Being Canadian, I really do hate census workers (or, more accurately, the census), and I don’t even think you have to be Canadian to feel that way about nosy government lackeys, but anyhow…
PS: Andrew Sullivan, huh? Remember him? Wow.
Ann Coulter writes:
In the fall of 2009, the naked body of Census worker Bill Sparkman was found hanging from a tree in southwestern Kentucky, with the word “fed” written across his chest.
Liberals wasted no time in concluding that right-wing extremists had murdered Sparkman in a burst of anti-government hate. (…)
New York magazine ran an article about the dead Census worker, asking, “Has Nancy Pelosi’s Fear of Political Violence Been Realized?”
The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan blamed “Southern populist terrorism” for Sparkman’s death, “whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts.”
But MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow owned the Bill-Sparkman-was-murdered-by-right-wingers story. Night after night, she breathlessly reported this “breaking national news.” Although Rachel’s main move is giggling and eye-rolling, she was all deadly earnestness when it came to the “troubling story” and the “worry that he was killed in fact because he was a federal employee.”
In case you missed the point, Maddow reminded viewers there’s “a strong suspicion of government generally among people who live in that area.”
A month later, investigators announced that Sparkman had committed suicide in an insurance scam. Rachel left it to her guest host, Howard Dean, to break the bad news to her conspiracy-minded viewers, sparing her the humiliation.
And then we never heard the story of the Census worker again.