© Getty Images/AFP/Chris Graythen
The #43 Victory Junction Chevrolet waits in the garage at Talladega Superspeedway on June 22, 2020
The 'noose' purportedly hanging in NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace's garage may have actually been a rope used to close the door of the carport, internet sleuths have argued, citing videos and photographs of the alleged crime scene.
NASCAR
called for a full investigation after one of Wallace's team members claimed to have discovered a noose in their garage stall at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama on Sunday. The black driver, who never saw the threatening rope himself,
said that the incident showed that the sport was struggling with racism. But there may be a simpler and far less racist explanation for the alleged hate crime.
A video dug up from 2019 shows garage #4 - the stall used by Wallace's team at Talladega - featured
a pull rope with a hand loop, which was almost certainly used to manually operate the garage door. Curiously, a photograph of the same garage stall taken on the day that the alleged noose was discovered shows that the hand loop was missing and had likely been cut from the rope.
Conservative commentator Mark Dice argued that there was a "99.9% chance" that the noose was in fact the garage pull that had been in the carport long before Wallace's team member stumbled upon it.
Dice noted that it wasn't uncommon for harmless objects to be misidentified as hate symbols. He pointed to a recent example in which "nooses" found in an Oakland park were later revealed to be exercise aids.
Comment: Fake noose media!
Update (6/24): Despite the investigations by the FBI and NASCAR resulting in the conclusion that the rope was simply being used to pull down a garage door, Bubba Wallace continues to
deny reality and claim it was a noose. He said that he had never seen a garage pull with a hand loop before. That argument was quickly destroyed:
Comment: A stark reminder that, in our dark and bizarre times, one needs to exercise discernment as much as is possible, lest we end up believing, supporting and promoting lies.