I know Earle is liberal. I wasn’t implying that he would be sympathetic to this killer. I just wondered why she would quote a song that is sympathetic to the murder of a (fictional) “fed.”
Why would they kill a census worker?
Journalists have been shot in rural marijuana-growing communities before. There was one in Hancock County (TN, I think) not too long ago. Wasn’t even investigating drug producers or anything, just doing a story on poverty in Appalachia.
I guess when your whole community’s economy is based on a couple of fields of weed it doesn’t pay to let anyone ask too many questions.
Still, given the scrawl on his chest it doesn’t sound like this was drug-related.
This happened about 50 miles west of me. There’s still a fair bit of pot grown around there, though not as much as there was 10 or 15 years ago. There’s some meth here and there. The predominant illicit drugs of choice (by a lot) are diverted prescription narcotics and benzodiazepines.
It’s disturbingly similar to the sort of thing that used to happen to the “revenuers” out looking for moonshine (as immortalized in UT’s fight song). It’s a horrible stereotype, but there are plenty of people whose engagement with the outside world is minimal enough that they’ve carried those attitudes down from earlier generations.
It’s very possible that the person who did this has never heard of Michelle Bachmann or watched Fox News. But it’s also possible that the Bachmann/Beck/Teabagger frenzy somehow found a rich target in someone who was raised to hate the Feds.
I’m sure I’ll hear a lot more about this at work tomorrow. One of my colleagues lives in Clay Co.
I guess it could’ve been drug dealers stupid enough to kill a census worker but clever enough to throw them off the trails by making it look motivated by something else.
googles
Whoah. I never guessed Rocky Top had (and essentially endorses) murder in it. Well, it is the University of Tennessee…
Even without all the evidence in, I feel 100% safe saying that we’re not dealing with the sharpest knives in the drawer here.
I always wondered what “Kentucky bluegrass” meant . . .
You know, if I were an undercover ATF or DEA agent walking around in a rural community asking questions because I suspected illegal activity in an area, I might tell people I’m with the Census as a cover story. It sounds plausible to me that someone with an illegal drug operation or large stash of illegal weapons might suspect that Census workers are actually undercover agents for another department.
That said, I bet that when we get to the bottom of this, it’ll turn out to be someone who does object to the Census.
Huh. Undercover DEA agent they knew about would also make sense for “FED”
I would have thought they could tell an overweight 51-year-old part time teacher from an undercover agent.
The whole point of an undercover agent is for him to not look like an undercover agent.
Yeah, I’m sure that every single undercover agent in the DEA is young and in good physical condition. Part of the point of undercover agents is that they don’t fit any particular profile, and so go unnoticed. To assume that because someone is middle-aged and overweight, they must not be DEA would be pretty stupid on a drug-grower’s part.
And to be honest, we may not be dealing with the brightest bulb in the box here. The fact that they decided to lynch a Federal agent suggests that either this operation or person is extremely powerful and believes it can get away with it, or that this operation or person is stupid enough to think that lynching a Fed is a good idea, and that it will scare away other Feds.
I find it horrifying that in 2009 we have to worry about hate crimes against government workers. Anyone who doesn’t want to connect the motive dots of the message carved on the victim’s chest is a little blinded. All the Beckheads I ever talk to can only muster up three things they inexplicably believe are destroying the country, two of which are the census and the fed (the other is ACORN).
Every time someone suggests that the inappropriately foul mood being whipped up currently on the right could lead to something terrible like this, conservatives act like that’s the craziest accusation ever (despite the recent holocaust museum slaying).
I just…don’t get how so many people feel that they are suddenly so oppressed since Jan 20. Fucking yokels.
A census taker was killed trying to test someone? Maybe that person ate his liver with a nice Chianti…slurp, slurp, slurp!
Meanwhile, the Freepers are actually comparing this to the Reichtstag Fire.
I bet the census is going to count the shit out of this area after this.
That’ll show 'em!
Another disturbing sign of paranoia from the right: gun and ammunition sales have skyrocketed since Obama got elected.
Note that Obama, unlike Clinton, has not proposed any gun control legislation whatsoever.
There have been hate crimes against government workers in inner cities for the past 20 years. The government workers, in that case, are cops.