Kentucky police have concluded that Bill Sparkman's death was a suicide:
State police, working with the FBI, said at a press conference moments ago that Sparkman had recently taken out two life insurance policies that would not pay out for suicide. It appears Sparkman hoped that the scheme would benefit his son, Josh Sparkman.
Sparkman, of course, was the Census worker who was found hung, bound with duct tape, and with the word, "fed," scrawled on his chest. At the time, I wrote:
More gruesome details about the death of Census worker, Bill Sparkman, have emerged that make it obvious that - regardless of motive for the killing - Sparkman's killer was, by stripping Sparkman, binding his hands and feet with duct tape, scrawling "fed" on his chest, and attaching his Census ID card to his head, was participating in an exceptionally violent and lunatic way with the anti-government rhetoric promulgated on cable television and talk radio.
Obviously I was wrong about Sparkman having killers. It seemed fantastic at the time that anyone would kill themselves they way Sparkman did - it still does, frankly - and that a murder with such blatant anti-government details was, in fact, a reaction in some way to recent anti-government rhetoric. Instead, it turned out that Sparkman was spoofing Beck and Bachman, and a lot of us were wrong about his death, and obviously rushed to implicate high-profile, cable television righty extremists in it. In this particular case, we were wrong.
But beyond the senseless death and Sparkman's convoluted acts and the effect it will have on his family, the worst thing that will probably come out of this isn't that leftys suddenly look like jerks, but that the Glenn Becks and Michelle Bachmans of the world will somehow feel "exonerated" or cleared. But their vile rhetoric has already led to recent killings. The story here shouldn't be that leftys jumped to conclusions, but that extremist rhetoric has already created dangerous tensions. Frankly, the only difference between the extremist rhetoric that touched off Nidal Hasan, and that which touched off Poplawski is that the Pittsburgh shooter's fare is widely promulgated on cable television and underwritten by mainstream businesses. Politicized right-wing misinformation and paranoia has been legitimized, and the revelation that Sparkman's death was a suicide means warnings about rightwing extremism will be viewed as unfounded or exaggerated. |
