The Secret Service has visited a West Hollywood, Calif., home where a mannequin of Sarah Palin is hanging by a noose - and they've said the display is harmless.

AP is reporting today that Deputy Special Agent in Charge Wayne Williams says so far, the display of a Palin effigy complete with a red Nieman Marcus suit, glasses, and updo hair-style, doesn't seem to be a threat.

It's part of a Halloween display - the Palin effigy, along with "John McCain" coming out of the house's chimney, surrounded by paper flames. But does that make it right?

If you watch the videos of reports by the various local news outlets, many Democrats and Republicans living in the neighborhood think its too much. And they rightly point out that had it been a Barack Obama effigy instead of a Palin one, there would be a lot more calls to remove it. The NAACP, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton likely would march on West Hollywood demanding it be taken down. The homeowners who set up the display even admit that had it been Obama, they would have had rocks and other items thrown through their windows.

So why it is more acceptable that this effigy is of a white woman? And why is Halloween an excuse?

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West Hollywood Mayor Jeffrey Prang has urged resident Chad Morrisette to remove the mannequins, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich is calling for an investigation into whether the effigy constitutes a hate crime.

A "hate crime," or "bias crime," as defined by the FBI, "is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin."

The local police say there's no crime here.

"I'm not defending this; I'm not criticizing it. It doesn't rise to the level of hate crime," Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, told the LA Times. "Now, if there was a crime against bad taste . . . "

But Whitemore said a complaint about an effigy of Obama would have to be handled differently.

"That adds a whole other social, historical hate aspect to the display, and that is embedded in the consciousness of the country," he said.

So then we're perpetuating the idea that it's OK to "hang" a white Republican, but not a black Democrat?

Of course there's more historical horror at the latter, no one is arguing with that, but that doesn't make it OK to go ahead with the former. It's all disgusting. And it's acts like these - and the plot thwarted earlier this week by the ATF, designed to kill 102 black people and Obama (not that the disorganized skinheads could have pulled it off, authorities say) - that are making this election almost unbearable. A cardboard effigy of Barack Obama was found hanging from a tree on the Christian campus of George Fox University in Newburg, Ore., late last month. Four students were suspended.

I for one will be glad when Nov. 4 is over and done - if it's actually over as of midnight on Election Day, god willing.