"Lynch Coates"

I received the following comment from Tim Sumner, who runs the website 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America:

The race card. Who'd of thunk this leftist author would ever play one?

Did the thousand-plus 12/5 crowd chant "Lynch Holder" in unison? Where's the video?

Did Ta-Nehisis "Tee-hee-hee" Coates ever object when it was suggested President GW Bush be strung up or as his likenesses were hung in effigy hundreds of times during his Presidency? Is it always okay to suggest hanging a white Republican? Wasn't that what they were suggesting, Tee-hee-hee? Or was it is effigy? You being a person of color, obviously makes you the world's foremost expert on peering into a person's heart and mind-reading so you know. Discern for us their intent, please, Tee-hee-hee.

I am currently hanging in effigy a printed off picture of you, Tee-hee-hee, over my computer with the words 'Lynch Coates' written on the photo. Discern that.

I did some googling around and found that Tim Sumner, evidently, lost a relative on 9/11. My condolences.

I'm not quite sure what my reaction would be, or who I'd become, if I lost a loved one like that. One thing I hope would not happen--whatever my politics, whatever my feelings about torture, whatever my feelings about terrorism--is that I'd be compelled to threaten other people with lynching.

When I read Jane Mayer's description of that rally, I was somewhat in disbelief. Had she been another reporter, writing for another magazine, I might have even doubted her account. Turns out she was more right than I knew.

I don't know what manner of blindness makes people pillory the race card, and then turn around and threaten a lynching. I don't know what makes them seethe with this kind of hate. I don't know what America they want to keep safe, or strong. It isn't mine. Likely, that's the point.