Amanda Palmer, the rock singer who made headlines after being hospitalized in Maine with Lyme disease and having to cancel upcoming concerts because of it, also whipped up a debate over Confederate flags and gun control while she was in the state.
At the center of it was a former Boothbay Harbor selectman and brother of well-known comedian Tim Sample.
Palmer, former singer-songwriter for the Dresden Dolls, had a Maine vacation with her husband, award-winning author Neil Gaiman, derailed when she became ill and was admitted to Miles Memorial Hospital in Damariscotta. In entries on her blog and Patreon site, she raved about the doctors and nurses that cared for her there, and after giving the tick responsible a piece of her mind, even decided to forgive the disease-carrying insect.
After her hospital ordeal, Palmer continued chronicling her Maine stay on Facebook, including a picture of a sign decorated by Confederate flags at a Boothbay Harbor property, which read “Just because you are offended, does not mean you are right!”
The musician wrote that two days earlier, the property had a sign sporting the now-famous National Rifle Association quotation “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Palmer said the sentiment “made me sick to my stomach.”
“I’m truly sad for America this week,” she wrote in a post that accompanied the latest sign picture. “Guys. What’s happening. Why is everybody shooting everybody? This really shouldn’t be normal. … Can we please just do what Australia did, put aside a sliver of the defense budget, buy back all the guns, recycle them, and put all of this shooting-people stuff behind us?”
The post has been shared more than 850 times and liked more than 10,000 times in the three-plus days since it was first posted. And it triggered a torrent of nearly 1,000 comments — as well as dozens of replies to those comments — from other Facebook users on both sides of the ongoing disputes about gun control and the Confederate flag.
Since a mass shooting was carried out last month at a predominantly black church in Charleston, South Carolina, by a suspected gunman known to brandish the flag, the Confederate symbol has been the center of debate. Opponents have decried the flag as a symbol of racism and the Confederate flag was ultimately removed from the South Carolina state house after heated arguments there and elsewhere.
Supporters of the flag have argued the banner is a symbol of southern heritage, rebellious spirit and dissatisfaction with federal government intrusion into states’ rights — not a tie to the pro-slavery platform of the Confederate states that waved it during the Civil War.
Linc Sample is the 55-year-old contractor and former selectman who posted the signs. According to the Portland Press Herald, the outspoken conservative has been putting different signs up on his property for nearly a decade, and has a town permit to do so.
He told the newspaper he took down the sign with the Confederate flags, in part because “I share the property here with other family members, and I didn’t want somebody knocking on the door calling someone a racist.”
But he stood by the “good guy with a gun” message, telling the Press Herald: “Whenever there is a tragedy like (the Charleston shooting) the things they recommend include banning guns. I just think it’s more of a societal problem than a gun problem. I don’t thinking infringing on the right to bear arms is ever going to make us safer.”
Tim Sample, the popular Maine humorist and sign painter’s brother, told the newspaper that, while he and his don’t see eye-to-eye politically, he respects “Linc because he’s got his perspective and he puts it out there. That’s what America’s all about.”
