confederate artifacts, and her past support for various celebrations of confederate heritage and civil war revisionism. and it's not like there aren't white mississippians who are grappling, genuinely and substantively with the racial issues in the midst of this campaign. a local tupelo reporter who was present for the public hanging comments wrote a thoughtful introspective column on why he hadn't picked up on those comments as news at the time he heard them. quote, reporting these remarks didn't occur to me. to the best of my recollection, i heard "public hanging" as a play on the senator's background as a cattle farmer. like everyone, i've had a limited life experience, and for me that experience has been influenced by the history of whiteness in the american south. i have no family members who were lynched. i have no relatives who were threatened with lynching.