The U.S. Department of Justice has joined the discussions over a controversial float in the Norfolk Independence Day parade. The department sent a member of its Community Relations Service team, which gets involved in discrimination disputes, to a Thursday meeting about the issue. Also at the meeting were the NAACP, the Norfolk mayor and The Independent Order of Odd Fellows.So, "investigate" replaced "has joined the discussions." And The Washington Times omitted the material explaining the role of the Community Relations Service team: "getting involved in discrimination disputes."
You might still want to deem this federal activity "a civil rights violation." It is intimidating the local Nebraska people who had the nerve to make fun of the President within an unsophisticated folk tradition, the 4th of July parade. (We talked about the depiction of the Obama Presidential Library as an outhouse here.) But it doesn't seem to be an "investigation" in the sense of looking for evidence of a criminal violation.
Should we object to the deployment of the Community Relations Service team when the Justice Department seriously believes there is an outbreak of racial hatred in some little place in America? That's a separate question from whether we object to the participation of the Community Relations Service team in this instance, which doesn't entail any sort of threat to people of a particular race. It's mockery of the President. And there is something seriously wrong with deploying even the mellow-sounding Community Relations Service team to get out the message: If you criticize the President, the forces of the federal government will descend upon your community and make it look as though a shameful racial problem is festering.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder went on "ABC This Week" yesterday to do a performance — a subtle, sophisticated performance — in the theater of racial politics:
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