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It was making light of lynching. Treating it as funny. That could be viewed as "advocacy," although it isn't direct advocacy.

But what about "Freepers should be shot"? (Head of Hillary Now)

Or "Someone should kill President Bush"? (Alec Baldwin)

Or "Someone should kill Henry Hyde"? (Some Democrat whose name I forget").

Or what about the pictures on this thread, advocating fragging military officers? You can bet that if a patriotic American took a swing at any of those jerks, he would bear the full brunt of the law, and the jerks wearing the inflammatory t-shirts would have gotten no punishment at all.

There's a double standard here. Offensive speech should be met only by more speech, not violence.

Do you think someone could have gotten away with physically assaulting any one of those people? They were directly advocating violence.

It was making light of lynching. Treating it as funny. That could be viewed as "advocacy," although it isn't direct advocacy.

Wat he was doing was deliberately trying to provoke a reaction. The kid is obviously stupid. But I refuse to believe he was so stupid he didn't understand what would happen to him.

I agree violence against the kid is uncalled for but I can't say with certainty that I wouldn't have done the same thing.

There's a double standard here. Offensive speech should be met only by more speech, not violence.

There is only the question of whether the speech has crossed over into "fighting words," rather than simple offensiveness. It's the definition the government uses to decide whether an expression is protected under the 1st Amendment or not, and the definition I would use to decide whether it should be met with words or violence.