First Draft

The Golden Ticket (and what it took to get it)

“You are out of your goddamned mind!”

Not exactly the support I had hoped for when explaining my plan for this Friday to The Missus.

About six weeks ago, a company that does massive estate sales posted early pictures as to what was going to be present at a sale that kicks off at 9 a.m. Friday. I had made it a policy to avoid estate sales after my last few escapades had yielded a ton of shit that costs a decent amount of money and was slow in turning around. Still, I’m always on the look out for a good bit of luck and some nice dishware for The Missus. It turns out she grew a fetish for a Depression-Era glassware known as jadeite. Turns out, Martha Stewart had just done a big spread on it and she loved it.

“If you see any of that out on your shopping trips, could you pick it up?” she asked in that sweet and hopeful way that says “I love you” and “If you want to keep doing this, here’s an excuse that won’t make me want to kill you.”

Of course, I knew nothing about it, but as an intellectual, I attacked the problem with the idea that knowledge gain would be best. I bought about six guidebooks on this stuff, dug around on the Internet and kept looking for it at estate sales and flea markets.

The shit was ridiculously expensive. When Martha likes something, so do collectors.

Thirty-five bucks for a fucking plate? With a crack in it? Oh well…

Some savvy shopping, good digging and some luck later, she had a cabinet full of light green bliss. Still, you can’t wave off a hunting instinct just because the hunt is over and people are full. There are worlds to conquer, dammit.

Thus, I found myself sorting through the pictures this company posted online.

What I came to realize early in this set of photos is that they were clearing out a hoarder’s home. The place was piled with shit. The thoughts of what might be crawling under those mounds of crap had me thinking, “No fucking way.”

Still, I thumbed through the thumbnails until I noticed a copy of an old Green Bay Packer program. Then another. Then another. Good stuff, but I could probably live without it.

Then, I found a picture that had my heart in my throat and my stomach in knots for about six weeks.

To the untrained eye, they were scraps of paper. To me, it was like unlocking the Ark of the Covenant.

---

The Bible talks about the man who finds a treasure in a field, so he goes and sells all he had and buys that field. When he returns, he rejoices over the treasure and what it has brought him.

This parable was swimming through my head as I quickly Googled some information that I intuitively knew. The image was as clear as a bell and right as rain. The four scraps of paper scattered in the middle of this image were ticket stubs from 1959. They had info about the Packers on them.

They were the first four games Vince Lombardi ever coached in Green Bay, all four wins.

I did a quick search to see how rare they were and what they were worth.

Only one had been found. The first game. Certified. At auction: more than $500.

A unique item in the purest sense of the word.

It was then became determined: I had to have them.

And thus, I revealed to my wife how I planned to get them: I’d camp out in my car overnight and be the first person in this house.

And this is how I find myself in the driveway of a stranger in Kaukauna, Wisconsin at 11:30 p.m., waiting eight hours for a chance at a piece of history.

Here’s the running diary. As I write this thing, I don’t even know how it will end as I'm writing it in mostly real time. Typos will be likely. Verbiage will be wild. Click on at your own risk.

A Mini-sota Post

 

To Mr. A, as I'm missing a trip to the Chicagoland area to spend a weekend teaching kids how to report, write and annoy the administrators at their schools. It's convention season, which means I'm running my ass off all over the Twin Cities, dodging people wearing some of the ugliest team colors ever conceived. (Seriously, who the hell looked at maroon and gold and said, "Sweet! Wait until we make polyester uniforms out of this for our MARCHING BAND!")

I wish I could be there, buddy. You are the older brother I never had, desperately wanted and always needed. Miss you more than you know and you are on my mind now more than ever.

I hope you have a great time with The Missus and The Midget. Make sure she gets all the cat-cat time she can handle. Don't let her eat too many ferret treats.

If I don't see you, have a happy birthday and treat your wife to all the love she deserves.

Doc.

You can have my tattoo when you pry it from my COLD, DEAD HANDS!

The saying “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention” needs to be reworked, based on current events. People seem to be getting more and more outraged lately, but it’s a curious set of topics that have them outraged.

The post Thursday from A regarding the pissed off weatherman and his indignation that his job has been outsourced to Punxsutawney once a year  is just one example of how Gary Busey we are starting to become. We’re worried if Mitt Romney is a “weird” Mormon or if he’s really Mexican. We are fervently debating whether Michael Fassbender was denied an Oscar nomination because he’s donging off on screen.

And now this: People are raging against a student newspaper kid who wrote that she hates tattoos.

Lisa Khoury, a first-year student at the University of Buffalo, had her column “Why put a bumper sticker on a Ferrari?” go viral this week, and not in a good way. (Question: has anything ever “gone viral” as a positive? Seems like the closest we get is a video of a cat flushing a toilet or Mitt Romney saying something stupid.)

She makes the argument that overall women have great bodies and inking them up is just a pointless exercise that diminishes their sexual allure. (Khoury’s approach seems to say that if you’re obese and look like your face caught fire and someone put it out with a track shoe, hey, ink away! Kind of disturbing…)The piece was a counterpoint to an article by another student, who explained her attraction to tattoos.

Khoury learned quickly that the Internet is an unforgiving place to espouse an opinion. Even personal thoughts that are well crafted, soundly reasoned and intensely backed by research are eviscerated on a daily basis. When you show up with a knife at a gun fight, things tend to be a lot worse.

In Khoury’s case, she showed up with a spoon.

I’ve always had problems with student papers and opinion columns. As educators, we tend to not teach opinion writing very well and in most cases, people who write columns don’t care to learn what we do teach. My opinion editor almost had an aneurism one year when she was interviewing potential columnists because of this. She asked each kid what he or she wanted to write. The answers varied, but the rationale was the same: I don’t care what you want to read. I want to write what I want to write about, even if I don’t fully understand it. When the editor asked each kid what was the most important aspect of a column, the answers ranged from a good use of vocabulary to a willingness to use exclamation points. Finally, she lost it on one kid and said, “No, you idiot! It’s research! You need some facts in there!”

This column isn’t one of the worst I’ve read, but it definitely fits the writing pattern I’ve seen: Take a stand because you like/don’t like something, offer little in the way of insight and then come across as somehow morally superior because you have a column through which you can pontificate.

In the pre-Web days, you might get a letter to the editor or two based on your ignorance. As a student who wrote really shitty columns, I know I got a few of those. Today, however, this is what you get: a backlash that could knock the asshole off Newt Gingrich.

The thing that stuck with me was the editor’s response to the chaos. He defends his decision to let it run (good call), he protects his staffer without becoming a douche (good call) and then he makes a point about where all this outrage is going (best call):

 

What has baffled me more than anything is how much people care about this issue. Last month, we reported that this university gave money illegally to (then) County Executive Chris Collins' political campaign and that UB President Satish K. Tripathi broke SUNY regulations. We got almost no response.

I respect people's attachment to their tattoos and the personal and emotional value they hold for many. But as a student hoping to make my career as a journalist, I would also like to believe that the public cares about issues that extend beyond themselves.

 

As an adviser, I can relate. One year, a paper I advised uncovered the way the university had set up its mandatory meal plan system to force students to fail. The way the money worked and the prices were set, almost every kid had some money that went unused. This money was then filtered into an 8-figure stash that the university used to do various things it felt were necessary. All of this was under the radar until one kid broke the story.

The response? Deafening silence.

I’m always amazed at what we give a shit about. A few months back, I wrote about how Buffalo Bills fans were raging against a local columnist who told them to chill out about the 2-0 start to the Bills’ season. The fans told columnist to get back in the kitchen, wax off her moustache and stop being a cunt. The Bills finished 6-10, losing eight of their last nine games.

Guess the view is pretty good from the kitchen…

Look, if you like your tats, fine, but a raging defense of them against an ill-informed freshman at a college newspaper is probably not the best use of your oxygen. The people I know who are really into them, including one of The Midget’s classmate’s parents, don’t give a shit what other people think about their ink. If you’ll pardon the pun, they’re comfortable in their own skin.

However, the world is bigger than the Hello Kitty my 6-year-old already told me she wants to have stenciled on her arm some day.

If our current state of vitriolic indignation is any indication, there’s enough outrage to go around.

Student media at odds with educational paths

Loyalty and affiliation, once earned and given, become a large part of who we are. It is for this reason that I still wear T-shirts from my student media days, root for the Cleveland Browns through every double-digit loss season and have never once thought about “Newting” my wife.

It can also be something that blinds us a bit to the reality of our surroundings.

I thought about this when one of my previous stops along “career highway” fell into my newsfeed this week. The editor-in-chief of a blog that critiques the Mizzou J-School was told to resign from her post because she would be working at the Columbia Missourian that term.

The Missourian is a unique enterprise, by the very definition of the word. The one-of-a-kind media outlet is owned by the university, edited by faculty members and staffed by students. The paper is Columbia’s citywide a.m. daily and competes with an independent p.m. paper. (It also has obviously expanded into digital outreach over the years since I left.)

The students land on staff as writers, photographers, designers, copy editors and more when they sign up for specific classes that focus on writing, photography, design and so forth. In other words, to graduate in this program, they have to work at the paper. In order to work at the paper, they must not work at other competing media outlets, as per a conflict-of-interest policy.

This clearly bothered the founder of J-School Buzz, David “Teeg” Teeghman,  who took to JSB and lambasted the decision. Aside from calling the policy “antiquated,” he explained his views on how the policy does a disservice to student journalists:

(Kelly) Cohen would have learned a few things as JSB’s editor-in-chief that she will never learn at the Missourian. She won’t learn much there about analytics, what content generates traffic and buzz, the difference between stories an audience “wants” and “needs,” how to run a popular news blog, how to respond to critical commenters and tweeters you know personally, how to keep a site running when it gets a rush of unexpected traffic, and so on. We can talk about how all the sequences are becoming converged, or whatever, but JSBers learn a unique skill set no other Mizzou newsroom can offer.

Comments from the current Missourian editor, Tom Warhover, and current and previous members of the Missourian crew take issue with various points Teeghman makes. To his credit, Teeghman clarified his original aims, defended some of his positions and made amends when it was clear he was wrong, all things I’d expect from any good journalist.

The policy isn’t new and this isn’t its first challenge. In the pre-blog days, the conflict had always been between the Missourian and the Maneater, the student-run paper. Students hated that they had to give up their allegiance to a paper that allowed them to do great journalism and run their own show to come to what they viewed as a weaker place to be told what to do. Students I knew often planned their Missourian terms around their Maneater desires. One kid kept taking summer courses to “get the Missourian over with” so he could get back to the paper and eventually run the place.

It wasn’t the greatest way to view the education you were shelling out tons of money for, but I did understand it.

And I do understand Teeghman’s desire to keep his brainchild up and running. On occasion, I’ll check in on a few projects I started at various stops in my career to see if they’re still going or not. I still hate one J-school that took a decent idea a couple of us built, bastardized the unholy hell out of it and then declared it a “great thing” despite protestations from students each term. I was also saddened to learn one project I launched, involving high school students and press freedom, was discontinued.

