So Rep. Michele Bachman, R-Shame, was down in St. Louis today, where she ignored Lincoln’s axiom on being thought a fool as per usual. But what is really impressive is this little sequence from her departure, as reported by the Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel:
After the speech, Bachmann had only a few minutes to sign autographs and collect a stack of CDs and books from fans who’d followed her into the lobby. I caught up to her as she headed outside and asked if she had any response to the murder of a Kentucky census worker, having noticed that the Census, a constant target for Bachmann, did not figure into her speech. Bachmann recoiled a little at the question and turned to enter her limo.
“Thank you so much!” she said.
That’s…well, it’s pathetic, that’s what it is. It wouldn’t have taken Bachmann but a second to say, “Well obviously, I condemn violence, yadda yadda.”
Of course, someone who didn’t condemn this sort of violence would simply get into a limo and duck the question.
As for the murder of Bill Sparkman, the evidence coming out makes it quite apparent that he was, indeed, targeted for being a census worker:
One of the witnesses who found a part-time census worker’s body hanging in a Kentucky cemetery says the man was naked and his hands and feet were bound with duct tape.
Jerry Weaver of Fairfield, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he was among a group of relatives who discovered the body of Bill Sparkman on Sept. 12.
Sparkman was a substitute teacher who worked part-time for the census. Law enforcement officials have released very few details on his death, only saying he died from asphyxiation.
Weaver says the man also was gagged and had duct tape over his eyes and neck. He says something that looked like an identification tag was taped to the side of his neck.
Some on the right have suggested this might be a suicide, or possibly the work of drug dealers. Well, drug dealers generally don’t target census workers, and don’t ritualistically display those they kill. As for suicide, the details of Sparkman’s death pretty much eliminate any chance of that.
If they wanted to redeem their mortal souls, people like Bachmann and Glenn Beck, people who have been slagging on the census for months, could at the very least condemn this act of violence. I might even be willing to believe them. It’s possible they didn’t think their words had the power to motivate people. (They certainly fail to motivate me.) It’s possible they didn’t think through the consequences of what they were saying. It’s possible that they actually feel terrible about all this.
It’s possible. But the longer the silence goes on, the more clear it is that it’s pretty unlikely. I suspect Bachmann sleeps quite well at night. I suspect she isn’t bothered by this murder one bit. And I suspect that she’ll come out as a pro-choice, atheist, lesbian Democrat before she takes even the basic human step of saying that this sort of violence is wrong.
I’d love to be surprised, Rep. Bachmann. I’d love for you to prove me wrong. But I don’t think you’re going to.
I hate to point this out, but there’s , so far, little evidence that this wasn’t suicide.
So lets not jump to judgment (except for Bachmann., of course)
His hands were bound, he was gagged, and he had ‘fed’ written across his chest?
What about that sounds like a suicide to you?
—Myca
For some reason, Bill Jones’ statement is making me think of Douglas Adams The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, wherein faced with a decapitated corpse, with the head on a turntable across the room from the body, the police declare a suicide.
Or possibly of Lois McMaster-Bujold “Forty stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they’ve ever seen?”
No no no. This is clearly a Discworldesque suicide. ie. Few people on the Discworld are murdered, but plenty of people commit suicide, for instance, calling an assassin a weakling is suicide, walking into a cop bar with a crossbow and screaming give me all your money is suicide.
Apparently, being a census worker in Kentucky is, itself, an act of suicide.
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This whole thing is super creepy. Why can’t everyone just condemn a murder as murder regardless of anything?
Does righty silence on this matter mean they wouldn’t mind seeing a few more of these murders come around?
And I feel like I’m operating with incomplete knowledge here. Does anyone feel inclined to explain to me why people hate the census? Isn’t census-taking in some important law in this country? Doesn’t it have a lot of legitimate purposes? Why murder a census taker? I truly don’t understand. Help!
Apparently, being a census worker in Kentucky is, itself, an act of suicide.
No, no, only if you do your job. Imaginary census-fraud-workers would be fine.
