The vindication of Clay County, Ky.

Y'all remember Morgan Bowling, right? Well, she gave me a call yesterday afternoon from Kentucky, and so I mentioned her in my American Spectator column:

Thanks to an anonymous source in an Associated Press story and a flurry of speculation by bloggers, however, this quiet community was imagined to be a seething cauldron of hatred stoked by Fox News, talk radio and Republican politicians. Clay County's state Sen. Robert Stivers told the Lexington Herald-Leader that "many in the media owe the county an apology." As Morgan Bowling said Tuesday afternoon, at times it seemed as if pundits were trying to turn Bill Sparkman into a "sacrificial lamb for ObamaCare."
At the height of the national media glare, the Manchester Enterprise's young editor received an e-mail from New York: "What are you people, backwoods ignorant freaks?" the e-mailer wrote. "This crime is a reflection of all the residents of Clay County. . . . You are all disgusting pigs, and if one could level a curse at a community, then I curse the whole lot of you."
Morgan Bowling is only a few months into her journalism career, but she got a crash course about what can happen when irresponsible reporting leads to unfounded speculation.

You can read the whole thing. And you should also read Michelle Malkin's rejoinder to Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE: Well played, Charles Johnson!

Since this news came out, I've received several angry emails demanding that I apologize for saying Sparkman had been murdered by a right wing extremist.
The problem is, I never wrote anything like that. For the record, this was my post when the story broke, and I don't apologize for a single word:
"There's not enough information yet to say for sure what was behind this killing, so let's not jump to conclusions. But the description of the circumstances and the timing (around the time of the Washington DC tea party) raises a strong suspicion that anti-government sentiment may have been the motivation."

Right. And the connnection between the two phenomena -- the murder and the 9/12 March on D.C. -- was entirely imaginary, so long as we assume that Bill Sparkman didn't have something like that in mind in choosing the date of his demise.

Nevertheless, don't apologize for your suspicion that the Tea Party movement represented the sort of "anti-government sentiment" that could motivate a murder.

By the way, Tea Party: The Documentary Film will have its Washington premiere next Wednesday, Dec. 2, at the Ronald Reagan Center.

UPDATE II: Perhaps it would help to explain that my interest in the Sparkman case -- what inspired my spur-of-the-moment urge Sept. 26 to light out for Kentucky -- was not so much a matter of ideology as of people.

Some have seen the debunking of the "right-wing lynching" meme as a vindication of conservatism, but I see it as the vindication of the people of Clay County. Having worked for 10 years as a journalist in the small towns of north Georgia, I was all too familiar with the yawning chasm between the perception and reality of such places and such people. Go back to my Sept. 29 American Spectator article:

MANCHESTER, Kentucky -- Rodney Miller has lived nearly all his 56 years in Clay County, the only exception being when, as a young man, he moved to Indianapolis. He lived in the big city for two years without ever knowing his neighbors' names.
"The best people in the world live here," says Miller, sitting in the office of the Manchester Enterprise, where he directs advertising sales. "Down here, everybody knows everybody else." . . .

Those are the kind of small-town people I know. It was their good names, and the reputation of an entire community, that were being smeared by the implication that they were a bunch of hateful yahoos who had lynched Bill Sparkman.

The good people of Clay County have been vindicated, and their know-it-all accusers (inter alia, the Harvard-educated Andrew Sullivan) have been exposed as credulous fools.

UPDATE III: Speaking of people who have been vindicated, this is as good a time as any -- on the eve of Thanksgiving -- to express my gratitude to our readers, especially those who have contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund.

Several people -- including Da Tech Guy -- have expressed congratulaions to me on the denouement of the Sparkman case, validating the reporting I did here, at the American Spectator and in the Hot Air Greenroom, but I would never have been able to do that reporting without the generosity of the tip-jar hitters. When I got the wild notion of traveling to Kentucky to cover the Sparkman case, I wrote:

Figure 1,200 miles travel round-trip, at 25 cents per mile, that's $300. Five meals at $5/each, that's another $25. A carton of smokes, $50; ten cups of coffee, $20. If you add $125/night for a hotel room, I could make it a two-day trip for $500. . . .
So if the tip jar contributions between now and Sunday evening reach $300, I'll take it for granted that the rest will come through while I'm on the road. I could be filing reports with a Kentucky dateline by Monday noon.

