A House Divided

The photo above is stolen from my friend of long-standing, Bill Kiefer, with whom I had the pleasure of working in the Fox Valley’s biggest radio newsroom three decades ago.  Bill is now a senior news executive at Channel 11 in Green Bay.  This photo, taken on Oak Street in Green Bay, which Bill posted on his Facebook page last week, pretty well sums up the state of the state.

Wisconsin is truly a house divided.

This past weekend, I made a quick trip up to Appleton, and returned home shaking my head about the state of poisoned politics in Wisconsin.  Here in Dane County, Governor Walker has far fewer friends than he does in the Fox Valley.  His budget measures have hit a lot of people who live in Dane County very hard and very personally.  Political yard-signs supporting Walker are few and far between around here.

As you travel north from Madison on Highway 151, you know you’re getting closer to Walker country when you begin to see more and more Walker yard signs.  When you turn off Highway 151 to take Highway 26, the “short-cut” to Highway 41, you begin to see a smattering of Walker yard signs.  In Rosendale, the state’s best-known speed trap, there’s a spectrum of political yard signs: some for Walker; some for Falk; even a few for Barrett.  A few miles north of Rosendale, there’s a big yard sign – about six feet long and four feet high – that says “Walker for Governor”.  But the person who put up the sign spray-painted a black X over the word “Governor” and added the word “President” under it.

Now you know you’re not in the state’s bluest county.

When you hit Highway 41 just south of Oshkosh and begin the trek up what I call “The Main Street of the Fox Valley”, Walker signs proliferate.  Every quarter-mile or so, there’s a Walker sign or billboard of some sort.  But just north of Oshkosh, I saw a humongous billboard – probably twice the size of a normal roadside billboard – and my jaw literally dropped when I read what it said:

GOVERNOR WALKER – WORKING FOR ALL OF WISCONSIN, NOT JUST THE SPOILED FEW

The spoiled few.  Who are they?  Teachers?  The women who work in school kitchens, preparing the meals for our children?  The men who plow our roads in the winter?  The man or woman who checks our stores to make sure the cash registers are not cheating us on prices, and our gas pumps to make sure that when it says it’s delivered a gallon, it’s really delivered a gallon?  The people who work in nursing homes taking care of our elderly?  The ones who pick up our trash when we set it on the curb? Are these the spoiled few?  Was it 950,000 spoiled people who signed recall petitions?  It sure wasn’t “out of state union thugs” who signed those documents.

All the way through Neenah and Menasha, Walker billboards are predominant; and just before I exited Highway 41 at Wisconsin Avenue in Appleton, there was a big sign that said “I Stand With Governor Walker”.  As I made my way east on Wisconsin Ave and then turned north on Richmond Street, into a more residential neighborhood, there was an intriguing mix of signs, some supporting Walker, some encouraging his impeachment.  It looked not too dissimilar from the photo above.

When I got to my friend Greg’s house, on Grant Street, he had the American Flag flying proudly from his home, and a yard sign that said “I Stand With Governor Walker”.  Across the street, his neighbor’s yard sign said “Impeach Walker”. 

My friend and I didn’t talk politics; we talked music, our common bond as old-time tuba players a few years apart at Hortonville High.  We did our business – I bought one of Greg’s reconditioned bass horns – and then talked music for another half-hour, glad to have renewed our acquaintance and solidified our bond as “back row boys”.

As I headed back down to Madison, I spent a lot of time thinking about how our state has become so deeply divided.  It’s not just Scott Walker.  The Tommy Thompson of 2012 is not the Tommy Thompson I knew in the 80’s and 90’s.  It’s two parties that can’t talk to each other about anything, can’t put out a news release without sniping at the other party.  And I kept thinking regardless of the outcome of the recall election, it’s not likely the hyperpartisanship will change.

We will remain, I think, a house divided.

I Call B.S. on the Appleton Post-Crescent

A few days ago Genia Lovett, the president and publisher of the Appleton Post-Crescent newspaper, which is owned by Gannett, made note in her column in the newspaper that 25 Gannett Wisconsin media journalists, including nine employed by the Post-Crescent, signed the petition to recall Governor Walker.  She went on to say those employees broke the paper’s “Code of Ethics” by signing, and further said they would be disciplined.

This is the biggest load of BS that’s come down the road in a long time.

First, before we go any farther, I’m sure people more experienced and smarter than I, have already explained (in colorful language) to Ms. Lovett that Wisconsin has very specific laws in place to prevent organizations like Gannett from taking any sort of “disciplinary” or “retraining” action against employees who are exercising protected rights.

The concept that a reporter can’t write unbiased news coverage because he or she signed a recall petition is as ludicrous as saying a reporter who owns a Ford  can’t write about General Motors.  Or a reporter who's ever been treated by a doctor can't report on health care.

Ever since I was a boy who grew up in Hortonville reading the Post-Crescent, the paper has endorsed political candidates every election cycle.  So, the newspaper itself takes political positions.  And yet its reporters can’t?  What kind of cockamamie “code of ethics” does Gannett follow?

Shout-radio tea partiers like Charlie Sykes and Vicki McKenna loudly trumpet that they’re going to “expose” local reporters who signed the petition, apparently unaware that one of Appleton’s other notorious products, Senator Joe McCarthy, had a brief and failed career trying to “expose” the communists that he saw everywhere.

