In the wake of yesterday’s tragedy in Austin, it’s certainly worthwhile to ask what caused troubled software engineer Joe Stack to crash a plane into an office building that housed 200 Internal Revenue Service employees. But will the media get the story right? Perhaps, just perhaps, I’ll be blessedly wrong about this, but I don’t think so.

We know how these stories seem to go. The “unbiased” journalists from the old media working in the field first develop the story, establish the “factual record” and – once that job is done – the would-be opinion makers move on, using that “factual” docket to make their pious cases. The narrative has begun, as this AP story demonstrates. Joe Stack hated the IRS, felt that this oft-criticized agency had done him wrong and – the conclusion is easy to see – was therefore another right-wing nut job who went over the edge. He was a victim, if you will, of the hatred and fury that festers within the conservative and libertarian movements. His friends, the AP tells us, never saw it coming:

They never heard Stack talk about politics, about taxes, about the government — the sources of pain that Stack claims drove him to his death.

But, nowhere in this story does the AP drill down any further. If you read Stack’s 3,000+ word on-line suicide note, it’s clear that he didn’t hate the IRS because he despised big-government per se. He hated the IRS because he believed that the agency was in collusion with the ultimate enemy: big business. A few telling examples from Stack’s manifesto: (more…)