Still, as Thomas Wolfe once noted, you can’t go home again.

I also understand that student media outlets often find themselves scratching and clawing for respect and dignity, desires most professional media outlets simply dismiss as “cute.” It always galled me when the pro papers got dibs on a story because sources would call them first. I’d have six kids working on breaking a story in a student newsroom somewhere, backchannelling the shit out of something, begging for interviews and pursuing the piece with the vigor of starved pit bulls. Once it became clear the sources couldn’t stop us from publishing the thing, they’d call up the pro paper and just give them the whole story, which they’d publish before we could. It was infuriating.

It was also infuriating that these “important” outlets never wanted to give the student media their due. They’d take info from the student stories and offer no credit to the paper as a source. They’d be snotty to the kids at press conferences. They’d pretend that student media didn’t really exist.

My first job interview at a pro paper involved sitting down with the city editor and going through my clips. He was polite enough before asking which of the six stories I submitted that I liked the best.

“That one,” I said, pointing at a piece about a house party being busted and $80,000 in fines being levied against the hosts.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I beat you guys on it.”

He gave me this whimsical look and explained that his paper had bigger concerns than this and how this kind of thing wasn’t a big deal. In other words, “We didn’t lose to you. We weren’t even playing the game. It wasn’t worth our effort.”

Nice.

Still, the guy hired me and a few months later, the paper did an “in-depth look” at how cops were busting house parties and handing out monstrous fines. I’m sure in his mind, he still wasn’t behind the story. He was working on something much bigger and more important that we little student people couldn’t understand.

Despite all of this, I get the reason for the policy.

The paper has to look out for its own interests, but also the interests of the students. Even without a direct link to JSB, I’m imagining life in the Missourian newsroom for Kelly Cohen will be a bit awkward. It always was for the Maneater “lifers” who were sentenced to the term at the CoMo. When the Maneater broke a story and left the Missourian in the dust, these kids got the stink-eye. The prevailing thought: “You probably knew about this and didn’t tell us.”

Or, worse yet, when things happened around the Missourian that led to news, if the Maneater covered it, look out.

One year, a kid who was a reporter for the Missourian was busted for theft of some pricy artwork after he and several friends broke into a historic home on campus. As the Missourian was trying to figure out how to write this, word got around that a Maneater reporter was working on this story. One editor was really ticked off and was wondering aloud which of the Maneater kids in the newsroom had tipped our hand.

None had. Shockingly, the Maneater folks knew enough to... (gasp!) check the police blotter and (swoon!) interview people.

And this is with a policy that prohibits working for two places at once. Without the policy, I’m sure the paranoia would have been worse.

We all have to make choices in our lives as to where our loyalties lie and how we let them play out. Sure, it sucks for Teeghman that he’s being shorted a staffer and yet, anyone who knows anything about the school and its policies could see this coming. No, this policy isn’t antiquated or stodgy or whatever descriptor seems easiest to fling when you’re losing a fight like this one. Companies all over the place have rules about what you can and can’t do as a member of their organizations. When it was time to take that pro media job, I had to quit my gig as the city editor at the student newspaper. I was as pissed about this as Teegham is about the Cohen situation. I kept thinking, “This is horseshit. These people just don’t get who we are and what we do.” Eventually, I was the one who figured it out.

I also figured I didn’t want to become the real version of this fictional guy.

If it’s any consolation to Teeghman, I peek in on my other old jobs from time to time, but I’m not horribly invested. When the schools I graduated from call and ask for money, I politely decline.

However, when my student newspaper does its annual alumni fundraising drive, my check goes out in the mail the very next day.

Loyalty, once given, remains long beyond the strictures of policies and the reach of time.

The Brain Dump

I’m suffering a Recall-Packer Loss-Newt Gingrich-Walker Ad Blitz-Edit happy assholes hangover right now. I kept trying to say something, but realized that I can’t find anything particularly poignant to say about anything epic.  Could be the end of an interim where I had awesome kids who really demanded a lot of me. Could be that The Midget managed to vomit twice, one time being at school after telling her teacher she was fine. Might be that I’m working on a longer post and it never seems “done” enough to put out there. Maybe it’s something else. In anyway, here’s my brain-emptying thoughts on a horribly frigid Friday:

- From the “Good Tip” Department: Found this from a friend who solved his problem with DirecTV the old-fashioned way: “What I learned tonight: If you scream "FUCK YOU!" into your phone when stuck in DirecTV automated phone system hell, it then connects you to a customer service rep.”

- It’s been ass-pounding cold out here, to the point where I’m actually wearing gloves because it hurts not to. I had not fully put the gloves on, so a small sliver of skin was exposed to the -30 wind chill yesterday and it felt like I was being stabbed in the wrist with a butcher’s knife. In walking around campus, however, I saw three kids without hats and one wearing flip flops with socks. Look, kid, no one is taking away your “man card” if you actually try to avoid frostbite.

- Went to get gas today. It was so cold that digital display was barely visible and slow in switching from screen to screen. After I scanned my credit card, the pump robot immediately asked me if I would like to add a car wash today. Duh.

- Last year, I was driving my Civic to work in weather like this when I found that the cruise control no longer worked. I figured something had broken and I’d have to go to a boneyard and pull a part. Did some research and found out that Honda admits that under the “rare instance” that temperatures fall below -20, the cruise may cease to function. This year, the same thing happened. You’ve got to wonder if people from Honda ever visited Wisconsin.

- Every time I try to avoid saying something about Governor Deadeyes, he just forces my hand. In a brief weekly recap, citizens of this state gathered enough signatures to force a recall election against him, word got out that he turned down $37 million to implement health care reform, he derided the recall as being driven by “big money from out of state” while he was fundraising in California and New York (which in case he failed geography is out-of-state), remains tied to an ongoing John Doe investigation and announced his plans to implement education reform having not shown State Superintendent Tony Evers the final bills. Oh, Scott, you had me at “recall.”

- You’ve got to give these guys points for creativity… Nothing says “VD, public corruption and scandal” like a puppet.

- Got our first “copy edited” chapter back from the book I’m co-authoring. This was supposed to be a simple cleaning edit for style and grammar. Instead, the copy editor decided she would be better off just writing the book herself. I’m not even close to kidding. She tracked changes in blue and it looked like an entire planet of Smurfs were massacred and left to die on that chapter. Making it worse, she was adding unneeded words and putting back things the initial reviewers said were really bad ideas (and they were right in retrospect). I was more than a bit upset and it wasn’t even a chapter I had written. My co-author wrote to me that he stopped reading after six pages because his blood pressure meds were failing to keep him in the green zone. The response from the publisher: We’re looking into this. Oh… Good…

- Read this piece about Muhammad Ali at 70 and what he means and should mean to people. It’s a solid read about a complex man who had a polarizing nature and a firm sense of right and wrong. I might be in the minority here, but I have huge problems with Ali the man (as opposed to Ali the symbol). He embraced a religious persona as a member of the Nation of Islam and yet was horribly unfaithful to his wife. He was pro-civil rights and anti-racism and yet he had no problem calling Joe Frazier “a gorilla.” He never seemed to fully understand that his lack of consistency was unnerving to people who weren’t solidly on his side. Prior to the Fight of the Century, he said Frazier could never beat him. Ali said if he lost, he’d crawl across the ring and subjugate himself to Frazier. After Frazier kicked his ass, Ali instead claimed it was a huge miscarriage of justice and that he didn’t really lose. After he agreed to a “computerized” boxing match against Rocky Marciano to determine who would win, Ali bragged about how he’d never lose. After every the final scenario showed he lost, his answer was, “That computer was made in Alabama.” Every conceivable slight was attributed to racism or error or something else entirely. Some people loved him for that, I suppose. However, it took Larry Holmes to cut through all of this and at one point explain, “For all he did for boxing and for all he did in life, Ali wasn’t a good boxer and he wasn’t a good loser.”

- Finally, rest in peace, Etta James. The sultry singer whose smooth voice launched a million love stories will be missed. When The Missus and I were getting married, we pretty much disagreed on everything at some point, but the one thing we knew for sure was that our first dance would be to “At Last.”

 

'Do not sit beside me and whine'

One of my favorite mythological stories is that of Ares, god of war, returning from the battlefield at Troy. He was wounded in the fight and complained about it to his father, Zeus.

Dad’s response was logical and predictable:

'Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar.
To me you are the most hateful of all gods who hold Olympos.
Forever quarrelling is dear to your heart, wars and battles.

Republicans love war, but only when they’re winning and when they’re not getting hurt.

Or when the war doesn’t involve complicated things, like, you know, words.

Billionaire Warren Buffett recently upped the ante on his earlier claims that he wanted to be taxed more. In an interview with Time Magazine, Buffett said he’d be willing to match dollar-for-dollar all contributions Republican legislators made that would go toward paying down the national debt.

He called out Sen. Mitch McConnell, adding, “I’ll even go 3 for 1 for McConnell.”

McConnell is worth about $10 million. He’s the senior senator from Kentucky and the leader of the senate minority.  He’s probably also getting a ton of likeness rights cash from Cabbage Patch Kids people, so a challenge like this shouldn’t be a huge problem.

And yet, this was the response from some literacy-challenged email monkey in McConnell’s office:

Sen. McConnell says that Washington should be smaller, rather than taxes getting bigger. And since some, like President Obama and Mr. Buffett, want to pay higher taxes, Congress made it possible for them to call their own bluff and send in a check. So I look forward to Mr. Buffett matching a healthy batch of checks from those who actually want to pay higher taxes, including Congressional Democrats, the President and the DNC.

The response, of course, makes no sense as a) Buffett said he’d match Republican contributions, not those from Democrats, b) the three sentence statement switches from third to first person at least once and c) ignores the fact Buffett isn’t proposing a tax, but rather a donation to pay down the debt.

I wanted to tell McConnell to grow some balls, but I realized that would be insulting to the ball-less everywhere. My grandmother is tougher, stronger and more aware of the debt situation than McConnell and she’s been dead for 10 years.  

Republicans have made a living on the “get tough” ideology. In fact, they’ve adopted the word “tough” as a standard for keeping themselves in office. They want to get tough on crime, tough on drugs, tough on illegal immigrants, tough on foreign powers, tough on toughness…

And yet when someone actually gets tough on them, they scurry like roaches when the lights come on.

In Wisconsin this week, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald filed a complaint with the GAB, arguing that the people who are attempting to recall him got an extra day to collect signatures. Of course, this is horseshit, as the GAB explained the rules back in November, explaining how the clock worked and when signatures were due.

Did Fitzgerald bitch then? Nah.

It’s only now that it looked likely that he’d be told to squeal like a pig that he’s pitching a fit. Or, as one volunteer put it, acting like “the kid who's not winning at Monopoly throwing the board up at the end."

(And of course, the folks trying to recall him just made a “Thanks but no thanks on that extra day. We can recall this asshole now” press statement on Friday.)

