Georgia Restaurant Billboard Displays N-word to Deride Obama Health Plan

By Alicia Cruz
Editor-in-Chief
Theblackurbantimes

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse than the Joe Wilson "You Lie!"outburst, along comes a peach oyster. A Georgia business owner, who strenuously disagrees with President Obama's health care plan, has took to posting the N-word on a sign outside his restaurant, the Peach Oyster in Paulding county.
The billboard reads, "Obama's plan for health care - [N-word] rig it." "I've used the N-word most of my life and there is different ways to put your opinion up, but that's just the words I choose to use," owner Patrick Lanzo told Atlanta's WGCL. "I've put signs up for 22 years. ... I've put all kinds of political signs up."
Dismissing the presence of a mannequin clad in a Ku Klux Klan outfit, Lanzo denies being racist while pointing out photos of Dr. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela on his walls and flashing a 2005 NAACP membership card.
"I stand by my President, but I also stand by my right under the First Amendment to criticize him if I feel he's wrong," Lanzo said, "President Obama's health care plan is substandard."
In a written statement to WGCL, a local NAACP chapter took aim not at Lanzo's message, but those who are allowing it. "This latest ploy for attention by Mr. Lanzo is not surprising. What is of concern, however, is the total lack of leadership and action from the elected officials of Paulding County, who repeatedly have allowed this type of toxic public display," the statement read.