While the starry-eyed media likens the recent Louisiana protest to Selma, and bloggers pat themselves on the back for a job well done, and over-excited liberal commentators say we are heralding in a “new civil rights movement,” a trend has developed out of America’s newfound obsession with the Jena Six. And it ain’t about peace and love and equal rights under the law.

Hello, old, familiar noose. Welcome to 2007!

First, there was the original noose, in Jena. Well, I obviously don’t mean that the Jena noose was the first noose. People have died with nooses around their necks for centuries and centuries — long before the lynching of blacks, symbolized, with a particular weightiness, by a noose swinging from a tree — became a dark, dark chapter in American history. Since that time, nooses have continuously been a uniquely American way to intimidate and terrorize blacks.

But I would say that the Jena noose, which many consider to be the straw that broke the camel’s back in that small Louisiana town — the catalyst for a series of events that culminated with a ballsy DA charging six black boys with attempted murder for beating up a classmate — was the start of a new trend. Now, I’m not sure if the trend is the noose-hanging itself or the media attention to noose-hanging. Either way, it’s all the rage these days with racists-in-the-know.

Because soon after the furor over the Jena Six hit the mainstream, , near an African American cultural center. And a Louisiana KKK member was arrested with a noose hanging from the back of his red pickup, James Byrd-style. And . And nooses were planted in the bags of a black Coast Guard Academy cadet and a white officer conducting race relations training. And someone hung a noose in the locker of a black, of course, Long Island Deputy Police Chief. And I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to add to that growing list in the coming months.

A friend asked me recently, “Why are people really doing this? Is it because they really want to ‘hang a nigger from a tree?’ Or because they are desperate to be noticed?”

My guess is most are somewhere in between, with a hefty helping of ignorance about what a noose hanging from a tree really, truly represents.

Mostly, though, the copycat noose-hangers are terrorists in the most passive aggressive sense of the word. A noose is supposed to make us feel unwelcome. Intimidated. Make us flee in the other direction. Or, better yet, get so angry that we become violent and beat up classmates and get ourselves thrown in prison. Incidentally, the people hanging the nooses are rarely caught. And even if they are, getting a hate crime charge to stick on something that is really more of a hate “incident” is an uphill battle.

Besides educating away the ignorance that causes people to do these idiotic things, the best way that we can combat the “noose trend” is to ignore it. The people who do it are begging for some kind of reaction. And, simply put, they don’t deserve one.