For McConnell and Fitzgerald and the other members of the Usual Gang of Idiots, it’s great fun when you’re running the show, calling the shots and demanding things of other people. When someone turns the tables, especially when you think there’s NO WAY that could happen, it’s going to suck.

When you decide to fight that way, though, you need to be able to dish it out and take it.

Life without Louie

Five years ago this week, Louis Ingelhart died at the age of 86.  I don’t know what student press freedom was like before him, but I know that it would never have been the same without him.

Louie, as he was known by those who loved and admired him, was a staunch believer in the First Amendment and had no qualms about expressing his beliefs in that area. When his beloved Ball State University got a new president in May 2004, Louie attended the press conference. He sought out the reporter for the student newspaper, tugged on the kid’s sleeve and told him to take Jo Ann Gora a message.

“You tell that woman that no one has ever censored the student paper on this campus,” he said. “And no one ever will.”

Louie wasn’t a hypocrite when it came to that issue. He was the first chairman of the department of journalism on his campus, serving from 1953 to 1979. During that time, the university grew and the paper changed, but he worked tirelessly to keep student media a free and open public forum.

And it worked too.

During his tenure, the newspaper only had four full-time faculty advisers, indicating that working under him wasn’t a constant battle to keep the kids safe. He also helped turn the heads of administrator, making sure they understood why it was important to let the students have their own triumphs and deal with their own problems.

He was so successful at that task that the university now bestows the Emens Award to college administrators who have gone to great lengths to keep meddling censors away from their campus media. The award is named after the university’s former president John R. Emens, with whom Louie worked frequently and often considered an ally.

Shortly after Louie stopped being the chair of the department, but before he retired, the student newspaper ran a three-part series that uncovered how university trustees were feathering their own nests by investing university money in under-performing assets that helped the trustee-affiliated banks. The adviser at the time was threatened, the kid who wrote the series was a target and yet, in the end, it was the board that crumbled. That kind of thing doesn’t happen without a guy like Lou setting the foundation for a campus that treasured the freedom of the press.

I got to thinking about Louie and my encounters with him this week after an advising colleague of mine was sent packing.

Paul Isom of Eastern Carolina University was fired two months after his paper published full-frontal shots of a streaker who interrupted a university football game. The kids ran three images, including one of the guy with his knees to the breeze, and covered the story thoroughly. After that, they followed it up with stories as to the guy’s arrest and his pending court date. In other words, they practiced journalism. (NOTE: people covering this have blocked out the guy's dick. They went Full Monty in their photos.)

Did they need a picture of the guy’s dick on the front page?   I don’t know, but that’s not the point. It wasn’t my call or your call or the adviser’s call. It was up to the staff of the paper. They debated, they discussed, they made a call.

And it was their call to make.

When people of an administrative age decide they don’t like seeing something and decide to get all hand-wringy about what’s wrong with kids these days and their Intertoob porn and such, I have to laugh.

After a congress-critter who had attended school at one of my previous stops argued with something we ran that was somewhat provocative, I went back into the archives to see what ran when he was on campus.

Turns out, there used to be an annual pictorial of the “Nude Indiana Competition” or some such thing with a ton of nudie shots in black and white. I bet that was laminated to the ceiling of his dorm right above his bed.

Even on a campus where I’ve got kids reading Glenn Beck books like they’re the next installment of “The Hunger Games,” the paper has had its moments of “whoa!”

A former department chair stopped by my office a couple months ago and handed me a copy of the student newspaper that was about as old as I am.

It was an April Fool’s edition that had a guy standing in a field holding a giant inflatable banana between his legs on its cover.

He also gave me a photo print he found that ran in one of the regular issues.

“Check out the cockshot they ran,” he noted pointed at the two streakers who donned masks and jogged through campus.

One guy, hey, I hope it was cold outside but the other guy? Damn…

I doubt Lou Ingelhart would have been a huge fan of the nudity running in the paper.

(Then again, maybe he would. One of my most vivid memories came from spending some time with him at a convention. He was in his early 80s at the time. We had to catch a shuttle to the airport and he was going with our group, so I found him in the hotel lobby. He was talking to a woman less than half his age, at least, and when I approached, she left. “How are you, Dr. Ingelhart?” I asked. “Good until you showed up,” he wryly responded. “I was talking to a blonde until you chased her away.”)

However, Louie would have been stark, raving pissed that an adviser was removed for essentially doing his job.

He once told me that he didn’t like administrators who decided it was their job to kick kids around. He also knew that if you couldn’t kill the paper or destroy the editor, shooting the adviser was the next best trick administrators would use to silence the press. It appears to be working as well. The kids at ECU had noted a chilling effect in the wake of Isom’s firing.

ECU is not unique in this approach, unfortunately. The Student Press Law Center has a running list of advisers who were fired for not stepping in and conducting prior review or prior restraint. Also, keep in mind that while some advisers in high school are required to do this and that private universities are different than publics, we are talking about young adults availing themselves of their Constitutional rights. Just because we call them “college kids” doesn’t mean that they’re not at the legal age to enlist in the military, vote, marry and buy smokes (but not road beers…).

I’ve always believed that student newsrooms are amazing learning environments.

What ECU has decided to teach them through the school’s actions against the paper’s adviser is deplorable.

A scientific rationale as to why designated drivers are hard to come by

Scout got to the Walker fiasco before I could, so I thought I’d take a moment to explain one of the heaviest mysteries I’ve encountered to this stage in life.

Tonight, we’re going out to celebrate The Missus’s birthday with some of her friends. She has some “normal” friends like A and a couple people she met through social engagements and previous jobs. Then, there are her work friends, who have been known to plow through an entire bottle of Red Stag and then give each other “cleavage checks” before they head out to the bars.

We will be going out with the latter this evening.

Early in this process, I volunteered to be the designated driver. I don’t like getting shit-hammered, I really hate hangovers and if I’m getting drunk, I’d like to make sure I’m safe about it.

I think it goes back to my first experience with a drunken driver. When I was 17 or so, my best friend decided no one was driving his car, dammit, and he was just fucking fine. Thus, I found myself riding shotgun, sober as a judge, on the U.S.S. Look Out For That Fucking Light Pole.

When we were inevitably pulled over, my good friend had the misfortune of breathing within 10 feet of the cop who asked, “You drinking?”

True to form and without missing a beat, my friend answered, “Why? Are you buying?”

It was all down hill from there.

In any case, DDing isn’t exactly popular around here. I know at least two people who have court-mandated breathalyzer-keyed ignition locks on their cars and I can’t read the local paper without seeing something about some idiot who showed up drunk to a DUI hearing.

Dennis Miller, back when he was funny for the right reasons, once noted that there are two groups of people in the country now: Those who get pathetically drunk in public and the rest of us poor bastards who are now expected to drive these pinheads home. The first group seems to be growing while the second group seems to be shrinking.

Here’s my logical “Doc-based” explanation as to why.

Let’s start out with the concept of you and a fellow barhopper heading out for a night on the town. If you both have about equal tolerance and start drinking about the same time, you’re getting hammered at the same rate. You thus both find it equally difficult to walk, you both are OK when you want to tell the other person “just one more thing” and you each think the other is fucking hilarious.

You have a very small differentiation in how much of an asshole you are being in your own minds because you’re both drunk. You both might be raging assholes who are puking all over yourselves and trying to grab the bartender’s genitalia, but neither of you notices because the gap between your assholic behavior is so small.

I have labeled this differentiation the A.T.G. or “asshole tolerance gap.”

See Figure 1:

Now, let’s think about you, your drunken friends and your poor designated driver. As you continue from rich to good looking to bulletproof to invisible in your alcohol-soaked mind, your DD is sitting there, sipping a Diet Coke and wondering why everyone else at the table thinks it’s hysterical that the woman at the next table is wearing a “Where’s the Beef?” T-shirt over her A-cup-sized chest. It’s also unclear to your DD why one of your party has been staring at the jukebox for 45 minutes trying to find “That one fucking song… you know what I’m talking about? By that chick… With the tits… And… Fuck, man… It was just here!” Meanwhile, the one girl that everyone hates because because after two drinks she makes it clear that when she says “Let’s blow this place!” it in no way means she’s planning to leave, is over in the corner trying to seduce someone’s husband.

It’s not just your friends that become a problem at that stage for the DD. Your own perception of reality has become something between that of a kaleidoscope and an acid trip as you suddenly come apart on your DD in one of the following ways:

 

1) The “I love you” attack: This is marked by several staggering passes at your beloved DD, who is doing his/her best not to topple over and spill Diet Coke all over the place as you fall slobbering on top of him/her with a “You know I love you, right?”

2) The “horny toad” approach: Alcohol lowers your inhibitions until you suddenly feel like Don Juan or Bella in Twilight. Either way, you sense nothing but yourself, your groin and the DD. There is likely to be a lot of groping, fondling and the inevitable line of “What’s your fucking problem? Don’t you want me?”

3) The “fuck barter” conundrum: Drunks want several things all at once: Food, more booze, sex and sleep. The last one, they really don’t cognitively want, but their body’s putting the squeeze on them to lay down, vomit and start the road to recovery. Still, if you’re drunk, you’re fighting that urge because you “so totally want breakfast/Taco Bell.” Thus, you will offer to trade your DD anything, including a rim job, for the chance to get a stack of waffles or a burrito supreme (no those aren’t euphemisms).

Here’s a tip from me to the rest of the DDs out there: If he/she says, “I will blow you right now for some pancakes,” don’t expect head and don’t bother with the IHOP run. The drunk will be asleep before the second traffic light.

4) The “Dylan Thomas” fight or flight mechanism: Some folks are angry drunks or violent drunks. Some are stubborn drunks. The best way to deal with these drunks is to not be around them in the first place. However, the DD needs to make sure they get home alive. Thus, after what seems like six minutes to you but is actually about 19 hours, the DD will do the “hey, it’s time to get going” thing, which will trigger a “do not go gentle into that good night” moment. You don’t wanna go dammit. That DD fucker isn’t the boss of you. He isn’t the king of Dirk. People can’t tell you what the fuck to do… All of this leads to either a drunken slapfest fight or you running through the parking lot in the middle of a snow storm wearing nothing but a bra, a pair of vomit soaked jeans and one shoe. And if you’re a woman, you’ll likely be wearing even less than that.

At the time you are engaging in any/all of these behaviors, you appear to be totally rational and in the right. Of course, you’re so drunk you spent three minutes making out with the wooden Indian who is guarding the entrance to the smoking lounge at the bar, so what do you know? Meanwhile, the DD is fighting the urge to try to carry you to the car and swearing to GOD that he/she will never DD again. The reason is because he/she sees reality while you are growing more and more and more disturbed and assholic.

Thus, the A.T.G. is much wider.

See Figure 2:

 

 Everyone has an asshole tolerance threshold. Some people can tolerate anything. Take my mother, for example, who works with eighth graders all day. Her tolerance levels are beyond anything I can possibly comprehend. I really think she could have an armored car dropped on her from the top of Empire State Building and emerge unscathed with a “That all you got?” smirk on her face.