Havlová, the people in question don’t seem to make decisions through reason (even to the extent that other people do). At first, I think, they claimed to fear Democrats using the census for political gain. The details seemed dubious and unsupported, but perhaps rational for someone with poor information. That was months ago. Now they’ve gone for the murderous conspiracy of squirrels that could use the census to round up and intern political opponents. The human nut-gathering industry is petrified.
As for Bachmann’s silence, I actually disagree with Jeff in part. I think she suspects she helped kill that man, and she wants to block that thought.
Yikes. Taking Ric at his word, even if some people feel the Census questions are intrusive and even if there has been a long history of antipathy toward the Census, actually killing a man goes quite a bit beyond “neighbors complaining about having to answer questions,” right? And Ric argues that the increased violence can’t be attributed to rhetoric from Limbaugh, Bachmann or Beck because “in eastern Kentucky I’d be surprised if one out of fifty residents knew who any of those people were, let alone what they talked about,” but then goes on to say it’s because residents are getting mad that ACORN is helping run the Census. To me, it’s implausible that people are paying enough attention to national news to know about ACORN but not enough to know who Rush Limbaugh is. I’m not from eastern Kentucky- do they have giant radio-wave intercepting towers there that somehow block Rush Limbaugh’s voice? If so, can we get some more of those towers for the rest of the country?
Perhaps Rep. Bachmann didn’t respond as you expected because it didn’t occur to her that anyone would consider that her statements might have led to this.
You’re right, we can’t assume she has that much self-awareness.
One of the great ironies is that by refusing to cooperate with the census, intimidating census workers, and otherwise sabotaging census results in their areas, the very people afraid that the census will be used against them will be undercounted, and thereby likely underserved by the government. Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecies.
Actually, Tapetum, if you look at her remarks she does say that she intends to cooperate with the counting function of the census, which is what it was established for and what Congressional representation is based on. It’s the other questions she says she’s not going to answer.
Hm. I’ve never up in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. Presuming people have radios and TVs up there I too would be surprised if only 2% of the people would ever have heard of Rush Limbaugh.
OTOH, the influence that Limbaugh and the rest would have had on something like this would come from an awareness not just of them but on what they’ve had to say about it. And while I’ve been following the various ACORN stories on the national news media, I haven’t heard what he or Beck or any of that crowd have had to say, since I don’t watch or listen to any of them at all. I doubt I’m alone. Sometimes I get the impression from listening to people here that many of you think that Limbaugh and Beck and the rest have the ear of all the conservatives in the country. Lots of people DON’T listen to them at all.
hf, I don’t think it’s an issue of self-awareness. I think it’s an issue of her being quite aware that her statements don’t make her at all responsible for this kind of action.
RonF,
I imagine that Obama is aware that his having once been an attorney on a voter’s rights case in which ACORN was one of the plaintiffs, and of his old community-organizer job having been associated with ACORN, doesn’t make him responsible for what ACORN employees in a half-dozen offices (none of them Chicago) said to a fake “pimp and ‘ho.” But I doubt you would have thought it appropriate for Obama to ignore a question he was asked about that incident.
Also, while Bachmann will avoid undercounting for purposes of Congressional representation, failing to answer any of the other questions (e.g. about whether one has indoor plumbing) means that government won’t know what needs are going unmet in certain parts of the country. Now, if you and all your neighbors are in agreement that you don’t want none of that durn rural electrification nor any other project that might have the federal government’s money behind it, that’s fine. But I find that very few parts of the U.S. are unified on that point, as grandstanding Republican governors discovered with regard to stimulus money even when they had Republican-majority legislatures.
As for the first comment on this post, it reminds me of the speculation that perhaps the victim was killed because he’s a child molester. What evidence is there of his being a child molester, you might ask? Why, none whatsoever! But that doesn’t keep right-wing bloggers from putting the idea out there.
RonF: So, gross ignorance of social science?
Recent evidence calls the anti-Fed hate crime conclusion into question.
Hanged Census Worker Staged Suicide in Apparent Insurance Scam.
Census Worker’s Hanging Death Called Suicide.