After a Census Bureau worker was found dead in rural Kentucky in September, liberals jumped at the chance to attribute his death to right-wing extremists whipped into a frenzy by the hate-filled sermons of Michelle Bachmann and Glenn Beck. It turns out the Census employee committed suicide and tried to make it seem like a murder to recoup life insurance payments for his son.
USA Today reports that Bill Sparkman "committed suicide and staged his death to look like a homicide." He was not murdered by a government-hating extremist with Fox News prime time cued up on his Tivo. Given this revelation, let us review what some in the liberal media and the lefty blogosphere had to say upon the discovery of Sparkman's body.
The Census Bureau field-training manual advises employees on everything from walking only in lighted areas to staying away from political issues, especially when someone is hostile: "Do not defend yourself or the government with respondents who say they hate you and all government employees. Indicate that you regret this opinion and express a desire to provide them with a positive experience." Perhaps Bill Sparkman wasn't given the time to follow that sage advice.
Twelve days ago, in a Kentucky cemetery, a the body of a census worker was found hanging from a tree. Scrawled across his chest was the word "fed." Though it's too early to conclude that the man, 51-year-old Bill Sparkman, was targeted in an act of anti-government violence, that is an angle that authorities are currently looking into. And if that turns out to be the case, it wouldn't be all that surprising, considering the sheer volume of vitriol directed at the federal government and the Obama administration these days by conservative media personalities, websites, and even members of Congress.
The gruesome lynching of this Census worker seems to bear a disturbing similarity to some of the worst hate crimes committed across this country. Regardless of what the motive for the killing may have been, why would a murderer(s) take such pains to so blatantly convey anger, fear, and vitriol towards a Census employee? Perhaps because some on the right have created an impression that Census employees are terrifying.
It's possible, I suppose, that anger at the feds in general could make a drug dealer murder a census worker. But the most worrying possibility - that this is Southern populist terrorism, whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts - remains real.
MyDD:
If conservative politicians and opinion leaders keep stoking fears about the government using census data to steal from or perhaps even round up law-abiding citizens, I am concerned that mentally unstable individuals will commit further acts of violence against census-takers next year.
The facts surrounding Sparkman's death, facts that were not available when these writers issued their vitriolic indictments of prominent conservatives, demonstrate the hastiness with which so many of the left's opinionistas will attribute violence to mere words.
Now that the blatant falsities of these accusations have been exposed, we shall see if these writers show some decency and retract their scornful statements.
—Lachlan Markay is an associate with Dialog New Media. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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Even if these liberal dolts
Tue, 11/24/2009 - 18:23 ET by gmaniac1Even if these liberal dolts retract their statements, they've already committed career suicide and seriously have no shame/common decency.
Unfortunately
Tue, 11/24/2009 - 18:33 ET by Quasi-socialistI don't think they have committed career suicide. They will only be judged by the "legitimate media" which does not include commentary sites on the right or Fox news, or--if they keep it up--they'll find someway to make the Wall Street Journal sound "fringe". I remember Cronkite-lead roundtables in the 80s, where the press cleared themselves of all charges of bias--about the closest that they would ever come is that they didn't have a perfect record on resisting manipulation from outside sources.
However, I read Charles Frankel's book about the Johnson Administration. Johnson tried hard to please the radicals in the press. He wanted appreciation from the press for the Great Society program, and Frankel could see it on the faces of the press that they were not impressed at how long it had taken Johnson to give them a modicum of the social programs that they preferred. Frankel represents it that Johnson, at his most liberal, still could not please the social progressive tastes of the press.
It kind of explains how 40 years later the press fell all over itself for a true radical.
Well I think they have and
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 00:47 ET by gmaniac1Well I think they have and continue to do so with constant false reporting like this. However, they may get a bail out from the liberal politicians so they may still have life. So the "legitimate media" is who? Let me guess, NBC/MSNBC, CBS, ABC, the liberal rags known as newspapers. Hmm, I'd say anything legitimate would be on the eye of the consumer and Fox News is way out in front.
just more proof
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 13:04 ET by Patriot IIon how really sick these liberal leftists are!!!
We can hope.
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 15:29 ET by Quasi-socialist"Hmm, I'd say anything legitimate would be on the eye of the consumer and Fox News is way out in front."
There's just so much aligned against conservative media, it's hard to tell the penetration among other groups. I mean, Obama still has more the 40% who believe he's doing a good job. What are the factors? Well, it could be that the MSM were 1300% more negative on Reagan with a similar economy.
But MSM is stonewalling everything.
Johnny Mathis
Tue, 11/24/2009 - 18:26 ET by Quasi-socialistonce had a hit describing the day that you can expect the foul left to apologize or to admit that they were too hasty trying to frame speech as "deadly".
They will continue to laugh every time a conservatives is alarmed by something, and be alarmed everytime they feel that a conservative has said something they don't think they should have--regardless of whether it's true or not.
Liberals used to believe in "speaking truth to power". Was that ever just-trust-in-the-government pollyanna-ism that they prefer now?
What they actually meant was . . .
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 12:38 ET by Galvanic"Liberals used to believe in "speaking truth to power". Was that ever just-trust-in-the-government pollyanna-ism that they prefer now?"
. . . "Truth to power, unless WE'RE in power."
The only blessing that Obama's election has brought forward is the exposure of the genuine socialist and even Marxist sentiments of many of our elected officials and the majority of MSM. It's as if they sense that Obama -- whom they knew all along was no centrist but rather a bonafide socialist -- gives them cover to express their Leftist agenda and dismiss both criticism and counter-evidence.
The self-proclaimed Watchdogs of Democracy are deliberately turning away from Truth, even going so far as to deny its existence. Any legitimate journalist would be chomping at the bit to dig into an ACORN or AGW-fraud story. There's some Truth to Power to address.
