This is not a normal GetReligion post. Then again, these are not normal times in American life.

Ponder this journalism question. Let’s say that alt-right leaders made a public announcement that they were — in two days — going to gather to attack, desecrate and topple a memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. How much news coverage would that story receive? How about a right-wing attack on a statue of President Abraham Lincoln?

That brings us to the status of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.

What is missing from the following material in a Washington Post story about a number of events unfolding in the nation’s capital?

Other protesters gathered on Capitol Hill’s Lincoln Park, home to another controversial statue. Protesters decried the Emancipation Memorial, which depicts a freed slave kneeling at the feet of President Abraham Lincoln.

Earlier in the day, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) introduced a bill to have the statue removed, saying it did not reflect the efforts African Americans made to free themselves from slavery.

Now, click here and watch the video at the top of this post, which contains a specific threat made against this memorial.

Is that threat worthy of coverage?

Of course, it also helps to know something about the history of this particular memorial — which was created with funds donated by freed slaves.

While critics claim that the statue depicts a white man towering over a subservient black man, that is not what it mean to the former slaves who created it. They knew the story behind the image.