That $300 threshold was reached within a matter of hours, and it is to you people -- too numerous to name, lest anyone be omitted from the honor roll -- whom the congratulations are owed. The honor roll can be extended to include all the bloggers who have linked my reports on the Kentucky case, and to Smitty, whose labors and skills deserve so much praise.

You who have contributed should are invited to take a bow in the comments, and you who have not yet hit the tip jar -- well, what the heck are you waiting for?

My wife just spent $90 at the grocery store, including $12 for a turkey. We've got six kids to feed, including 17-year-old twin boys, and you know how teenage boys can eat. You know those $4 frozen pizzas? Last night our family ate four of those -- that's $16 worth for one meal.

Now try to imagine feeding this brood three times a day, 365 days a year. Like they say: Do the math. And the Christmas shopping season starts Friday.

When I came up with this blogging idea, my wife told me I was crazy -- and my wife is always right. But somehow crazy has always worked for me. So I am thankful for being crazy, and thankful that there are so many of you who (like Mrs. Other McCain) actually like my craziness. God bless you!

Kentucky's Morgan Bowling vs. NY idiot

MANCHESTER, Ky. -- She is only 20 years old, but already she's news director of her hometown paper, the Manchester Enterprise. So guess what kind of e-mail Morgan Bowling got when the mysterious death of local Census worker Bill Sparkman made national headlines? From Gary S., in Malta, N.Y., came this Sept. 24 missive:

To M. Bowling
I just read the story on the AP about the Census worker who was hung. What I want to ask you is, are you people for real down there? I mean what kind of f---ing animals live in Clay County? I live in New York State, and this story is above and beyond even for New York!
Are you a bunch of uneducated, ignorant, toothless, dirty scumbags? What f---ing century are the residents of Clay County living in? Do you realize what this crime makes you people look like? Good God! What kind of people are you? This is a story one would expect would come out of Iraq or Afghanistan!
What are you people, backwoods ignorant freaks? Let me tell you this ranks up there with terrorists cutting peoples' heads off. This crime is a reflection of all the residents of Clay County. Are you all proud of that?
What is the average education level of the residents of Clay County? Third grade? You are all disgusting pigs, and if one could level a curse at a community, then I curse the whole lot of you. May Clay County Kentucky be wiped off the face of this earth by fire or some other disaster such as a flood or an earthquake!! And may all the residents of Clay County -- man, woman, and child -- rot away in Hell forever!!
Gary S-----
Malta, N.Y.

To which the young journalist replied courteously:

Mr. S-----,
If you've read the story on the AP about Mr. Sparkman, then I hope that maybe you've been following other coverage . . . and you might know that details given to the AP surrounding Sparkman's death may or may not be true, according to police and the FBI.
What has happened to Mr. Sparkman is a tragedy, and no one is saddened more than I that this happened here.
To answer your question, no, we are not animals. People here are just as educated as anyone might hope to find in New York. Rural Appalachia is a sincerely beautiful land and I challenge you to find a place parallel in beauty to this region.
The stereotype we have been slapped with is unfair, undeserved and, like all stereotypes, born of fear and blindness. . . .
But the truth is, the world is filled with ignorant, evil people, Mr. S-----. And if you honestly believe that this incident, which was an isolated incident, can't happen anywhere else, then that shows how ignorant you are.
I feel sorry for you, because you can only see the very elaborate picture the media has painted for you. Maybe if you pulled the wool off of your eyes, you might accept this for what it is: a horrible tragedy that shouldn't have happened here, or anywhere else.
But it's easier to hate than to accept, isn't it?
Thanks,
Morgan Bowling

Well, we could leave it at that, but let me tell you a little bit about this 20-year-old college junior who works full-time as a professional journalist. When she met me in the lobby of the Enterprise on Tuesday afternoon, Miss Bowling led me back to her office and I noticed a tattoo on her back, just below her neck.

Miss Bowling is not exactly what someone in New York or Washington might expect a small-town Kentucky girl to be. She wears black fingernail polish and black clothes, has a sort of alternative-rock hairstyle and sports a "Johnny Cash Is My Friend" bumper sticker on her car.

After we had talked for several minutes about the Sparkman case and the situation in Clay County, I asked her, "What's up with the tattoo on your neck?"

She laughed and told me that actually she has four tattoos. The one on her neck says, "Born to Suffer" -- the same motto as her grandfather's tattoo, the one he got while serving his country in Vietnam, more than 20 years before Morgan was born.

