The Bluegrass and Beyond

In a media environment where the public seems to prefer ideology, opinion, speculation and outrage over fact and reason, Bill Sparkman seemed to think he could find plenty of suckers.

He was right.

Authorities said Tuesday that their investigations had determined the part-time Clay County census worker committed suicide in an elaborate ruse to cash in two life insurance policies worth $600,000.

Sparkman wanted to make it look as if he was murdered by an anti-government zealot, authorities said. So he stripped naked, hanged himself from a tree, taped his Census badge to his head and wrote “FED” across his chest with a black marker.

News reports of Sparkman’s death in September were quickly seized upon by the national media’s talking heads. Not many facts were available, but that didn’t matter.

To left-wing bloggers and talk show hosts, this seemed like the perfect example of what can happen when right-wing bloggers and talk show hosts — not to mention public officials — preach anti-government rhetoric.

Even some reporters, who should have known better, used speculation about Sparkman’s death as an opportunity to exploit other themes and stereotypes. If it wasn’t anti-government crazies who killed Sparkman, maybe it was drug dealers or moonshiners.

The headline of the Sunday Herald in Scotland said: “U.S. Official killed in Kentucky — the land of Meth and Moonshine.” ABC News did a report about drugs in Appalachia that began by saying Sparkman’s death had “put renewed focus” on the subject, even though it cited no facts to support that claim.

It wasn’t just media people who jumped to conclusions.

In an op-ed piece published Oct. 19 in the Herald-Leader, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, John Gage, wrote:

“While the investigation into Sparkman’s death is not yet complete, I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that this occurred after an unprecedented wave of hate speech by public officials, media figures and leaders of extremist organizations, some aimed directly at the census and some targeting President Barack Obama and the government in general.”

Sparkman suckered them all. Police weren’t so easily fooled, but they had to spend a lot of time and taxpayers’ money to make sure the media swirl would be silenced.

These tempests seem to happen frequently now, and it’s easy to see why.

Bloggers and talk show hosts — who aren’t journalists, but advocates and entertainers unencumbered by journalistic ethics — know that the more outrageous their comments, the more attention they’ll get.

Even public officials are getting in on the act, saying things they know aren’t true in the hope of gaining political advantage.

They all do it because the public doesn’t hold them accountable for their words. And they’ll keep doing it until the public does.

Freedom of speech comes with responsibility. Words have consequences, because crazy people will act on them — and have.

One recent example was Jim David Adkisson, who walked into a Unitarian Church in Knoxville last year with a shotgun, killing two and wounding several others. He left behind a handwritten list of grievances that read like a right-wing talk-radio script.

Hateful and irresponsible speech comes from the political left as well as the right.

Until the public rediscovers the difference between news and entertainment, journalism and advocacy, people like Bill Sparkman will continue playing the talking heads for fools.

But the talking heads are not nearly as foolish as the people on both sides of the political spectrum who listen to their shows, read their blogs, buy their books and make them rich.

The American public will get the kind of media it demands. At the moment, that isn’t much.

As divisive political years go, this one would be hard to top.

It was conservatives against liberals, blue states against red states, McCain against Obama, Biden against Palin, and everyone, it seemed, against Bush and Cheney.

As we change presidents next month, the rancor is sure to continue. We can expect more partisan sniping, more finger-pointing and more self-righteousness from both the right and the left. And it’s so much easier to dismiss people who disagree with you if you can slap a label on them.

As Christmas approaches, I’m thinking about a controversial leader from the past. His views were radical, and many people disagreed with his methods. He created an incredible amount of political divisiveness.

It made me wonder: Based on what the Bible tells us about Jesus Christ, would people consider him a conservative or a liberal if he were walking among us today?

I put the question to several Christian clergy in Lexington. A couple of them found time to respond.

“I do think that Jesus could not have been described by our constricting labels,” said the Rev. Steve Drury, pastor at Trinity Hill United Methodist Church. “I believe he would appear very conservative at one moment and entirely liberal the next.

“I believe he showed his greatest displeasure with those who were at the extremes. Jesus revealed the importance of ultimate truth while at the same time demonstrating the ultimate value of having compassionate love for all people. He was tender with sinners caught in the very act of sin and harsh with self-righteous believers.

“I believe people of his time thought they had him pigeonholed and then he blew their presuppositions away by his actions and statements,” Drury said. “The Sadducees (liberal) thought him conservative and the Pharisees (conservatives) thought him to be liberal.”

The Rev. Nancy Jo Kemper, a Disciples of Christ and United Church of Christ minister who is executive director of the Kentucky Council of Churches, took a similar view.

“It would be as hard today to put Jesus in some kind of box, or affix a label to him, as it was in his own time,” Kemper said.

“The religious and ruling authorities tried every which way from the Sabbath to figure out how to pin him down, with little luck. … He associated with riffraff and good folks from everyday walks of life. Jesus wanted to conserve the core teachings of his faith that we are called to love God and love our neighbor as our selves (from Leviticus 19), and he wanted to toss out all the superficial pieces of religiosity that impeded someone’s relationship with a loving and forgiving God.

“For me, Jesus was a reformer who aimed to transform not merely the religious status quo of his time, but to transform hearts from hopelessness and cynicism to joy and kindness. … He wasn’t the messiah that they expected, and we still want to make him a messiah that suits our own ways of thinking, and who will do for us whatever we ask, rather than the one who wants us to allow God to work with us.

“There are those today who don’t want a controversial word to be spoken in their churches. Heaven forbid if someone should get upset. Yet the Jesus who walked among us was so controversial, perhaps precisely because he could not be pigeonholed, that the only solution the religious and secular establishments could see was to hand him over to the Romans for crucifixion. …

“He asked people to follow him in caring about the least and the lost, those in prison, those without food, and encouraged us all to become less childish and more childlike,” Kemper said.

I think Drury and Kemper said it pretty well. The person many of our political warriors now worship couldn’t be defined by narrow ideology.

Does it make any sense for the rest of us to be?