That might be true in the abstract but anyone who had more than the slightest awareness knows that what was directed at Obama was based racism. The same people made racist comments about Africa in general, said he was inarticulate in ways straight out of minstrel shows a century ago, refused to accept his Christianity insisting that he was secretly following their favorite Other religion, and used various threats and rhetoric from the Jim Crow-era south against someone born in Hawaii.

You don’t lynch someone in effigy because you’re trying to say that you don’t think they aren’t 35.