Barbarians in Oklahoma

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

30 April 14

am saying this quite deliberately. The state of Oklahoma committed an act of fucking barbarism last night. It did so under the color of law, which makes every citizen of that benighted state complicit in the act of fucking barbarism. The governor of that state, a pink balloon named Mary Fallin, is a fucking barbarian. A state legislator named Mike Christian is a fucking barbarian, for reasons we will get to in a moment. Every politician in that benighted state belongs in a fucking cage this morning.

Clayton Lockett, 38, was declared unconscious 10 minutes after the first of three drugs in the state's new lethal injection combination was administered Tuesday evening. Three minutes later, he began breathing heavily, writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow. Officials later blamed a ruptured vein for the problems with the execution, which are likely to fuel more debate about the ability of states to administer lethal injections that meet the U.S. Constitution's requirement they be neither cruel nor unusual punishment.

This is only the basics of what went on. To get a real flavor of the fucking barbarism practiced by the state of Oklahoma -- Mary Fallin, Governor -- last night, you have to go to the Twitter feed of a fine AP reporter named Bailey Elise McBride, who was in the death chamber. If there ever is a Pulitzer for tweeting, Bailey Elise McBride is a stone cold lock for it. I think this is the one that is most illustrative of the act of fucking barbarism practiced by the state of Oklahoma -- Mary Fallin, Governor -- and witnessed by Bailey Elise McBride, damn fine reporter, is the one where the guy tells the people trying to kill him, "Something's wrong."