A sad end to an even sadder story
We are admittedly far from the days when Virginia O’Hanlon inspired by her fathers admonition that you will “know it’s true if it is published in the New York Sun” sent her famous letter to the editor of that long gone periodical. Now adays only the foolhardy regard any news paper’s opinion as factual without considering the political leanings of the paper. Unfortunately very few papers, websites, books or other news sources are truly non-biased.
Keeping that in mind, I would like to discuss a stories that the media (especially the so called “new media”) considered important that now is not, only because the story did not bear out the hopes and suspicions of the media source.
The media source in question in this story is the Huffington Post. The subject of the story? The death of census worker Bill Sparkman.
As the death occurred within a few weeks of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s tearful warning about violent rhetoric it was only natural for leftist journalists to attribute the death to Right Wing hate speech, some of them covered all their bases like Landon Ross who the Huffington Post describes as “A Los Angles Based Writer, Artist and progressive thinker”. In his article of September 28, 2009 entitled “Census worker hanged – What Pelosi Warned?” he stated that “If it is revealed that his death was indeed a homicide (as an unnamed official has alleged) and not a suicide, then the media and the public have a very important challenge ahead. Since polarizing political turmoil often leads to the level of crisis before the parties involved decide to moderate, the question is whether our nation can change course in time to avoid more bloodshed.”
He continues “Yet Republican lawmakers, cable hosts, and radio personalities are riling up fears that a Manchurian-Kenyan-socialist and his secretly anti-American comrades are planning to turn this country into the Fourth Reich. They lend credibility to the idea that the Democrats want to kill your grandmother, and that the 2010 census will lay the groundwork for FEMA’s secret concentration camps.
When an individual comes to believe these malignant distortions, it then becomes rational for them to kill in defense of country; just as when one comes to believe that exploding themselves amongst a group of civilian infidels is a righteous act commanded by God, that person can then justify acting. Beliefs are powerful catalysts.”
He goes on to state that Nancy Pelosi when warning of hateful rhetoric was ‘lambasted’ by the right – Well, this is kind of true, except that he neglects to mention that this ‘lambasting’ was due in large part to Pelosi’s hateful rhetoric having to due with the murder of the first openly gay politician Harvey Milk who along with Mayor George Moscone was assassinated by Dan White another city supervisor. And his lamenting the attacks or ‘bullying’ by the right against poor Janet Napolitano neglects to mention that her ‘bullying’ was in large part due to her warning about Veterans being potential terrorists (or man made disaster specialists or whatever we are calling them now).
The he does his masterful job of covering his bases “Yet if this tragedy turns out to be unrelated to politics, that would be beside the point. The fact that, upon hearing of this incident, politically minded people wonder whether the death was a result of right wing invective is telling”
And then the motive behind the story rears it’s ugly head “With adequate will” Ross states, the public can force Fox News to own responsibility for continuing to actively distort and manipulate the truth, propagating dangerous beliefs. A large enough movement might force advertisers to go elsewhere. And the other news networks could conceivably challenge and correct conservative (and liberal) politicians who intentionally distort the facts. Is this wishful thinking? I don’t know. And then amazingly “Do not misinterpret this as a call for censorship.” What are we supposed to mininterpret it as? “Unbiased journalism”?
But Ross was far from the only leftist blogger anxious to equate the tragic and untimely death of Mr. Sparkman with right wing irresponsibility. That’s not so bad, it is the fact that they were so plainly hoping that it was somehow connected to the right that is so unfortunate.
Delvin Barrett and Jeffrey McMurray from Huffington Post teamed up to write an article on the tragedy. Although their article was very in-depth perhaps it was too in-depth as the following quotation from the article demonstrates:
“Door-to-door operations have been suspended in Clay County pending a resolution of the investigation, Scurry-Johnson said.
Manchester, the main hub of Clay County, is an exit off the highway, with a Walmart, a few hotels, chain restaurants and a couple gas stations. The drive away from town and toward the area Sparkman’s body was found is decidely darker through the forest with no streetlights on windy roads, up and down steep hills.
Kelsee Brown, a waitress at Huddle House, a 24-hour chain restaurant, when asked about the hanging, said she thinks the government sometimes has the wrong priorities.
“Sometimes I think the government should stick their nose out of people’s business and stick their nose in their business at the same time. They care too much about the wrong things,” she said.”
Kelsee Brown, a waitress at Huddle House? Is this reaching,, or is it just me?
There were many other Huffington Post articles, updating everyone, providing additional information and in general raising in the background the specter of right wing hate.
And then with the prononcement came the saddest part of the story. “Suicide — that’s the conclusion of state police and the FBI after completing their exhaustive investigation into the mysterious death of census worker Bill Sparkman, who was found hanging from a tree with his hands bound and the word “fed” scrawled in marker across his chest. It’s believed that Sparkman was trying to make his death look like a murder because his life-insurance policies didn’t cover suicide. “This is one of the most thorough death investigations that turned out to be suicide that I’ve ever seen,” said Kentucky State Police Captain Lisa Rudzinski.”
If that is not enough apparently Mr. Sparkman was suffering from cancer. Fortunately the left who had already attempted to use the death of the man to start a ‘grass roots’ boycott of Fox has thus far been able to keep itself from making Mr. Sparkman the martry for the Health care plan.
November 26th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Pat…..it is a very tragic and sad story, but I can understand why people initially responded to the story as they did. At first glance, even the police…..and probably anyone on the scene would have thought that this was a ‘hate’ crime, after all that’s what Sparkman wanted people to believe.
I did read several stories about Sparkman expressing his anger at people in his community, and their distrust and hate towards the Government. As you mentioned, this tragedy came weeks after Pelosi’s statement of findings from the Homeland Security Department, regarding the escalation of ‘hate groups’ that are followed by this Department. In addition, it coincides with the findings of the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center), who has been tracking these ‘hate groups’ for a long time.
It is not incorrect to single out the ‘right wing’ as the source of most of the ‘hate speech’ rehtoric, and the findings prove that. I find it a little naive and defensive on your part to just ‘assume’ that it is wrong without noting the findings.
One more thing…..I have driven through that area along the Daniel Boone Express in Kentucky, while on vacation to visit a friends mother. When I drove into town (which was about a ‘blink of an eye long’) I stopped to ask directions. When I initially got out of the car, everyone stopped what they were doing, and some even went inside a building and were watching out the windows. I was driving a red sports car, which obviously stood out, and one man who was still standing outside walked over to me very cautiously (I felt like I had entered the ‘Twilight Zone’), and he asked what I wanted. When I told him who I was looking for, he immediately smiled and was happy to give me the information (but not until he called my friends mother on the phone first). I spent 2 days with her Mom and the whole family, and her Mom told me stories of the place and surrounding area. There is a real distrust of strangers and the Government in particular. She told me a story about when they were first building the DB expressway, they came across this family who lived up in the remote back woods, and thought that the President was still FDR…..and other stories such as this. I’m sure glad that I always travel with my gun, because these people would just as soon shoot you, then ask questions later.
So, my point is this…..none of this was overblown in the reporting initially, as I pointed out earlier in my ‘oh too lengthy response, and when I heard the story I immediately had a flashback of my trip through the TZ.
I realize that in the end the story was not what it had initially appeared to be, but my personal experience, along with the findings of the HSA and SPLC, is in no way an indictment on the media, nor Pelosi.
If the ’shoes fits’…..well, what can I say. Oh, and btw, my friends Mom and family are ‘right wingers’ and racists, but I loved them all.
November 27th, 2009 at 2:30 am
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