Other people are way too sensitive for their own damned good. I remember getting an earful from a former colleague who was incensed at the dominant-male-hegemonic-hierarchial-paternalistic-hegemonic-hegemony of this world after someone in our group made the mistake of referring to a “covered sewer access opening” as a “manhole cover.”

However, for most of us, we have a moderately OK level of tolerance. When someone farts in public, drops an off-color joke or makes an inappropriate movement, we can grit our teeth, blow it off and move on with life. We don’t like it but we tolerate it.

And yet we all have our limits, which is why the A.T.G. is such an effective and rational explanation for why we have fewer DDs and those who do DD don’t like it all that much.

That said, my other theory, known as the “Who the fuck puked in my car?” axiom, also seems promising.

Graduation Day

 

The end of the year means Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Freedom From Religion Foundation protests, Bowl Games, seeing family you love, tolerating family you don’t, gifts, department store return lines jammed with angry people, travel, traffic, headaches and Jenny Craig’s hotline exploding with cries of “I’m too fat!” For me, it’s a happy-sad gathering that involves that involves me wearing the most expensive thing I own that wasn’t autographed by a football player.

Mid-year graduation is always a strange phenomenon for me. I usually end up gowning up in apparel that makes me look like a cross between Henry VIII and a Detroit pimp and sitting through three hours of names being announced in the school gym. I usually end up freezing to death while trying to get to the gym and then sweating to death when we’re all crammed in there. The speakers have eventually learned that they need to keep it short, but on occasion, you run into someone for whom this is like their moment on Star Search: They’re not giving up that mic without someone coming after them with a whip and a chair.

The rule at my previous college was that you had to attend at least one of these things each year. You signed up and if you blew it off, you were up a creek without a paddle. I usually picked the winter one, as it was shorter, easier and had fewer faculty, which meant more space in the faculty seating area. Of course, by the time summer rolled around, faculty had been blowing off stuff and missing in action, so another call went out to those of us easily swayed by Catholic guilt to pony up again.

I went for a number of reasons: I’m a fan of graduation ceremonies for the kids, parents like to meet you and I do look awesome in the regalia, despite the fact I hate dressing up. Doctoral regalia gives you this odd feeling that you know what you’re doing, even if you’re wearing jeans underneath this badge of importance.

I have to laugh about all of that. As an undergrad, I was a horrible student, due primarily to the greater interest I showed in the student newspaper than I showed in my classes. I made the dean’s list one term, got involved in the paper and watched my grades crash like the Hindenburg. In my master’s program, grades didn’t matter, but I did marginally better. In my doctoral program, grades didn’t matter worth a shit, so I never paid attention to what I got, so long as I passed. One day, I got a letter from the school telling me I was being inducted into the journalism honors society on the strength of a perfect GPA. I almost threw it out thinking it was a joke. Turns out, I got a neat medal and the right to wear a purple hat. I honestly think it’s the academe’s way of mocking me.

In this gig, I went a couple times, only to find that most of the kids I knew didn’t attend and faculty presence wasn’t required, so turnout was low. I then made a deal with myself and the kids: I’m not going unless someone specifically invites me. That way, I know I’m going for a reason.

Some of the kids from the newsroom thought I was joking until the year I didn’t show up for a spring graduation and all these parents were there looking to meet the guy who corrupted their children. I got an irate text message from my editor asking where the hell I was. Hey, you knew the rules. Not my fault. I’m waxing my car.

This winter, I got three invites, including one from my managing editor who told me, “If you don’t come, I’ll cry.” This from a woman who bounces people out of her bowling alley/bar every night and walks around the newsroom toting a baseball bat.

Thus, I ponied up, sweated my ass off and sat through a graduation ceremony. It was actually one of the better ones. I got to meet the family of the kids, a couple of whom looked at me and said, “Oh, I thought you were a student.” With a hat that hides male-pattern baldness, that’s somewhat workable on a campus filled with non-traditional students, I guess.

Afterward, I make good on the traditional promise I make to the kids their sophomore year when they wonder why I’m digitally dissing them: I’ll be your Facebook friend once you graduate. When you become an alumnus, it’s a great way for us to keep in touch. Before that, it’s creepy as shit and given the fact that everyone from columnists and football coaches to teachers and priests seem to be having trouble separating themselves from kids without using a crowbar, it’s in my best interest to not open any doors that might suggest impropriety. One kid one year literally walked across the stage, got her diploma cover and whipped out her smartphone. I got the “friend request” about six seconds later.

Many of these kids are returning students or one of the first in their family to get a degree. Moms and dads come in their best jeans and clip-on ties. Some of them come with husbands, wives and their own kids wearing muddy boots and cowboy hats. Their coats are from the local Harley dealership, the city factory or the Carhart section of Farm and Fleet. They feel horribly awkward standing around looking at all these people they’ve been trained to view as academic elites while their kids pose for photos with these overpaid government workers. I always do my best to try to break through that, once doing so by spending about a half hour talking to a woman’s husband about diesel engines and the benefit of having a good pickle fork when confronting an uncooperative tie-rod.

In looking back at the pictures the kids post from graduation, it becomes clear this means a lot more than many of them are willing to let on. They treat it like an imposition while waiting for their turn on the stage, but when they smile for those photos, you can tell that they know what they’ve earned.

And when I see my own smile there, it reminds me that this is why I do what I do.

Memo from the owner’s desk: Go fuck yourself

Patronizing local and national media have made it their business to explain to me and about 200,000 other folks all over the world that we’re rubes. The reason? We plunked down $250 (plus $25 for a handling fee) to purchase a piece of the Green Bay Packers.

When the Packers, the nation’s only publicly owned major sports franchise, made an offering of stock on Dec. 6, the shares began flying off the shelves. The timing for the Packers couldn’t be better: The team was coming off a Super Bowl-winning season, the team was 12-0 and Christmas was about three weeks away. Add those things up, and you’ve got a lot of folks who were interested in becoming an NFL owner.

Truth be told, this is the second professional sports team I’ve owned. About 15 years ago, Dick Jacobs of the Cleveland Indians decided to open up his team and create a stock sale. The rules of baseball required that one person own a controlling interest in the team. The rest of team? Hey, he could give out shares until his eyes bled.

Most owners balked at this, as by making his franchise public, Jacobs was forced to open his books to anyone who wanted to see them. That’s not a good thing for a group of rich dudes who always plead poverty when they decide they’re not getting enough love or they want the taxpayers to fork over some cash for a new stadium. They’d rather open their jugular than open their books.

Still, Jacobs blew them off and offered stock for $15 a share. It paid no dividends, but it was a tradable commodity (unlike the Packer stock). In his book on the Indians, Terry Pluto recalled a conversation he had with one of the Indians’ PR guys about the sale.

The guy asked Pluto if he planned to buy stock. Pluto laughed it off. He said that the stock paid no dividends, held no voting power and was unlikely to increase in value. The PR guy told him, “That’s all true and I have no inside information here, but have you ever known Dick Jacobs not to make money on a deal?” The guy said Jacobs was a master at making a profit, even when no one else could see how he was going to do it.

A few months later, my birthday rolled around and I had forgotten I’d asked about the stock.

Dad hadn’t.

He knew a guy at work whose wife was a broker and was willing to forgo her fee. Dad and Mom bought me 10 shares, a bargain for them, as the stock had sunk to about $6 per share. When I opened my gifts, I had to open them in a specific order. I got an Indians shirt, an Indians glass and an Indians bumper sticker.

“You need this stuff,” Dad said, “since you’re an owner…”

The last gift was the stock. It had my name on it, 10 shares and a beautiful drawing of Jacobs Field on it.

Over the next few months, I received “important guy” paperwork from the team. I got prospectus info, voting rights info and all that stuff. I think I voted on two things as an owner, if I remember correctly. Of course, my vote didn’t count. Jacobs was still running the team.

Somewhere around 1999 or 2000, I got a certified letter in the mail. It explained to me that Jacobs was selling the team and that the new owner, the Dolan family, was taking the company private. As part of that deal, the team was creating a forced sale of stock.

This basically meant I had two options: Sell the stock to the Dolans at an established price based on what they paid for the team or don’t and my stock would become invalid. The price they established was about $25 per share.

I didn’t want to sell. I wanted to own part of the team. That was the whole point of this exercise in the first place. However, as I wouldn’t be owning the team either way, I sold and made a pretty nice profit. Not nearly as nice as Jacobs did, but still it was a good deal, even if I didn’t want to make it.

To help salve the wound, the team agreed to cancel the certificates of stock and send them back to the former owners. I sent mine in, got it back and it remains on my wall to this day. If the team reopened its offering tomorrow, I’d buy again in a heartbeat.

Which brings me back to the Packer stock…

Thank you, oh all knowing and wise financial investment guys, who are trying to help me understand that I won’t make money off of this deal. I’ve got between four and six college degrees (depending on how you count them), I’ve resurrected two financially bereft student media outlets and I’ve even managed to not trade in my cow for some magic beans. I think that when I read that I get no dividends, I can’t sell it for a profit (or even to get my money back) and that this is not to be viewed as a financial investment, I’m pretty well versed in how this isn’t like buying Yahoo! Stock.

In other words, I’m a lot better off with my investment.

Also, thanks for pointing out that I have no real say as to the direction of the team or any real, tangible voting rights. Just so you know, I’ve got other forms of stock in my retirement portfolio and still pretty much have no voting rights. It’s not like the CEO of MicroSoft is thinking, “New version of Windows for this year? Hang on, let’s ask Doc about this…” Unless you’re buying a shitload of stock, your vote doesn’t count. Even then, it probably doesn’t count. While I’ll likely kid Mark Murphy (the Packers CEO) at the Lombardi Open this year about what I want him to do (since I’m his boss and all), I have no delusions of grandeur.

Also, thanks for helping me out, Sports Guy, by knocking the fact that this money will not get me tickets to the games, a Super Bowl ring or anything else. I do, however, get access to a shareholders’ meeting, a stock certificate (suitable for framing) and access to a “special owner’s line of merchandise.” Even if I got none of those things, that doesn’t make me an idiot. Just because the Packers are issuing these allegedly worthless pieces of paper to help expand the stadium and improve the facilities, that doesn’t make them crooks.

The Packers are special, and I say that not only as a lifelong fan and an owner, but also as a matter of fact. The public owns the team. No one person can have massive sway over the direction of the franchise.

This is a team that, unlike the Raiders, the Ravens/Browns, the Colts, the Cardinals, the Rams and a dozen other professional sports franchises, won’t ever hold its fans hostage and then flee to another city.  Even though the team has taken public money at various points in its tenure, it has done its best to look to other ways of raising revenue, like this stock sale. Unlike the Miller Park debacle in this state decades earlier, you won’t see the Packers waking up state senators in the middle of the night to change their vote on a stadium bill and foisting tax hikes upon residents in multiple counties.

What this sale did was say, “Hey, if you want a piece of the team and you want to help us out with some renovations, here’s how we’re going to do it.” When the Brewers constructed Miller Park on the backs of the taxpayers, people went nuts and rightly so. And, oddly enough, research has shown that publicly funded stadiums are shitty investments for the public. Go figure.

