If you happen to be driving down I-5 near Sutherlin, Oregon, look up. You may be horrified by the display a man has created that reflects how he ‘feels’ about this round of presidential elections.
Billy Pitner, a local man, has hung a stuffed, black, rubber wet-suit wearing tacky ladies clothing and a bad blonde wig on the end of a rope. The rope is suspending the wet suit by the neck. The other end of the noose is attached to a crane raised high in the air.
Pitner had also hung three signs beside the swinging effigy.
One sign read, ‘Vote Trump.’ Another sign reads, ‘Uranium One.’ This presumably makes reference to treason which the third sign confirms. It reads, ‘Treason? Ask her.’
This hideous display of free speech can only be interpreted as a hateful jab at Hillary Clinton. And in fact, Billy Pitner confirms this. Pitner says to the reporter on the scene:
“I’m allowed to have my feelings, right, wrong, or indifferent. Here you are. Got your attention, didn’t it?”
The fact that Pitner has feelings and is allowed to have those feelings is not in dispute here. There is no law that regulates how a person ‘feels’ about anything. The laws only regulate how we express them.
So, although Pitner may ‘feel’ like he is doing no wrong in creating an effigy of Hillary Clinton, he is in fact breaking the laws of free speech as they are written.
If someone wanted to press charges against him they would definitely have a case. And indeed, a local priest has asked Pitner to take the display down. It doesn’t seem like Pitner has any intention of doing so, as he says he will be changing the signs daily.
It’s unfortunate no one has approached Pitner with more authority and legal power. Police officers would be well within their limits to ask him to take the display down and arrest him if he refused.
In the video below, you can see Billy Pitner challenging the reporter. Apparently what he wanted to do was get our attention.
Well, he got it, but to what end? He doesn’t like Hillary Clinton? Ok. He urges us to vote for Trump? Ok. That’s fine.
What isn’t fine is creating a horrendous display imitating a cruel and disgusting act during a time in human history where we were even more deplorable to each other than we are today.
It looks like Billy Pitner is just another one in the basket of Trump’s ‘Deplorables.’
https://youtu.be/mN5zJf2YpWc
Featured image from YouTube video.
