JackRiddler wrote:AhabsOtherLeg wrote:I tried a search on Websleuths, but they don't seem to know either. Might need to bring in the Vidocq Society on this one
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidocq_Society).
Mind you, the fact that the Vidocq Society haven't figured out yet that Vidocq himself was a big lying sociopathic fraud indicates that they might not be all they're cracked up to be.
Surely, if no deputy was shot, because the deputy was actually the sherriff, who only thought of himself as a deputy in order to absolve himself of blame for the oppression he conciously and purposely practised against Nattie and others - "I'm just a deputy. I was only following orders" - then the question posed by the OP is entirely moot?
I'm certainly fine with that as an explanation if one can show it in the text. I think we did that one above -- to Nattie, John Brown is the Sherriff, but to Babylon he is but a deputy and so they diminish Nattie's just act by calling Brown thus. (Or deputy may even be Brown's actual title.)
I'm definitely fine with VK's overall interpretation (and c2w?'s, they're compatible) and don't want to seem ploddingly literalist about this... but all right then, modify the question to "What is the deputy?" and I think you'll see it's still not settled and not minor, or Nattie wouldn't be insisting on its importance with every refrain: I hear the song saying not just that Nattie didn't shoot the deputy (whether or not any deputy was shot at all is separate) but that deputy-shooting wouldn't be good and Nattie finds the accusation unjust.
Here's another version I'm willing to go with: Babylon is claiming a deputy shooting that may not have even happened to stir up My Hometown against Nattie, because otherwise My Hometown finds the Sherriff-shooting acceptable and might make a hero of Nattie for it. It's a variation on "kill it before it grow." Or, to transpose this to Baader-Meinhof terms, you might get props in some quarters for offing Schleyer but not if you also kill his chauffeur.
But what does the text really say, I ask in my hopelessly conditioned Western way. Because the poetry goes together with a set of factual assertions (such as that Brown was shot down on the outskirts of town), and I'd love to have those cleared up.
Just call me "Internal Affairs."
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right! Nattie's being accused of a false flag terror attack: the killing of a deputy. this has Gladio written all over it. very RI.
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