"Lock her up" goes mainstream
by digby
This is really, really creepy:
A parade float featuring a Hillary Clinton lookalike wearing a prison jumpsuit and being pelted with water balloons left some in Arcadia, Iowa, laughing and others grumbling Saturday.
The Clinton character was inside a cage hauled through town during a parade celebrating the centennial of the Arcadia Fire Department, according to photos published by the Daily Times Herald newspaper of nearby Carroll, Iowa.
Clinton is the Democratic candidate for president and the first woman nominee of a major party.
The Carroll paper reported that Kyle Julin of Manilla, Iowa, and two other area men, Josh Reetz and Adam Corky, built the float. Corky served as the Clinton impersonator.
“Only one group booed us,” Julin told the Daily Times Herald. “My consensus from that was 99 percent to 1 percent liked it.”
The Carroll paper’s story depicted a young boy running into the street, taking aim and hurling the balloon toward the float, and then walking away with “the prideful smile of a job well done.”
Tim Tracy of rural Carroll, chairman of the Carroll County Democratic Central Committee, told The World-Herald that he found the float inappropriate.
“It is “not appropriate to be handing water balloons to little children and inviting them to throw” them at such a display, Tracy said. “I’m sure there are some that wondered, ‘Why is that lady in a cage? Why are they being mean? Why are they throwing water balloons at her?’ ”
Julin estimated that his group handed out about 400 water balloons during the parade.
As for those who might take offense, “I mean if they do, they do,” Julin said. “We believe if Hillary gets in, it’ll be bad for moving our political agenda forward. ... Also, it wasn’t just kids, there were a bunch of adults grabbing water balloons and cheering.”
Craig Williams, chairman of the Carroll County Republicans, said the local GOP had nothing to do with the float but did publish photos of it on Facebook.
I'm sure I don't have to remind anyone that the idea of putting women in a cart and running her all over town to be demeaned and humiliated is nothing new. That's what they did to witches and prostitutes for centuries:
This is how the little girls who saw that will remember how they treated the first woman nominee for president.
You may think it's trivial and silly to worry about this. It's not. Women and girls may not consciously know the significance of these archetypal misogynist behaviors, but they feel it.
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