As for the Packers, I supported the team, I supported the expansion and I’m fine with that. No one forced any of these naysaying assholes to pony up money for this. Consider it a refreshing change from how these things are normally handled. If you live in any of the areas listed in this link, you’re paying for your team to stick around and you don’t own shit.  And, if the owner doesn’t get enough money, get the perfect stadium or get a cookie, he/she can pack up and leave and you’re still stuck with the bill.

And I’m an idiot?

So, thank you, omnipotent media members, talking heads, concerned citizens and other Debbie Downers out there who feel it is their job to mock my choice of purchase. I appreciate your dimwitted concern and your complete lack of understanding. I know I’m not getting what you perceive to be a commensurate benefit, but trust me, there are far worse ways to spend a couple hundred dollars when it comes to a football purchase.

If you decide to come around to my way of thinking, I’ll see you at the owners meeting.

If not, feel free to STFU.

Sincerely,

 

Doc
Minority Owner, Green Bay Packers

Virginia Tech

This is the argument I’ve been having in my head prior to writing today’s post. I cannot promise you this will be fair or balanced, despite some efforts in those directions. I can promise I’ll try not to write in all capital letters or exclamation points as way to build consensus among readers.

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For the second time in five years, I was frantically searching newspaper websites, TV websites, college media websites, college media listservs, university home pages, Twitter, Facebook and everything short of MySpace (does that thing still exist?) trying to find out if a friend of mine who advises media at Virginia Tech was dead at the hands of shooter.

Or if her students, who despite having no journalism school to fall back on and yet have rushed head-on into danger (and will continue to do so) in order to make sure others know what they need to know about a tragedy that continues to unfold in front of them, are dead.

And with that level of fear and panic comes oddity: When the police essentially figured out it was one officer and the gunman who were dead, I was thinking, “Thank God it was only two people this time.” Then, I smacked myself in the face thinking, “Jesus, what’s wrong with you? Two people are dead. The hell do you mean ‘only.’”

And after that comes reflection: When we were moved into our new offices, we found out the labs were key-card activated and that you could no longer set the doors to be constantly unlocked. Thus, you either had to leave the door partially open or keep locking people out. I remember thinking, “Yeah, what has better odds? Me locking myself out or me trying to lock myself in?” Now, I wonder…

And with all of this comes rage: I’m in a state where people take their kids out of school for the opening of the deer-gun season and yet I never got into the idea of guns. They’re dangerous. They’re unforgiving. They create consequences that ripple far beyond what a 2-cent piece of lead should be able to create.

They’re often wielded by people who in many case aren’t thinking about any of those things and instead are thinking about how it gives them power and dominion over something else. How it evens the playing field. How it provides them with an equalizer in which logic, knowledge, law, security and 100 other things can be laid to waste because they possess cylinders of power that they can unleash as they see fit.

They’re also wielded by people who have no intention of ever using them in that fashion. They want them because they believe it is their right. They want them because, contrary to cozy White America’s rose-colored beliefs, sometimes the law that is meant to protect them doesn’t. Or turns on them.

They’re also a symbol of freedom to people, much like the flag, the bald eagle and the all-you-can-eat buffet at the local Golden Corral. One of the things that stuck in my head in watching the clip at the front of this thing is that Toby never really deals with the first part of that question: What makes the amendment I like better than the one you like?

People hate the First Amendment and have gone to great lengths to squelch it, diminish it or circumvent it. Words have more power than guns in many ways. They’ve raised and halted revolutions. They’ve toppled dictatorships and given rise to freedom. They’ve chased corruption out of the White House and given people a reason to believe. As this country, and dare I say this world, has learned over the course of history, a bullet can kill, but words can do so much more.

As much as I hate mouthy teens, obnoxious bar-based know-it-alls and generally annoying wing nuts, I would still stand up gladly to protect their rights to speak as they see fit. In critiquing high school papers, I can tell the ones that are allowed their First Amendment rights and those that aren’t. The free papers expose bullying, discuss important issues of sexuality, take on school board shenanigans, fight for school pride, exalt school achievement, deride hypocritical policies and provide their readers with value, meaning and knowledge. Those that don’t get those rights often sound flat, defeated and like a voter at a Cold-War Russian election: We’re here because we have to be, but don’t imagine for a second that we think this is any good. With all that this amendment can do, it is no wonder that people don’t like it, especially if they’re catching the brunt of it.

And yet it’s the Second Amendment and its slap-dash application that pisses me off today, because fear has a random galvanizing effect on most of us. When a kid writes a story for the high school paper about a group of girls giving blowjobs, the first reaction is “How could the paper write such a thing? We need to get rid of this rag. Can’t we do something about it?” When an asshole shoots a cop for no discernable reason, my first reaction is, “Why the fuck did he have a gun? Can’t we do something about this?” It’s not rare and it’s not productive.

I’m sure that most of the gun-related crimes in this country don’t come from people who took the concealed-carry courses or were taken by their mom/dad/someone to the range and taught to respect weapons. I know people who hunt and yet oppose loosening restrictions on guns. I know people who have served in the military who wouldn’t own a gun if you paid them. I know people who hate guns and yet want concealed carry laws because of their views on freedom. The gun debate isn’t a stereotype war.

But I keep coming back to the question, “Why did we make guns sacred?”

We ban drugs because of the potential danger they have, even though we all know that if we were able to rid the world of every mind-altering substance, people who wanted to get high would spin around on their lawn until they fell over to get a dizzy buzz.

We say that access to the products makes people more likely to use them, although studies indicate that the more “secretive” you make something or the more “taboo” it feels, the more likely people are to want it. If you banned vegetables from this country, you’d have kids on your street corner paying $20 a hit to their carrot pusher.

We rely on simple slogans like “Just Say No” to try to stem the tide of people saying, “Fuck yeah I want another hit,” not because their stupid, but because they made one step down the rabbit hole and they can’t climb out despite their best efforts.

And yet, when we’ve tried to apply those same basic tenets to gun control (other than the slogan thing. Not sure a “Don’t fucking shoot people” bumper sticker would be a big seller.), people pour out of the woodwork with their bumper sticker arguments about how if you criminalize guns only criminals will have guns.

Decisions are never made well in the aftermath of a shock to the system. We have mandatory minimums for drug arrests, in large part, because people freaked out after Len Bias died of cocaine intoxication. The TSA is allowed to inspect my colon for polyps because people freaked out after 9/11. And any gun-control efforts made now will reek of over-reactive liberal horseshit because an idiot with a gun tore the scab off a still-healing wound inflicted four years ago.   

Free speech at $50 an hour

Gov. Deadeyes is apparently trying to find a way to keep those dirty hippies from showing up for all these annoying protests at the state Capitol.

His solution? Charge them for it. (Check out the policy)

According to the MJS, Scott Walker’s administration has decided that it will hold protestors liable for any costs associated with their free speech.

Yes, that’s irony.

Or stupidity.

Or a Constitutional violation.

Or maybe a shithead trifecta.

In any case, the policy took effect Thursday and will have a “learning period” through the middle of December. The goal, the administration notes, was to clearly identify current rules and establish ways to provide “equal and continuous access for all Wisconsinites to their state buildings in a way that is reasonable and safe.”

This is what the administration considers “reasonable” as per the policy itself:

Groups of four or more people must obtain permits for all activity and displays in state buildings and apply for those permits at least 72 hours in advance. The policy requires permits for 100 or more people outside the Capitol. The policy does provide some leeway for spontaneous gatherings triggered by unforeseen events.

 

I know we’re the Dairy State, but let’s not print our laws and edicts on Swiss cheese. Look at what this is saying:

- Four people (or 1/5 of the Duggar family) acting in concert are at risk of violating this rule if they show up in the Capitol and do ANYTHING without a permit that was sought at least 72 hours in advance. The policy explains that the state police receive hundreds of permit requests per year and that the processing of the event permit can take upwards of a month. While state officials note that there will be no enforcement of this based on the political position taken by the speech, I’d bet that if the Scott Walker Fan Club showed up unannounced to rally for the governor, they wouldn’t be fined or forced to apply for a permit.

Of course that’s probably because there’s only three people in that club at this point and one of them works in the building…

 - The policy is nebulous in about 812 areas, not the least of which is this variable known as the “spontaneous event” clause:

Permits are required for any event occurring in any area inside or outside of a state building unless the event is a bona fide spontaneous event. This paragraph does not apply to events occurring on the State Capitol Grounds.

How, pray tell, does one determine to what degree this is a “spontaneous event?” And who gets to make that determination? Is a flash mob a “spontaneous event?” Theoretically, it should be as the underlying purpose of a flash mob is for random people to show up and do something “Glee” like in front of others and then disappear. That said, if you look at the wording of this notice, you could clearly make the argument that it’s not spontaneous, as someone has planned it, promoted it and people have engaged in it. Basically the things that the policy outlines as being fineable.

- The rule extends beyond the steps of the state buildings and appears to be able to levy costs against people who are in anyway involved in anything that might end up possibly being a protest:

 

Individuals or organizations that organize (note: love the redundancy), sponsor, promote or participate in an event may be held jointly and severely liable for law enforcement expenses arising out of the event.

 

So, it’s not just the big dirty hippie with the bull horn they want to fine but pretty much anyone who helps get people to show up, anyone how tells other people about the event or even shows up at the event. An even more insidious reading of that rule indicates that if you were to pass along emails about a protest, communicate about a protest or in any way get near this thing, you could be liable. Who gets to determine what levels these people are liable for costs? How exactly are you going to bill them?

Obviously, lawyers are going to enjoy smacking the administration around on the issue of free speech, which if has to be government approved and then you have to pay to do it isn’t really free. However, this also violates a second tenet of the First Amendment: the right to peaceably assemble. While the courts have held time, place and manner restrictions can be applied to the Amendment, this fails to fit any of those limitations as the policy is overarching in terms of its requirements and should fail to pass the laugh test.

And of course, forcing people to pay for police presence that they don’t want anyway will likely lead to less-than-peaceable assembly. Which of course is what the state wants, so we can have pictures of no-gooders punching "real citizens" on the news (this time without the palm trees in the background) and the “taxpayers” can cluck their tongues at these protestors and wonder what’s wrong with this country.

Little Big Man

 

 

You can keep your Black Friday specials, your retail madness and your “Holy shit, I weigh HOW much? It’s time for a diet,” post-Thanksgiving madness. For me, the day after Thanksgiving will always be tied to the moment I learned to believe that the little guy could come up big.

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In planning their post-Thanksgiving football games, CBS spent the early part of the summer of 1984 looking at games they believed would be “bullet-proof.” The night game they chose matched an up-and-coming Boston College program against the defending national champions, The Miami Hurricanes.

The Hurricanes title defense was off to a rocky start that year. They lost the third game of the year to Michigan and had gotten bludgeoned 38-3 at home by Florida State. Leading up to the clash with BC, the team had built a 30-point lead against Maryland at home only to have Frank Reich lead one of the biggest come from behind wins in college history.

