The Death of Bubba Copeland

[dixiehack]

This Esquire story is a long, long read and I don't blame you if you can't finish it all in one sitting - or even at all considering the subject matter.

Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor: An American Tragedy

To try and summarize, this guy was a small town mayor in East Alabama and pastor of a progressive Baptist church a short ways down the road in Phenix City. He did a mediocre job of hiding the fact that he was a cross-dresser and he wrote some disturbing fiction pieces that sometimes used people's real names and photos, but nothing that crossed the line into lawbreaking.

One of the many pink slime nut job news websites in Alabama found out some of this and ran a story exposing what he did in his private time, on the theory that he was a hypocrite. (I guess they thought he was Southern Baptist.) That spent him spiraling, and on the day a follow-up story came out he kilted himself in front of deputies who were trying to pull him over to conduct a welfare check.

A shorter summary is available here.

https://www.al.com/news/2024/04/the-tragic-last-days-of-bubba-copeland-i-cant-do-this-no-more.html

According to the Esquire piece, Copeland led a Bible study on Nov. 1 after the first story broke. His Scripture verses came from the 23rd Psalm. He then walked into a church trustee meeting that last two hours.

"We did not suspend him," David White said.

"We did not reprimand him. We did not fire him...We talked to him frankly. We expressed our shock and disappointment, and then we replaced that with our concern and our love and our support for our brother, who was suffering. The church would be fine. Now it was Bubba we were worried about."

Elizabeth White, a WRBL News 3 crime reporter based in Auburn said, "Bubba was down, and they just kept kicking and kicking and kicking. It wasn't enough for them to just expose him. They wanted to hurt him. It's devastating to know that for all the good he did, he spent his last days and moments in unbearable anguish."

 

[goalmouth]

oh look fukchead Gannett in business with pink slime network what could go right

https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/03/a...s-being-hired-by-big-publishers-like-gannett/

 

[dixiehack]

Paywall-free version of the Esquire story

Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor: An American Tragedy