And they are in a state of denial, failing to understand that declining subscriptions, sales, and viewership is Nature's way of telling them that they are seriously ill, and will die unless they change their behavior.
Instead, they insist that the problem is that there's something wrong with us.
Tame stuff...
Tue, 11/24/2009 - 18:33 ET by shooterIf you really want to see anti-rightwing bile-filled screeds on this subject, check out the dailykos postings on it. _________________________________________
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert A. Heinlein
suicide?
Tue, 11/24/2009 - 20:03 ET by cajun2Andrew Sullivan wrote a piece stating this guys death was Michelle Malkin's fault. Sullivan will apologize immediately, I'm sure.
I wonder if Mike Malloy
Tue, 11/24/2009 - 20:26 ET by dscottI wonder if Mike Malloy will be apologizing to Glenn Beck?
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/09/26/radio-host-mike-mallo...
We won't hold our breath.
Btw- does that lower the right wing death toll from 9 to 8? Just asking since libs are quick to blame us for violence when their looney tunes are ones who act on their impulses.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, starving the poor one gallon of ethanol at a time. Fill your tank with E85 and cull a village.
Won't stop the Leftard
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 01:02 ET by RR GOPWon't stop the Leftard talking heads from dropping his name in the future when they go on a rant after x number of Americans are murdered by Muslim terrorists in the future.
Many folks will just nod and agree.
One of the 34% who thinks George W. Bush was a great President. One of the 86% who wants to bring back the stock and pillory.
I Guess It was Ok to Jump to Conclusions
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 01:02 ET by PooveyI Guess It was Ok to Jump to Conclusions, Thank allah that no muslim was involved.
Can be dangerous
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 02:08 ET by Copperhead RidgeI used to work in rural parts of east Kentucky. There's a reason why I don't anymore. When I learned of this poor soul's death, my first reaction was to think that he had stumbled on the crop of a local marijuana grower, although they are passive about letting unsuspecting people out of the vicinity of their crop.
One of my crews and I discovered a marijuana crop in a county near Clay County a few years ago. The grower had camoed some pickle buckets and had them tied up in the branches of a tree. We left the area immediately, but I can assure you that we were watched every step of the way. Growers put the crops in pickle buckets so they can move them when morons like me happen across them. I'm alive to tell about it, right? They also put the plants on federal land, so private property can't be seized if authorities find them.
So, I was suspicious about his man's death from when I first heard about it. East Kentuckians don't waste time with hanging people. They usually just shoot them. I don't mean to sound insouciant about it, but a lynching requires a group of men in coordination to pull it off (Please believe that I don't have any experience with this, although I know a judge whose last name is Lynch). A shooting takes one person and a split second. Anytime I've run across undesirables in the mountains they were armed with firearms and not ropes.
Anyone who would kill a man up there, would not be likely to waste time writing something on his body. If they did, they would do it with a knife and not a damned Sharpie. Plus, they don't think on a national scale (I mean no insult by this). They think locally. They'd be more inclined to kill a man because of the local sheriff's election than over any animus between liberals and conservatives in god forsaken Washington, D.C. (google Pulaski County, Ky., Sheriff assassination and read about that).
Besides, in 1998 liberals in this state whipped people in the mountains into a frenzy over coal mining on Black Mountain. No one was killed, thankfully, but people got hurt. They made people hate industry, and people attacked and threatened anyone representing the coal industry at the time. Not a danged word was written about it in the very newspapers misrepresenting all the facts of the case.
I know. I spent a year working on that issue. I've always been a conservative, and I list what little respect I had for environmentalists working in Harlan County in 1998. I also lost any respect I had for journalists. They're lying dogs.
They purposefully used Mr. Sparkman as a political prop. Even some seasoned journalists in Kentucky should've reasoned what I did from the circumstances at the outset. Instead, they rushed it into a left vs. right issue before the man had been laid to rest. Shameful. They needed a story to counter the rise of the Tea Parties and the decline of President Obama's popularity.
On the money
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 09:57 ET by mang"They needed a story to counter the rise of the Tea Parties and the decline of President Obama's popularity."
You're right on the money and this is what is so frustrating about the media these days.
"The honesty of the press is as great an object to society as the freedom of it." - Thomas Paine
The web they weave.
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 10:11 ET by CrashThe second this story broke I knew there was something more to it than what the MSM was yarning. A copy of Ann Coulter's, Guilty would be a nice companion to this nonsense.
This has been a week of revelations, By my count us levelheaded skeptics are up by four*... five if you count the Louisiana Purchase!
All I want for Christmas is to expose the thugs from Chicago. And hey ... Alinsky really works!
*Don't forget Acorn and Climate Gate.
The irony of the MyDD posting . . .
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 10:14 ET by GalvanicMyDD: "If conservative politicians and opinion leaders keep stoking fears about the government using census data to steal from or perhaps even round up law-abiding citizens, I am concerned that mentally unstable individuals will commit further acts of violence against census-takers next year."
The latest revelation suggests something quite the opposite: we should be concerned that mentally unstable individuals are collecting important census data.
By attempting to tarnish the public's image of innocent local residents in eastern Kentucky, does this man's deviously-planned suicide constitute a hate crime?
Interesting... The Rocky
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 12:49 ET by wiwfInteresting...
The Rocky Mountain Collegian: Illustrating Idiocy
Actually, this is a coverup
Tue, 12/01/2009 - 04:34 ET by FreddyBActually, this is a coverup by the Kentucky fascist police.
The murder was committed personally by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
Sarcasm aside, someone is probably out there writing or at least thinking something similar.
Freddy Braun,
http://insurelifeok.com