After starting the season 4-2, BC wouldn’t lose another game leading up to the Miami game. After a 7-point loss to Penn State, the Eagles knocked out Army and Syracuse by solid margins. The bigger story, however, was if BC quarterback Doug Flutie would become the first major college quarterback to throw for 10,000 yards in a season.

--

Boxing’s Ferdie Pacheco once noted that contrasting styles made for great heavyweight fights. In the world of football, the same was true.

Sophomore Bernie Kosar led a Miami attack that had defeated the Nebraska Cornhuskers in the 1984 national championship game that January. A 6-foot-5 pocket passer, Kosar had the look of a pro-style quarterback. He led a program built by Howard Schnellenberger and honed by first-year coach Jimmy Johnson. It featured Alonzo Highsmith, Melvin Bratton and dozens of other kids from “The State of Miami,” an inner-city recruiting area filled with amazing prospects.

At 5-foot-9, Doug Flutie started his freshman year fifth on the depth chart at Boston College, the only Division I school to actively recruit him.

By his senior season, he had led the Eagles to back-to-back bowl games, landing BC in the Tangerine Bowl after the 1982 season and the Liberty Bowl after the 1983 season.

--

Under an increasingly persistent misting rain, the teams took to the grass field at the Orange Bowl on Nov. 23, 1984. The weather put a chill on the fans in the stadium, but not on either team’s offense.

Boston College struck first and charged out to a 14-0 lead. Kosar responded with 11 straight pass completions on his way to setting a Miami single-game passing record.

“They could do anything they wanted,” Flutie recalled years later. “They could run it for 8 to 10 yards at a chunk or throw it for 15 to 20. We had to try to manufacture our offense.”

BC coach Jack Bicknell had seen games like this before. Both teams could score, neither team could defend. Late in the game, he found his team clinging to a three-point lead, but he knew that his leaking defense wasn’t likely to hold.

Flutie had reached a similar conclusion.

“I was telling Jack, ‘Let them score. They’re going to score anyway. Get me the ball back with some time.’”

When Miami’s Bratton scored his fourth touchdown of the day, Miami had recaptured the lead, 45-41.

Flutie found himself down four points down, 80 yards from the end zone with 28 seconds left.

--

The living room in our old house had this scratchy yellow shag carpeting that made it impossible to drive Matchbox cars on the floor. Every three inches, a wheel would get caught on a loop and you’d have to stop and try to free it. The couches had this odd velour on them that left patterns on your face when you slept on them.  In the far left was an old Admiral TV. It’s giant wooden box with ornately carved columns held a 20-inch tube that took about 18 hours to warm up. The set had three knobs: On/off/volume, VHF tuning and UHF tuning. It was hooked to a giant antenna on our roof that years later would break free from its brackets and come crashing through my parents’ bedroom window during a blizzard.

With our bellies crammed full of turkey and Mom’s famous bread stuffing, Dad and I had parked ourselves on the couch to watch the end of this game Dad had been talking about all day.

Mom had finished the dishes and the grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins had all left after a massive meal, leaving us to our own devices.

At the age of 10, I was one of the smallest kids in my class. The boys would often measure me against the girls in the class to make the point that no only was a dwarf by male standards, but that the “weaker sex” had even exceeded my diminutive height.

Dad had always made the point that height wasn’t the most important thing, but he wasn’t the one who once got stuffed in a trash can.

“Watch this Flutie guy,” Dad explained. “He’s really small, but he can really play.”

Of course, shortly after he said this, Bratton scored, putting the game seemingly out of reach.

“Well, that’s the end of that,” Dad said as Flutie had maneuvered BC from the 20 to the Miami 48 with six seconds left. He arose to head to the kitchen for a beer.

“But there’s six seconds left,” I protested.

Dad picked me up and plunked me down on the floor right in front of the TV.

“Here,” he said. “You watch this and maybe you’ll learn a little something about reality.”

Reality I knew, but faith I had and there’s something about being a boy, being told you’re too small and being shown someone who was too small as well and hoping against hope he’ll succeed once again.

So I sat. And I watched.

--

The play was called “Flood Tip.” Three men to the right side of the formation, one to the left. They’d streak down the field as fast as possible while Flutie tossed one last desperation heave. The field had been chewed up under the relentless pounding the two teams had put upon it. The damp had crept into every inch of the players on the field.

Flutie took the snap and dropped straight back, bouncing on the soles of his feet as his receivers raced toward the end zone. Miami rushed three and dropped eight to defend against the Hail Mary. Even with only a small rush, a Miami defender broke through the offensive line and chased Flutie out to his right. An offensive lineman impeded the rush just enough to give Flutie a chance to escape.

He paused for a brief moment at his own 37-yard line and launched a pass toward the heavens.

Brent Musburger had the call as the pass sailed through the air. It covered 63 yards in the air, starting its descent around the 30-yard line. It coasted through the arms of three defenders and hit Gerard Phelan, Flutie’s roommate and good friend in the hands. Phelan cradled the ball and fell into the end zone.

“I rolled over and saw colored letters and I knew I was in the end zone,” Phelan would recall years later.

--

I remember leaping up and down in the living room, crashing to the ground and rolling around like a dog scratching its back on that crappy yellow rug.

Dad came storming back in, beer in hand, demanding, “What happened? What happened?”

Musburger had hollered, “CAUGHT BY BOSTON COLLEGE, I DON’T BELIEVE IT!” failing to mention the name of the receiver because his spotter had gone nuts with excitement and failed to identify Phelan right away.

Flutie was jumping in and out of the frame on that Admiral set as the enormity of the event settled in on my father.

“Wow!”

--

In the years that followed, I followed Flutie and Kosar as they went their separate ways. Flutie had trouble gaining traction as a QB in the NFL before he headed north. Kosar went back to Ohio and led his hometown Browns to the AFC championship game, but never the Super Bowl. He eventually got his ring as a back up with the Dallas Cowboys.

Flutie spent much of his prime in the Canadian Football League, becoming the league’s most exciting player. He earned multiple most  valuable player awards and led several teams to Grey Cup championships.

When he returned to the NFL in 1998 with Buffalo, I became a Bills fan. When he headed west, I followed the Chargers. When he finished up with New England Patriots, I grudgingly liked Bill Belichick’s teams.

Flutie’s last scoring play was another quirky moment in a quirky careers: the first successful drop kick since 1941, tacking on an extra point after a Patriot touchdown.

From time to time, I’ll catch him on a college football show or the clip of him making that miraculous heave will show up on ESPN and I’ll go back to that moment with him, marveling at how a big a little man had become.

And how he inspired a generation of others to do the same.

Cain-ful Arrogance

Herman Cain apparently blew off a newspaper in New Hampshire after blowing up while talking to one in Milwaukee.

The New Hampshire Union Leader caught the backlash of Cain’s recent gaffe in discussing President Barack Obama’s policy on Libya with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The paper video recorded the interview for its website and a segment of it, which showed Cain who answered the Libya question with the grace and certainty of a drunk trying to cross an icy street, went viral.

As a result, Cain told the Union Leader that he didn’t want his interview with the UL’s editorial board to be recorded. After a series of back and forth, Cain bailed on the deal when it looked like the paper wouldn’t relent.

Two things come out of this for me:

First, this reminds me of the joke about the scientist studying a frog. He yells at the frog, “Jump!” and the frog jumps. He then cuts off one of the frog’s legs and repeats his demand. “Jump!” and the frog jumps. He repeats this twice more, each time the frog jumps, but with more difficulty. When all of the frog’s legs have been cut off, the scientist yells “JUMP!” and the frog stays put. He screams “Jump! Jump! JUMP!” and the frog doesn’t move.

The scientist then notes in his research journal, “After all four of its legs are cut off, the frog goes deaf.”

For Cain, the problem isn’t that he doesn’t know crap about Libya, Obama’s approach to it or how many extra men it will take to hold that area in a game of “Risk.”

The problem is that a video camera was there.

Politicians used to like certainty that they could say something and if it sounded shitty, they could say, “The paper misquoted me” or “They misinterpreted what I said,” or something George W. Bush-ian that just confused the shit out of people. Now, with every human being carrying a video recorder of some kind, that’s not possible any more. Most news outlets have websites, which can show video, so newspapers are adding video, TV has always used video and bloggers and our grubby dirty unethical shithole sites are using video.

So Cain’s great Frog Deafness Corollary of 2011 dictates that he needs to get away from the video camera.

Can someone please remind him that he’s running for president? And maybe that on occasion our president will need to understand what the hell he’s doing? And that on similar occasions, he might have to be in front of a camera to explain what the hell he’s doing?

Saying you want to be president but don’t want to be videotaped is like saying you want to be a porn star but you’re saving your virginity for your wedding day and you’re camera-shy.

Second, and perhaps more important, Cain is likely to remain at the forefront of this thing until something truly horrific happens. I mean more horrific than the Libya thing… And the pizza song… And the sexual harassment… And the pictures of him at a pool party with Jerry Sandusky… (I only made one of those up.). You know, something like him walking down the middle of Washington, D.C. with an automatic weapon, acting like Hooper from “Chasing Amy.” Even then, I’m sure the Right Wing will support him for his staunch support of the Second Amendment and embrace his expressive nature and cultural diversity.

So why this guy?

Bill Maher hit this one right on the head, even though he wasn’t talking about Cain at the time: Republicans embrace certainty above all else.

It’s why Cain couldn’t say to the MJS guys, “Look, I’m really focusing on domestic policy at this time and I haven’t really looked into his approach to Libya.” He had to come up with a “THIS IS THE ANSWER!” answer for the board. Watch the video, he kept tuning up for his direct, absolute and forceful condemnation of Obama for something that he had no idea about. It was like watching someone try to light a solid rocket booster with a Bic lighter.

Whether it’s their faith, their family or their country, these people want the absolute certainty of hearing from their leader that he knows exactly what’s going on about whatever the hell it is and that he knows EXACTLY what to do an EXACTLY how to fix it. If you want to win the hearts and minds (what little they have of either), you need to bet that kind of absolutist. No time for learning, no time for discussion, no time for dissention. Grab the weapon and pull the trigger.

If you need any more proof of this way of thinking, look at how Cain followed up his LOL Catz Libya video:

“We need a leader, not a reader.”

Well, it would probably help to do some reading, on say Libya perhaps…

Even more, these idiots don’t get that you can’t boil complex problems down to bumper stickers, three-point plans or 8-second sound bites. The more you try to do this, the more often you fall on your keys and limp away.

This is why Rick Perry got into trouble… And Michelle Bachman… And… oh hell… I don’t even know what else is out there in Nutbag Valley.

But at least I admitted it.

Joe

Since this appears to be the week to discuss sports and second-guess people, I figured I’d weigh in. No, not on the Penn State thing; that’s been beaten to death and will continue to be.

Hey, don’t get me wrong: Raging against a pedophile and those who were within five miles of him is easy. Very few people are going to disagree with you.

