Labeling the News

an impediment to understanding

In March, 2011, in Trinity County, California, a woman in a remote mountain community called 911 and repeatedly whispered a single word into the phone: “Help.” Then she hung up. The sheriff’s department immediately sent a deputy, who expected to arrive within a few hours.

Whole lot of this

Because of that long travel time, law enforcement officials also called the nearest neighbors of the woman who had called for help, asking them to go over and see what the problem was. They did: James and Norma Gund went over to visit the neighbors, who had been murdered, and were lucky enough to survive after they were both stabbed by the murderer. After years of litigation, the Gunds ended up with Workers’ Compensation benefits — “because a sheriff's deputy had enlisted their help in the case, in effect making them law enforcement officers.”

Compare that story to the one from Josephine County, Oregon, about the woman who called 911 a couple hours before dawn on a Saturday morning to say that her violent ex-boyfriend was kicking down her front door. The 911 operator told her the sheriff would have a deputy on duty again on Monday, so.

This is the reality in a good portion of really rural America: The police could be just hours away, but only if you're lucky. The sheriff’s department in Lake County, Oregon, covers 8,500 square miles with seven patrol deputies. Not seven at a time; seven in total.

Now, read this thumbsucking story from The Guardian, if you must, about the knuckledragging far-right residents of Shasta County, California.

This story is just pure shit, and my thanks to the alert reader who brought it to my attention. It’s mostly a dumb story about untested assumptions regarding Covid-19, but I backed my way into talking about it so I could use guns as a test of good faith. The reporter drops a series of chilling facts about Shasta County — it’s 50% Republican! — before getting to this detail: “California’s gun safety laws have been deeply unpopular in the region.” (Far-right alert! Nazis sighted!)

The story doesn’t tell you what any of those “gun safety laws” might actually be, or why anyone in a rural county would object to them, because that sentence offers enough detail to make the goosebumps stand up on your arms, right? These people, they’re the rural type who, ya know, like their guns. Wink wink socioeconomics wink wink. It’s reporter shorthand, where they don’t like gun laws is the signal that sneers white working class.

But the idea that people in a rural county would object to restrictions on guns misses a long list of obvious daily realities, and does it without noticing. It’s a signal raised from an empty box, a symbol that doesn’t mean any of the things the person displaying it means to say.

So. How backward are these gun-lovin’ white trash Shasta County hillbillies? Reader, brace yourself:

When the pandemic hit and California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, enacted some of the strictest Covid rules in the US, issuing a stay-at-home order, school closures and a statewide mask requirement, Shasta leaders limited their measures to those mandated by the state. The county publicly told the governor it opposed the rules, and encouraged unhappy residents to contact state representatives.

Still, some residents were outraged that the county didn’t disregard the state’s orders entirely.

Go back up and look at that headline again: This is a story about a place taken over by political extremists.

Anyway, for a long time, things got really terrifying: “Unhappy residents began showing up to board meetings in large numbers.” That’s, uh. Yeah. Wow. One local defended the county board of supervisors against critics, and now says this: “I would get jeered and booed.” There’s a reference to the local “culture of political violence,” without any description of anyone being shot, stabbed, or beaten; the story instead hangs the discovery of a county sturmabteilung on the one guy who told the county board of supervisors he was willing to intervene in local politics with a length of rope. Scary, kids!

Then comes the analysis from regional experts:

“I would think it would be fairly devastating just in terms of the day-to-day functioning of these very important offices,” said Lisa Pruitt, a rural law expert at the University of California, Davis. “These technocrats and the bureaucrats really do have enormous experience and technical expertise. They also have a lot of local relationships and local knowhow.”

“These right-of-the mainstream Republican cohort of supervisors seem to be cleaning house by whatever methods they have,” Pruitt added. “It’s a pity because it looks like in every instance all these folks have done is to try to follow safe health mandates.”

Imagine, in July of 2022, asserting that the technical expertise of the technocrats on “safe health mandates” is a topic beyond question, or that criticism of lockdowns and school closures is political extremism. This story takes a bunch of absolutely unremarkable detail, slathers it all with untested assumptions that were stale a year ago, and hangs a bunch of dumb adjectives on it to try to inject drama: They objected to local policy — I mean, uh, the ultraconservatives expressed far-right criticism of local policy!

Here, I’ll do the same, and tell you a story about a produce section:

There were far-right peaches, and some ultra-conservative lettuce, and a cucumber that was suspected of having ties to militia groups.

Ohhh, SCARY!

Anyway, don’t go to Shasta County. It’s horrible there! They have guns and they don’t wear masks and they sometimes criticize the government!

If you can imagine what kind of monster would behave that way.