Newspaper defends controversial Obama cover

A newspaper in Georgia is under fire after critics complained about a recent cover article depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in the cross hairs of a rifle.

A reader on the Daily Kos web site posted the cover image on Tuesday after spotting the weekly suburban newspaper in Roswell, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. The reader, identified as spiralstairs, described being "shocked" at the cover, which features the headline "White Fright" above a picture of Barack Obama.

"The article itself is not offensive, but the cover is beyond the pale," the reader writes, and urges other readers to contact the paper to complain. "There are some serious racists in the area, and Obama's candidacy has brought out the worst in a lot of people," writes spiralstairs. "The last thing we need is a newspaper to suggest assassination with an incendiary cover such as this."

By the end of the day, the cover feature had been removed from the paper's web site and Holiday Inn had announced that it would no longer advertise in the publication, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The controversy comes just days after former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee apologized for remarks he made at a recent convention of the National Rifle Association. After hearing a loud noise off stage, Huckabee joked, "That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he -- he dove for the floor," Huckabee said.

The controversy also follows a recent threat in which a leader of the Ku Klux Klan vowed that Barack Obama would be assassinated if he were elected president. There have also been a number of recent media accounts describing racist incidents experienced by campaign workers during the Obama campaign and a story in Georgia in which a bar owner was protested for selling t-shirts that depicted Barack Obama as a monkey.