(In a Twitter jihad, one person I follow noted that Joe Paterno should be in prison. When someone else had the temerity to ask why, the “How could you defend Paterno? What if it was your kid?” tweets set my iPhone on fire. If it were my kid, I’d want to strangle Jerry Sandusky. I’d want to rain vengeance down on him that would make Marcellus Wallace say, “Holy shit, are you demented!” This is why we have courts: So that crime doesn’t perpetuate rage which then perpetuates more crime and so forth. It’s also why I shouldn’t route Twitter into my iPhone.)

You can convict him before a court of law does, or as some columnists have done, figured anyone around him is fair game.

I’m quite surprised that Sandusky’s postal carrier hasn’t been indicted for something…

I’m talking about Joe Frazier, who died of liver cancer this week at the age of 67. He lived a good life, scaled heights few ever have and yet he died a bitter man.

He fought Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Jimmy Ellis  and more, but he couldn’t fight hard enough to get his own trainer to believe in him.

If you want to talk about a legacy changed or an image altered, forget Joe Paterno and look at Joe Frazier.

---

Last night, I got a chance to catch a documentary on the Thrilla in Manila, the final fight of the Frazier/Ali trilogy.

Each man had won once. This third fight was for more than the heavyweight championship. As Ali biographer Thomas Hauser once explained, “They were fighting for the championship of each other.”

For Frazier, it was much more than that.

He beat Jimmy Ellis in 1970s to unify the heavyweight title, claiming the title Ali was forced to vacate when he refused to be drafted for the Vietnam War. In many people’s eyes, Ali remained the true champion.

In the 1971 “Fight of the Century,” Frazier and Ali met for the first time.

Frazier held on in a 15-round unanimous decision, flooring Ali with a wicked left hook that should have taken Ali’s head off.

Frazier was desperate to hear Ali provide him with some level of respect after defeating the former champion. Prior to the fight, Ali had said if he lost, he’d crawl across the ring and admit Frazier was better. Instead, he and his trainer, Angelo Dundee, took to the media room and told the press they had no idea what the judges saw.

It wasn’t a loss, they explained. It was an error. And it stung Frazier.

The 1974 rematch wasn’t much to write home about. No title was on the line and experts noted that it matched two former champions who were both past their prime. Ali earned a unanimous decision, with the fight going the distance.

The “Thrilla” would settle the issue, but this time with the title on the line. Ali had dethroned George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire.

In the build up to the fight, Ali called Foreman stupid, ignorant, ugly, an Uncle Tom and worse.

He told people it would be a Thrilla when he beat the gorilla in Manila. He went as far as to carry a rubber gorilla to meetings with the press.

Say what you want to about the greatness of Ali and his impact on American culture over the span of his life, but this clearly crossed a line. It was one thing to want to kick someone’s ass in the ring. It was quite another to go where Ali went.

---

The fight took place on an oppressively hot morning. People who attended the fight said they were unable to even breathe and all they had to do was sit there. Frazier’s companion said she had no idea how her guy could breathe, let alone fight.

Peter Bonaventure once described the battle as a fight in three parts:

In the first four rounds, Ali dominated the fight. He often grabbed Frazier, smacked him around and the evaded the giant left hook that Frazier threw with ferocity. By about Round 5, the referee started separating the fighters each time Ali put his hand on the back of Frazier’s neck.

Able to move inside with impunity, Frazier cut off the ring, pressed forward and was tearing Ali apart. While head shots often make for good-looking punches, body shots kill a fighter. Frazier took to the body, punishing Ali’s lungs, kidneys and liver. He punched Ali in the hips, causing huge hematomas and slowing down the quicker champion.

Hauser once explained that in those rounds Ali tried to regain the psychological edge by whispering to him, “Joe Frazier, they told me you were washed up.”

Frazier’s response? “They told you wrong, pretty boy.”

Despite his proclamation that a sledgehammer couldn’t stop him, Frazier found himself fighting against his own blindness more than Ali as the fight reached the final four rounds. His left eye had been damaged in 1964 during a sparring session, leaving him mostly blind from that side. His right eye, pummeled by Ali, was slowly but steadily closing.

By the 13^th round, Frazier couldn’t see Ali. He would use his body and head to weave near Ali, wait for Ali to hit him and then counter.

Ali wasn’t doing much better, telling his trainer, “I think I’m dying. This must be what death feels like.”

When the 14^th round closed, both men were crippled by exhaustion, pained from the beatings they had inflicted and uncertain if they could continue. Ali went back to his corner, slumped down in his chair and told his trainer to cut the gloves off of him. He was finished.

Dundee screamed at him and prodded him to continue, but Ali wanted no part of the 15^th round.

In Frazier’s corner, legendary trainer Eddie Futch told Frazier he was throwing in the towel. In recalling the conversation years later, Frazier said Futch told him, “It’s over, Joe. You can’t see him and I know it.”

Frazier shook his head no, “Don’t worry, I can visualize him.”

The last living member of Frazier’s corner remembers a far different conversation:

“Joe was telling Ed, ‘Don’t you dare stop this motherfucking fight. Don’t you fucking think about stopping this motherfucker.”

Frazier had the guts and the stamina. Ali was ready to quit.

Instead, Futch stepped in and called the fight. Moments later, Ali attempted to stand and collapsed in the middle of the ring.

Frazier had lost. Ali kept his title. History was written.

Shortly before his death, a reporter asked Frazier if he would have been willing to go on, even if it meant he might die. The usually verbally challenged Frazier, who often sounded like a mix between Clint Eastwood and Marlon Brando in “The Godfather,” uttered a single word in perfect clarity:

“Absolutely.”

Futch, who died 2001, refused to second guess himself for stopping the fight. He once recounted to sports writer Jerry Izenberg the eight men he had watched die in the ring. One more would have been one more too many, he explained.

I understand that and yet it’s not his call.

As adults, we all have the right to write our own life story. The choices we make lead to certain outcomes and those outcomes have consequences and those consequences shape the future.

Frazier understood this. He was a Philly fighter, a man for whom nothing was easy.

When Ali was out of boxing, Frazier supported him publically and privately, providing him with positive attention and cash. He refused to enter the 1967 tournament that was held to decide who should receive Ali’s belt, arguing that it would be an ill-gotten gain.

When Ali came back, Frazier could have made him wait around for a couple years for a title shot.

“Oh, you want a shot at the title, Muhammad? Fuck you, Mr. “I don’t have to do what other people say.” Wait your turn. I’m fighting Jerry Quarry.

To pay him back, Ali belittled him, marginalized him, dehumanized him and turned an entire race of people against him. Joe Frazier knew he could give three more minutes of his life to regain all Ali had taken from him.

Had Futch just let him stand up and answer the bell for the 15^th round, the world might have seen Frazier for who he always was.

The stronger man.

Premature Elect-ulation

OK, so then this happened: One of Scott Walker’s backers filed paperwork Friday to seek a recall of the governor.

Oh, don’t worry.

It’s not a story of remorse or a change of heart.

It’s just another Machiavellian machination in a long string of malicious maneuvers.

By filing the recall petition, David Brandt gave Walker an 11-day head start to his fundraising efforts. Democrats had made it loud and clear they planned to launch their recall on Nov. 15.

According to state law, as soon as the first official recall petition is received, Walker can start raising an unlimited amount of cash to fight for his job.

It is also likely more than coincidence that Walker is heading on a national fundraising trip in the next couple days.

The Democrats are pissed and the Republicans are doing a “who me?” thing when it comes to this action. To be fair to the folks in the GOP, this guy ponied up about $240 since 2010 for Walker. He’s not exactly a Koch brother. Still, it’s great to have some pawn on the board decide to go screaming toward chaos in order to screw up everyone else’s well-planned moves.

This thing is on the heels of a decision that if Walker is to be recalled, his lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch must be separately recalled. And that’s on the heels of a set of cross-wired fights regarding whether old or new districts will be used for any and all recalls.

If Walker were confident in his position, his support throughout the state and his grip on reality, he’d call a press conference tonight on this thing. Then, he’d confidently walk to the podium, tell the media he didn’t know this was coming and say he will not do any fundraising or prepare for any recall until after Nov. 15.

He’d look at the Democrats and with steely resolve say, “You think I’m afraid? Fuck you. Come and get me.”

Of course, this is not our governor. He will do the, “Well, geez, I mean, this guy filed and I can do this under the law, so why shouldn’t I?” thing. He’ll take every edge he can get, palm every ace he gets his grubby little paws on and undercut every opponent’s actions in the most devious of ways.

Then, when he’s done wrecking the shit out of this state, using every underhanded trick he can and hanging on to his job by the narrowest-minded of margins, he’ll declare that the people of spoken and he’s ready to move forward.

Guns + Penises + Anti-Recall Measures = JOBS!

In his inaugural address, Governor Deadeyes repeated to the point of laughability that Wisconsin was “open for business.” The importance of jobs could not be understated. In fact, if you played a drinking game with his speeches, you’d be better off taking “times Walker is on camera” than “jobs” for your drinking cue.

In calling a special session of the legislature, Walker promised that he would “focus like a laser” on jobs. Apparently, lasers must first do other things before they can hit that jobs target.

 Over the past few months, the legislature, which is controlled by Walker’s own party, has taken on a number of bills, none of which has anything to do with jobs.

Republicans have attempted to protect GOP targets from recall by trying to use the newer, more Republican-friendly redistricting lines.

They tried to make it harder for people to recall state officials by proposing a bill that required all recall petitions be notarized.

They put teachers' jobs in the hands of disaffected youth, by allowing for the use of standardized tests to help decide whether to discipline or fire teachers.(Did anyone ever take those tests seriously? I never did. Tried making patterns out of the dots a couple years in a row. Went from idiot to genius to idiot. I was then found out and my parents nearly throttled me.)

The senate passed a bill that demanded teachers in public schools promote marriage and teach abstinence-only efforts in sex-ed classes. (Question: What happens to the gay kids in the class who are told that marriage is important but can’t marry under our current law? Answer: They need to be less gay. Duh.)

They made a run at capping attorney fees in consumer litigation. Of course, it took the good folks at the Journal-Sentinel to point out that the representative who proposed the bill is actually on the “pay up” end of the stick in just such a claim.

In an effort of bipartisanship, the Assembly pushed forth a bill that would expand the rights of homeowners to kill people. (Because, hey, if we can’t get together on our right to bust a cap in someone’s ass, what has this country come to?)

This list could go on and on of “jobs-free” job-creation bills, but the most laughable one requires special attention. The Assembly debated for more than nine hours, deep into the night, over a contentious amendment that would remove race as a consideration for a college grant program.

 The problem? The state’s Higher Educational Aids Board stopped using race as such a factor about a year ago.

In other words, our legislature is wasting time arguing about something that doesn’t exist. And, to be fair, this amendment was proposed by Peggy Krusick, a Democrat, which goes to show that stupidity has no party affiliation in many cases.

Jobs have become for Walker what terrorism was for Bush: the brush-back pitch he throws at anyone who questions anything he’s doing.

Want to destroy unions? Hey, it’ll create jobs!

