QC Times — Agitprop — And Not Very Good At It

In a breathless page-one article by QC Times’ columnist Barb Ickes, an area seventeen year old student is lionized for being gay and overcoming allegedly having been threatened with death in a phone call that his mother describes.  We say allegedly because in some 1500 words we do not see the words “phone recording” or “investigated and corroborated by police,” nor are we enlightened as to any other incidence of crime or bullying.  If you think we are being niggling in our demand at least for better editing, read on.

A number of things struck us about the article besides it being another in a long line of gay tributes by Ms Ickes.  The inherent ironies, incongruities and even down right silliness (the article seems to have been expanded to confirm stereotypes) brings us to the conclusion the article is primarily an attempt at agitprop. We appreciate that the young man may not be fully aware of the overwrought theater surrounding him.

The irony is that most of the article seems to portray wide acceptance of the young man in the small town community and in his high school. We are therefore struck with the abiding question, what is it he has overcome in this day and age of virtual affirmative action for gay people to deserve high honor?  Affirmation of gayness is everywhere . . . schools, churches, the broad culture . . . why even down to small town Iowa.  Or is Ickes thinking everyone “knows” small towns are really just one mob incitement away from burning homosexuals at the stake?

It also struck us that the terms “bullying” and a (serious) death threat are being confused, we suspect on purpose.  If anyone took the alleged phone call as a serious death threat then “bullying” does not quite seem to meet a description of the crime. Does anonymously calling someone a “faggot,” arguably bullying, rate the same level of approbation and criminal punishment as a death threat?  There is something incongruous in such a conflation or is any bullying now as serious as a death threat and to be treated as such?

Much is made in the article of the young man being on the school’s cheerleading squad. Seriously.  Males have been part of chearleading squads since, well a long time, including in Texas.  Or is this separable from the gay hero theme and merely a slap at Hicksville, Iowa?

Then there is the issue of the award the young man will receive from the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Indeed the young man is quoted as saying “Matthew Shepard was my hero”  and Ickes in spite of substantial information to the contrary, repeats without journalistic  scruple of any sort that: “two men beat, tortured and murdered 21 – year-old Matthew Shepard because he was gay.”   No hedging from Barb to the effect “is said to have” been murdered because he was gay, or “the Matthew Shepard Foundation maintains but a recent investigative report disputes.” No siree, everyone knows it was a hate crime, not a misdirection.

The ABC program 20-20 in 2004 reported on camera testimony of one of the convicted murderers admitting otherwise. A recent book by a gay investigative journalist, as compared to a gay propagandist, sets out substantial evidence to dispute Ickes’ assertion. Of course Ickes is not the only journalist to, for whatever reason, ignore the dispute.

From the book by Steven Jimenez, The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard.

What if nearly everything you thought you knew about Matthew Shepard’s murder was wrong? What if our most fiercely held convictions about the circumstances of that fatal night of October 6, 1998, have obscured other, more critical, aspects of the case? How do people sold on one version of history react to being told that facts are slippery — that thinking of Shepard’s murder as a hate crime does not mean it was a hate crime? And how does it color our understanding of such a crime if the perpetrator and victim not only knew each other but also had sex together, bought drugs from one another, and partied together?

None of this is idle speculation; it’s the fruit of years of dogged investigation by journalist Stephen Jimenez, himself gay. In the course of his reporting, Jimenez interviewed over 100 subjects, including friends of Shepard and of his convicted killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, as well as the killers themselves (though by the book’s end you may have more questions than answers about the extent of Henderson’s complicity). In the process, he amassed enough anecdotal evidence to build a persuasive case that Shepard’s sexuality was, if not incidental, certainly less central than popular consensus has lead us to believe

R Mall

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