially in the era of Donald Trump.
And so it was that the media boiled over in excitement in 2018 when nooses were found near the Mississippi Capitol.
The Associated Press’s lede was stark:
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — State and federal investigators are trying to find out who hung seven nooses in trees outside the Mississippi Capitol early Monday, a day before a U.S. Senate runoff that has focused attention on the state’s history of racist violence.
This was serious stuff. If things that weren’t actual nooses warranted law enforcement involvement, wall to wall media coverage and strong rebukes from every corner, this atrocity would be a showstopper.
The Salon headline read:
Mississippi burning: Nooses hung at state capitol ahead of racially charged Senate runoff
Mississippi Senate runoff closes on the same racist note on which it kicked off
Governor Phil Bryant condemned the display and promised that the “perpetrators of this act will be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I have contacted the Department of Public Safety and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for assistance,” he stated.
You know where this is going.
The nooses were hung by supporters of a Democratic candidate for Senate.
Not one media company followed up and the “perpetrators” were not prosecuted. Zilch from the Department of Public Safety and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Shocker.
Heaven and Earth were moved in response to some shoelaces in Michigan. The laces were still strongly condemned - even after we knew they weren’t nooses.
Those laces and that bungee cord are still hurtful symbols of racism, we are told. Not so much for the real nooses in Mississippi. It just doesn’t make for a good story.