Kentucky

[snarp]

Reading the Huffington Post thing about the census worker story, I got to this line:

“I don’t think distrust of government is any more or less here than anywhere else in the country,” said Silver, a sociology professor at Southeast Community College.

My first thought was, “I bet the guy doesn’t have tenure.” My second one was, “Well, maybe he’s just kind of sheltered.” My brain was not being snippy or anything! It didn’t have time to be snippy.

You seriously do have to be pretty out-of-it to think that. I also note that this happened two frigging weeks ago, and I have no recollection of WYMT (local news station) covering it at the time. This place is just two hours away, and it’s not exactly a normal crime. This should have been on TV. There’s an article on their website as of today, and the comments are so far unusually short on the right-type craziness and long on the left-type - there’s only one person in there saying stuff about ACORN. I guess the strategy is to ignore it and hope it goes away.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

Comments

[loligo]

I worked as a part-time census enumerator back in 2000, tracking down people who hadn't sent in their forms. Southern Illinois isn't technically part of Appalachia, but culturally close enough that the managers didn't send newbies out into the hills of the Shawnee Forest.

I worked in rural small towns, instead. My first day on the job, someone who clearly had a beef with the man I was interviewing barged into his house, and the temperature felt like it dropped 20 degrees as they glared at each other. I got out of there as fast as I gracefully could. But people were mostly polite to me.

There is no way I would do that job again, in this political climate.

[snarp]

Uh-oh. Yeah, it's not one I would want right now, either - not here, anyway.

My job in Japan occasionally involved going out and sticking fliers in people's mail slots, which frequently meant I had to go right up through their yards to the front door. This was deeply alarming to me because I have this ingrained belief that You Get Shot At For Doing That. My co-workers did not understand why I found it so intimidating.