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Webster Kirkwood times columnist don corrigan gives his tar and feather awards | Missouri Political News Service

Let’s Bring Back Tar & Feathers

January 14th, 2008 by mopns · No Comments

By Don Corrigan

As a journalism history teacher, I always enjoy the press accounts of tar and feathering from the Colonial era. After 1776, dollars replaced feathers, on occasion, to protest the value of the worthless currency paid to soldiers.

Punishment by hot tar and a coat of chicken feathers was eventually deemed cruel and unusual. The practice, however, was recently resurrected in an episode of “Jackass” when Ryan Dunn suffered this humiliation.

It seems to me that in this new era, when we can justify waterboarding, we can surely bring back tar and feathering. Missouri’s Sen. Kit Bond told a PBS interviewer recently that waterboarding is not always torture.

“There are different ways of doing it,” said Bond. “It’s like swimming: freestyle, backstroke.”

By that logic, sporting a little tar and feathers is just like wearing that ugly coat Aunt Martha gave you for Christmas. It’s ugly, even humiliating, but it’ll keep you warm for a while.

The Year 2007 yielded some great candidates for tar and feathers. Here are my picks for a coat of pine tar: Read more…

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