Bill Sparkman was a regular guy. Had a couple children, managed to get them grown up. Worked with the Boy Scouts, worked with kids as a substitute teacher. Also worked for the U.S. Census, probably to help make ends meet. He, unfortunately, also got cancer and fought for his life with regular doses of chemotherapy.
In between sessions of chemo, while working as a census taker near Big Creek, Kentucky, somebody savagely murdered him. Abducted him, gagged him, stripped him naked, bound his hands and feet and hanged his body from a tree. They also marked him, scrawling ‘fed’ across his body and taping his Census Bureau i.d. to his neck.
Immediately, anybody familiar with the hysterical screeching of the right-wing in the wake of the presidency’s changing hands cringed. Conservative paranoia about the census had been boiling for months.
Bachmann’s irrational diatribes about scary stalking Census workers quickly spawned a right-wing movement. During an interview with Bachmann, Fox News’ Glenn Beck said, “Ok, so let me talk about the Census because there’s a lot of people that are concerned with it because they don’t want to fill it out, they’re not comfortable with ACORN members coming to find out all this information, they don’t want to give the government all this kind of information.”
Conservative radio host Neal Boortz told a caller, “Most of the rest of the [Census] information is designed to help the government steal from you in order to pass off your property to the moochers. They’re looters.” Boortz urged his listeners to resist the Census workers. “If somebody comes to my — if a burglar came to your house, are you going to show him where the silverware is?” he asked. “Maybe you will if he pulls out a gun.”
The door-rapping ethnics of ACORN? Stealing? Burglars, guns? That sort of hideous vilification of the census and its workers alone qualifies you as whacko dirtbags. It’s required by the Constitution, jerks.
So now we have to come to grips with this murder, an absolutely shocking event, a nightmare. If it turns out to be the hysterical lashing out of an anti-government/census lunatic, it’d indicate the country has a bigger problem than we’d perhaps like to admit: political hysteria-speech affects ‘regular folks’, to the point of enabling, if not outright stoking, homicide.
And, well, don’t the same mindless Conservatives who run their neon-red-raged mouths know it? What was the response to the silence-of-the-lambs killing of an innocent, mild-mannered census worker? What were they immediately inspired to say? This: ‘You liberals are So Fucking Stupid, HAHA.’
I killed the Kentucky Census worker — along with every conservative in America
By Michelle Malkin • September 25, 2009 10:38 AMSomething horrible happened to Bill Sparkman, who worked part-time as a Census worker in rural southeastern Kentucky….
A speculative rumor spread by the Associated Press that Sparkman may have been targeted because of his Census job — coupled with an unsubstantiated claim that “fed” was “scrawled” on his chest — was enough “evidence” for the nutroots to convict every outspoken conservative activist and advocate for limited government of a murder that has yet to be determined a murder…
To recap:
1) Police have not determined yet that this was murder.
2) He wasn’t hanging from the tree.
3) It hasn’t been determined if he was even working as a Census data collector at the time of his death or whether that job had anything at all to do with his demise.
But:
I killed the Kentucky Census worker — along with every man and woman in America who is guilty of having said or written anything critical of government.
The criminalization of conservatism continues.
Sparkman’s friends and family are living a shock film, the poor folks who found the hanging corpse are having a hard time sleeping, and Michelle Malkin is the victim.
She and her ilk have been working overtime warning people that the census and the government are out to harm them. A census worker then gets horrifically murdered, for god’s sake. Everybody reflexively points to the folks who screamed that g-men are really dangerous, and you want an apology, Michelle?
[...] about Michelle Malkin as of September 26, 2009 Census taker Sparkman’s hanging shows Conservatives to be the self-centered scumbags they are – thumpandwhip.com 09/26/2009 Bill Sparkman was a regular guy. Had a couple children, managed [...]
Pingback by Posts about Michelle Malkin as of September 26, 2009 » The Daily Parr — September 26, 2009 @ 4:39 pm
The investigation hasn’t been finished, nobody knows if he was “on the job” or that people knew he was involved in the census… maybe someone thought he was a narc regarding drugs. And nobody has been caught. Jumping to conclusions is stupid.
Comment by Harrison — September 26, 2009 @ 9:19 pm
Suppose he wandered onto a meth lab area, and there are plenty in that area, that would explain this horrible murder.
Comment by VH — September 26, 2009 @ 9:57 pm
Harrison, I didn’t jump to any conclusions. Look at the post–I said ‘if’ in describing the killer as a perhaps anti-government lunatic.
The point is that a tragic, gruesome murder has occurred that certainly looks as if it could be the work of someone unhinged and inspired by political hate speech, and the only thing many Conservatives are concerned with is dodging scrutiny by ratcheting up their political attacks. Self-serving politics and careerism is all that’s important to them, even now while we’re waiting to find out what the circumstances are behind this horror.
If it turns out to be as it appears, expect the Michelle Malkins to be even more callously annoyed while they defend their precious free speech and patriotism. That’s the way it goes with them–when they’ve done something wrong, they couldn’t be more American and Wonderful.
Comment by toma — September 26, 2009 @ 11:38 pm
The title of your post already labels a Conservative writer. So, in a way, you have proved what she said. And let’s make no mention of the Liberal hate speech that happened for 8 years under Bush. What of that violence? What of the American soldier murdered in Arkansas… was that because of Liberal hate speech? I find these types of diatribes to be very one sided.
Comment by Harrison — September 27, 2009 @ 12:35 am
Thank you, Harrison, for the obliging object lesson.
Comment by toma — September 27, 2009 @ 2:18 am
[...] about Michelle Malkin as of September 27, 2009 Census taker Sparkman’s murder shows Conservatives to be the self-centered scumbags they are – thumpandwhip.com 09/26/2009 Bill Sparkman was a regular guy. Had a couple children, managed [...]
Pingback by Posts about Michelle Malkin as of September 27, 2009 » The Daily Parr — September 27, 2009 @ 12:01 pm