If an angry crowd were to fashion a likeness of me, to go to all that trouble, I would be so flattered that I suspect it would not bother me very much at all to subsequently see myself burned in effigy. I could be wrong, extremely terribly wrong. Few want to be burned in effigy, obviously. I'm just saying that I'd appreciate the thought, and the attention, and the care that might have gone into concocting a figure that resembles me a little, or a lot, or even with uncanny and chilling accuracy, to the extent that the effigy is briefly mistaken for me by people who know me, who happen to flip on the news to find me noosed and aflame, say, only to realize after a heart-stopping moment that it's not me but a charred and smoldering likeness of me, battered with sticks and clubs by outraged protestors. After all, an angry mob could not have been so angry when they maybe got together, a small core group say, the day before, in someone's garage or home workshop, to build the effigy of me. It's a handicraft like any other, requiring patient and sober effort, despite being ultimately put into the service of ugly and hostile emotions. Rage alone will not make a decent effigy. Someone has to go down to JoAnn Fabrics, someone has to roll up their sleeves. Yelling and clenched fists have their place but an effigy of me couldn't have simply constructed itself! At some point someone would have cared and gotten down to business, consulting photographs of me perhaps, trying to make a presentable effigy, a good resemblance, and that thought might give me a nice feeling inside, or it might not. I won't really know till it happens.