Good for Larry for standing up to this letter-writer. S/he sounds like one of those people who thinks that "hate crime" legislation is a good thing - that's it's just marvelous to aggravate the penalty for some act because the perpetrator had bigotry or prejudice in his heart. That's absurd - murder is murder, vandalism is vandalism...and trying to pass some (unneeded) law because some people are upset by the sight of a tied rope, is absurd. I'd like to remind that letter-writer that while many innocent black people met their ends at the end of a rope, the noose was also used to dispatch some very bad people - John Wilkes Booth (murdered Abe Lincoln) for example, and more recently Saddam Hussein, AKA "The Butcher of Baghdad," responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent people. As Larry said, it's just a symbol. What you make of it is what matters, and I've had enough of society being forced to bend over backwards because someone, somewhere might be offended by something.

Matt -- John Wilkes Booth died of a gunshot wound to the neck -- he wasn't hanged.

By the reasoning of this column, then one has to assume that Meeks supports blacks using the n-word. Many African Americans who use the n-word make the same claim he is making about the noose: That their repeated use of the word in conversation, music, movies, literature and other art lessons the sting of the word and takes away its power.