It’s being reported that Ms. Lovett (who apparently lives in Hortonville!) is on the board of the Appleton Chamber of Commerce.  If that’s true, I expect she will resign that position immediately - or resign from the Post-Crescent - so there can be no “appearance of conflict of interest” if her newspaper decides to report anything about a business located in Appleton.

In her column (and yes, there is a difference between a column and an article) Lovett talks about the “higher standard” she expects her reporters to adhere to, by apparently not having any opinion on any political issue.  Some of my long-time friends in the news business have made public posts on social media, clucking about how “wrong” it is for “journalists” to engage in such blatant political activity as signing a recall petition.

Next thing you know, reporters will be outed for voting.

In a world where Rush Limbaugh refers to himself as “America’s Anchorman” and people actually believe he is giving “news” on his program….in a world where Fox News and MSNBC both exist under the banner of “news”….in a world where George Stephanopoulos leaves the Clinton administration and suddenly becomes a “trusted, non-biased journalist”, it may be well past time for organizations like Gannett, and Ms. Lovett, to get off their high horse for a few moments and re-think their “code of ethics” for reporters.

Have the hiring standards for news reporters plummeted since I was last in that business, four years ago, to the point where reporters can’t be trusted to hold a political opinion and still write balanced, unbiased work product?

Or, are we “safe” because Ms. Lovett and her ilk are carefully monitoring the work-product of these reporters, making sure no “opinion” slips into their work?

Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse.

This Rampant Exercise of Democratic Rights Must End

Now, the local scribes have a new game to play: combing through the online database of signers of a petition to recall Governor Walker, and reporting it as “news”. Today, we were shocked and astonished to learn that Paul R. Soglin and Joseph T. Parisi had the unmitigated gall and crass naiveté to sign the petition to recall Governor Walker.


Late last week, a breathless Charlie Sykes (Milwaukee shout radio host) informed us that several senior executives of the United Way campaign had signed the petition, thereby endangering contributions to the charity from those who chose not to sign the recall petition.


And then there’s the Dane County Judge, David Flanagan, who was outed not only for signing a recall petition, but for signing a recall petition his WIFE was circulating! When my bride first informed me about this while reading the article in the local morning print media, I said “next thing you know they’ll be finding out that judges have actually VOTED in elections!!!!!”. 


 In the alternate universe in which I live, it would be news if the Mayor of Madison and the Dane County Executive (Soglin and Parisi) did NOT sign the petition. But in my alternate universe, it is also headline news that Judge Flanagan did not recuse himself from sitting in judgment of one of Walker’s pet new laws, the ALEC-induced Voter ID law. 


 The reason this new pastime of reporters combing through the online database to uncover names of petition signers is news is that we have been conditioned by the extreme partisan politics of the past decade, and the clueless failure of our state’s highest court to operate in a fair and non-partisan manner, to believe that NO public figure can possibly conduct themselves as a professional and set aside their personal preferences to act in the best interest of John and Jane Doe. 


 The justices of our state’s highest court have amply demonstrated that they haven’t the foggiest clue of what “impartial” means; what is and isn’t ethical behavior; and they’re operating in a microcosm where “appearance of impropriety” has no basis in their reality. 


 There’s a reason the founding fathers made sure that we elect our nation’s political leaders via secret ballot. And, there’s a reason that signing things like nomination papers and recall petitions is not done secretly or anonymously. 


 The inability to discern why one is secret and the other is public has apparently become a lost art.

Energy!

In the course of grocery shopping and running errands yesterday (Saturday) I counted 16 spots where people were gathering signatures for the recall petitions.  They were along the busy portion of Fish Hatchery Road through Fitchburg; set up on corners in the newer, residential sections of Fitchburg; three spots on Park Street between the Beltline and the Capitol Square;  even one set up in – heaven forfend – the McMansion segment of Seminole Highlands.  Or Highlands of Seminole, whichever is correct.

Last week the organizers announced they’d garnered over half a million signatures, of the 540,208 needed to force a recall election.  They announced they hope to have nearly three-quarters of a million signatures by Friday the 13^th of next month.

My observations yesterday are certainly not scientific, not a representative sample, but the most clear impression I am left with is that the people out there in the cold holding up signs and trying to flag cars down are full of energy.  A lot of energy.  If I would give a “thumbs-up” sign or toot the horn when I approached their location, they’d jump up and down or wave or return my thumbs-up.  They were all smiles and very animated, at every location I saw.

I’m still not going to predict the outcome of the recall election….which I now believe is going to happen, after all the lawyers for the Republicans do everything they can to delay it….but if the side that wants the recall can hold their energy, it’s going to be a real close election.

Looking a bit farther down the road, one of the many things that troubles me is that regardless of the outcome of the recall election, I believe the partisanship will do nothing but increase.  With dweebs like that Fitzgerald boy wanting to make it a FELONY to sign more than one recall petition, and the fact that the Democrats demonize everything the other party does, regardless of the election’s outcome it will drive the sides even farther apart.

If Walker stays in office, he’ll have carte blanche to continue granting favor after favor, exemption after exemption for the big-business interests that support him financially.  If he’s tossed out, and some Democrat takes over, I believe their agenda will be to try and undo everything Walker has done, from Act 10 to privatizing many of the state’s former cabinet bureaus.

The “us versus them” mentality isn’t going away.  If anything it will be getting stronger.  And that’s a BAD use of energy.