Miss Bowling was largely raised by her maternal grandmother. Her father, who never married Morgan's mom, was named John Farmer. He was murdered -- gunned down in an ambush -- when she was 4 years old. Her father's murder has never been solved, and the case is still in the cold case files of the Kentucky State Police.

After Miss Bowling and her staff finished this week's edition of the Enterprise on Tuesday evening, we had dinner at the Huddle House (where we interviewed Kelsee Brown, who is not a right-wing extremist) and had a very interesting conversation.

After explaining how I ended up in Washington, D.C., I told Miss Bowling that I'd been a mentor to many young Washington journalists (among them Josiah Ryan, now of the Jerusalem Post). I was giving a thumbnail version of my career pep talk and, when I got to the point about finding a role model to emulate, Miss Bowling interrupted.

"Let me ask you something," she said. "What do you think about Hunter S. Thompson?"

Heh. As I always say, whenever in your journalism career you are confronted with a tough decision, sometimes it helps to ask yourself, "What Would Hunter S. Thompson Do?"

Then I told her the story of how, in January 2008, I'd made the decision to leave the Washington Times and go to Africa. I told her about my resignation letter, in which I wrote that it was as if God said, "Go."

People thought I was crazy, and maybe I was, but if I hadn't made that crazy decision to become a freelancer, I wouldn't have been sitting at home Saturday fuming about Andrew Sullivan's portrayal of Clay County as a fetid swamp of violent troglodytic backwardness -- and gotten the gonzo idea to make this trip. Once more, it seems, God said, "Go."

Anyway, just so TV and radio producers can get an idea of Miss Bowling's persona, I did a short video:

The producers of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, "Red Eye," etc., should contact Morgan Bowling (e-mail) at the Manchester Enterprise, (606) 598-2319.

Please also see my American Spectator article, "Murder and Motives in Clay County," and my "Reply to S.L. Toddard" at the Hot Air Green Room.

VIDEO: Kelsee Brown is not -- repeat, is not -- a right-wing extremist

MANCHESTER, Ky. -- Having a late dinner Tuesday with Manchester Enterprise news director Morgan Bowling at the Huddle House here, our interview was interrupted by the cook.

"Are you a reporter?" she asked, and when I replied that I was, she said: "Hi, I'm Kelsee, the Huddle House Killer."

Her jocular introduction was answered with a joke of my own, but the young lady -- Kelsee Brown, 19, from Corbin, Ky. -- then told us an amazing story, explaining how she was misrepresented by another reporter covering the Bill Sparkman story. Here is how that Sept. 24 article portrayed Miss Brown:

Kelsee Brown, a waitress at Huddle House, a 24-hour chain restaurant in Manchester, when asked about the death, said she thinks the government sometimes has the wrong priorities.
"Sometimes I think the government should stick their nose out of people's business and stick their nose in their business at the same time. They care too much about the wrong things," she said.

In a brief interview Tuesday night, Miss Brown said that her words were misquoted and her sentiments misconstrued. She said what she was actually trying to tell the reporter -- who had asked her what she thought about the Sparkman killing -- was something entirely different.

Miss Brown said she told the reporter that all she knew about the apparent homicide of the 51-year-old Census worker in the vicinity of Big Creek, about 12 miles east of Manchester, was what she learned from media accounts. Therefore, she was hesitant to pass judgment on the case. Miss Brown says she didn't mention government, and instead was saying that the news media should not "stick their noses in people's business."

However, her words -- which she insists were misquoted and misinterpreted -- were subsequently cited on an Internet discussion board under the headline, "Ignorant red state morons defend lynching of census worker."

Miss Brown says she is not a Republican, but is a registered Democrat and, during her 2008 senior year at Corbin High School, was actually a leader of students supporting Barack Obama for the presidency.

Miss Brown then recounted her story for my camera. Here is the world-exclusive video:

Miss Brown emphasized that she does not speak for her employer and that management of Huddle House share her deep sympathy for Sparkman's friends and family. Having spoken at some length to Miss Brown, I can testify that she is very friendly and cheerful, with a keen mind and a warm smile. Anyone wishing to learn more about this interview should contact Morgan Bowling (e-mail) at the Manchester Enterprise, (606) 598-2319.

-- Robert Stacy McCain

UPDATE: Check out this article from Monday's London (Ky.) Sentinel-Echo about the "pure speculation" and "misinformation" in the national media.

UPDATE 10:15 a.m.: Linked by Jimmie Bise Jr. at Sundries Shack, Moe Lane at Red State, and Dan Riehl at Riehl World View, and at Memeorandum.