The above image was painted on a public mural space in the city of Portland, Maine on Tuesday morning and although the mayor of the city called for it to be removed, the city could not legally do so.
The wall the mural was painted on was officially designated as a public canvas by the city government, meaning that removing the graffiti could have been a violation of free speech.
The good news for Governor Paul LePage and his apologists is that local residents painted over it.
After city resident Mark Reilly painted over the graffiti along the Eastern Promenade with white paint, a group of young women scrubbed it off using whatever they could find nearby, WCSH-TV reported. As of 10 p.m., the Ku Klux Klan imagery was gone and the governor’s likeness was given Mickey Mouse ears and framed by the words “No Hate” and “Hate is Hate.”
While the governor's portrait is now adorned with Mickey Mouse ears, an image that is somehow even more humiliating, it still identifies LePage as a racist, a homophobe, and a moron.
Now that I think about it, LePage's recent comments were actually more blatantly incendiary than what you typically hear from today's Klan. Even former Grand Wizard David Duke does not openly call for shooting people of color as LePage did.