Want people to get angry at state workers? Those guys have cushy jobs!

Want to get kids to stop fucking? It’s about jobs! Hand… blow… rim… et cetera.

However, job creation has to be more than a sleight of hand, a statistical maneuver and a bumper-sticker slogan. People need to go to work. They need to make real money. They need to start picking themselves off the ground again as they begin to rebuild their shattered lives.

People elected you, Scott Walker, because… Hell, I don’t know… Why the hell did they elect you? I could ponder this for days…

Anyway, when you stood up and yelled about Wisconsin being “open for business,” people seemed to like it. They gave you the benefit of the doubt about your desire to see this state chip away a the unemployment rate. When you said everyone needed to focus like a laser on jobs, people seemed to like that too.

So worry less about keeping your job and start doing your job. Don’t worry about who can shoot what at whom, whether they’re packing a .44 Magnum or a Magnum condom. Stop thinking about whether some lawyer or a black kid is getting too much money.

Find that laser and aim better.

Seasons in Hell

After the Cardinals tied it for a second straight inning last night, I went to bed. I didn’t need to know what I already knew: There would be a seventh game.

I didn’t need to see Ron Washington standing on the steps of the dugout, imploring Cardinal hitters to do something stupid and hand him the World Series.

I didn’t want to see the requisite camera shots of Tony LaRussa looking like he knew he’d win. Baseball’s version of Benjamin Button is annoying enough in the regular season, let alone the playoffs, where he always seems to have this misplaced sense of destiny.

And, as The Missus noted after her second drink of the night, “They can stop showing me that skinny blonde bitch in the Cardinals hat who is praying in the stands.”

The Rangers hold a special place in my heart, though, and I’m sure I’ll be watching Game 7. Not so much for the baseball, but because of writer Mike Shropshire.

Perhaps the funniest baseball book I’ve ever read  (and that takes in a lot of territory) comes from Shropshire.

“Seasons in Hell” and I got together in a chance meeting when the local library was closing and it was a buck a bag for books. While The Missus raided the cooking section, I cleaned the shelves in the sports area. “Seasons in Hell” landed in one of the bags and the rest is history.

Shropshire’s book covered the Rangers from 1973 to 1975. The team was managed in that time span by Whitey Herzog and Billy Martin, one a hall of famer and the other who probably should be. The team had stars like Jim Bibby, Ferguson Jenkins and MVP Jeff Burroughs. Pheenom David Clyde was on the roster as well and Bob Short was calling the shots from the administrative level.

On paper, they should have been a force.

On the pages of Shropshire’s book, they were a hysterical mess.

Between his binges of press-box alcoholism, Shropshire managed to crank out daily coverage of a team that lost 105 games in 1973, teased fans with a second place finish the following year and then finished with a sub .500 record in 1975.

Yet, it is his recalling of the characters of the day and the weirdness of the franchise is epic.

He noted that Jim Bibby had a dick of “equine proportions” and that Owner Bob Short’s biggest quandary was trying to figure out a way to make it a gate attraction.

He talked about “Hot Pants Night,” in which the team wasn’t going to give away the clothing item but rather ask women to show up wearing them. Women would then compete for a trophy that confirmed for the winner that “she and only she the best-looking ass in North Texas.”

He followed the meteoric rise and fall of David Clyde, an 18-year-old Texas boy who was driven like a rented mule and burned out before his 20^th birthday. His name still serves as the cautionary tale for abusing young talent.

However, my favorite story came as a result of Herzog’s displeasure with the ass-kicking the Rangers were receiving in Milwaukee:

“It started yesterday, when they were beating up on us with 17 runs. I knew something was up and figured the third base coach was stealing… signs,” said Herzog, speaking rapidly and making wild, pointing gestures, like in an old film of Mussolini making a speech. “But today, in the first game, I figured it out. I got some binoculars and looked out there in centerfield where they keep that little asshole in the costume.

“And that’s when I saw the other guy and that’s when I was positive. He had binoculars too, picking up our signs… Either they were getting our pitches or this is the greatest hitting team of all time.”

Herzog’s rant about Bernie Brewer, sitting in his barrel chalet, stealing signs is a classic. For those of you not familiar with old County Stadium, when a Brewers player would hit a homer, Bernie would slide down the barrel into a mug on this giant chalet mounted above the centerfield bleachers. He would then release a set of balloons.

While it ended up not being proven, the Milwaukee answer in Shropshire’s book was a classic:

“Some guy in the Brewers’ clubhouse took me aside and said that the Bernie, in real life, was the son of some team employee. ‘The kid… and please don’t print this… but his blender doesn’t go all the way to puree if you know what I mean. Steal signs? Hell. It’s all he can do to release those goddamn balloons.’”

Shropshire eventually moved on from the Rangers, and sports writing in general, but his recall of the events of those seasons will always be for me the epitome of Ranger baseball.

Still, I’ll be watching tonight to see what happens in Game 7 to this might oak that grew from a guy with a huge dick, some stupid promotions and a rant about a little asshole in a costume.

Scott Walker Gives UW System A Hand

(Not for the weak of heart or stomach. Not like the budget is any more savory.)

Apparently, Governor Deadeyes woke up earlier this month and said to the state’s university system, “Oh, you survived those three gunshots to the chest? Crawl over here and let me see your head.”

According to a memo released Wednesday, the state is expecting that all of those jobs we were supposed to get in Wisconsin, now that Walker opened us for business, will likely not yield enough tax money to balance the budget. Thus, the general raping that occurred in the budget battle this state saw will now be followed by required give-backs of between $174 and $300 million.

The news got worse for higher education, as approximately 38 percent of that amount will be laid at the feet of the UW System. This, despite the fact that the system accounts for about 7 percent of the state’s budget.

Several areas that are crucial are protected, including programs for the poor and aid to local schools. No arguments there. At least he’s not trying to fully eviscerate the poor.

But those folks hoping to become highly educated? Fuck ‘em.

There’s a perverse set of values our esteemed College Dropout in Chief is demonstrating here.

First, if you want people to put jobs somewhere, you need to have workers fully capable of completing the tasks you assign them. The governor isn’t cutting tech school funding, which seems to indicate that he’s thinking those jobs will be attached to manufacturing work or other elements of hands-on labor taught at these schools. Instead, every financial indicator had shown that the jobs of my father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather will not be the jobs of my children.

Like it or not, the bachelor’s degree has become the union card of this generation. You need it just to get in the door. After that, what you can do and what you have studied will come into play.

Forcing the university system to take another bullet for the state is simply shooting economic growth in the foot.

Second, if you are the governor and you are not educated, not good at your job and the source of scorn and ridicule by people who know better, you have a couple choices as to how to fix that. Option A is you can get an education, you can improve your work habits and you can show some serious efforts toward bridging the gap between you and those who don’t like you.

Of course, Option A is hard. Thus, there’s Option B.

You can do your best to cut down on the amount of people who are smarter than you.

So, while purporting to be pro-job creation, he’s undercutting the opportunities of people to become educated throughout the employment spectrum while simultaneously demonstrating his distain for smart people.

You know, like people who might own companies and maybe create jobs…

The government of the state that served as a northern hub of abolition in the 1800s, gave us Fighting Bob La Follette in the 1900s and re-crafted social policy in the at the turn of the century, has officially become a Dilbert cartoon.

Shorter LAT: Sit down, Cheeseheads, because we said so

The Los Angeles Times has taken time out of its busy schedule to let the folks in our fair flyover state know that they know better than we do when it comes to recall elections.

In an opinion run this week, the paper notes that the 2003 recall in California that sent Gray Davis home and the Governator out of the maid’s pants and into the state house was a bad outcome. They also note that: 

Recalls make it nearly impossible for state leaders to get anything done because they go into campaign mode rather than legislating mode. They worsen partisanship and, Davis' recall notwithstanding, they are usually a waste of time and money.

SNIP

Elections have consequences, and sometimes your side loses. Recalls are a useful tool when a politician commits misconduct, but that's not the case in Wisconsin. Democrats should accept that and move on.

 

In other words, from a sample of one, the folks in L.A. have determined that recalls are a bad idea and that Wisconsin should just let Governor Deadeyes do as he sees fit. Move along, Democrats. Nothing to see here. Please disperse.

Allow me to retort.

Yes, elections have consequences and we know that. It doesn’t take the Almighty Gods of Journalism ™ to tell us that. We’re dealing with the consequences of an election right now. Thanks for reminding us.

And the line about recalls making it impossible for state leaders to get anything done is really stupid. When someone is doing something that does nothing but create damage, you probably want to stop him. Or are you the type of folks who let your kid jump out of a moving car or shove a firecracker in a cat’s ass because you don’t want to curtail his sense of self-expression?

It’s also refreshing to know that the L.A. Times views the only area in which a recall should be used is during the case of misconduct. I wonder where the editorial board draws that line. Is it fucking the maid? Is it being an alcoholic? Is it dropping the “N” word on someone? Seems like these are the things that draw the most attention from the media when someone in some position of authority does them.

Or is it malfeasance of an epic level? Is it an attempt to plow under the other political party through actions that are so egregious that they merit lawsuits and massive protests? Is crushing public workers as you pad the pockets of the rich? Is it pulling off the election version of bait-and-switch, in which you appear to stand for vanilla politics to win and then decide to go all rocky road on our asses? Seems to me these things are precisely what a recall should be used for. It also seems to me these things fit Scott Walker to a T.

Just because you fucked up and elected an action movie hero with ZERO political experience as backlash against an OMG MEEEN TAXY DEM AND HIS CAR TAX, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recall this nub-head. That your piece fails use sources or research to provide a deep argument smacks of an arrogance bred from a paternal sense of massive egotism. In other words, “We know better. We did that once.”

It is offensive that the Times felt it necessary to “set us straight.”

But it is not nearly as offensive as Scott Walker has been to the state of Wisconsin.

You've got spunk! I hate spunk!

As a journalism educator, one of the basic lessons I teach the kids is that they need to answer the 5Ws and 1H. The “who, what, where, when, why and how” are the staple of all good stories. In the case of this story on Anthony Garcia of Albuquerque, we’ve got a pretty easy rundown:

Who: A fucking idiot

What: Served semen to a woman in a store

How: Disguised as yogurt in a sample cup

When: Recently (as in who gives a shit; he pled out Thursday)

Where: New Mexico, where apparently people need better hobbies (Or at the Sunflower Market, which I’ve never heard of before but will be actively avoiding)

 

When you start reading this twisted tale, it’s just a comedy of tragedy. Start with the guy who decides it’s time to go into the backroom and provide his own “sample” of something. Even if this guy is as quick to launch as a bottle rocket, it’s taking some time, some privacy and chutzpah to get that cup filled.

Second, read the criminal complaint. The woman immediately notes that the sample “tasted like semen.” Uh… Wait… I had something for this… Honestly, I’m sure I’d be grossed out as well. Despite the porn myth in which women loudly demand that men turn their faces into a Jackson Pollock painting, weasel whip is not meant to be consumed in that fashion. HOWEVER, I’m not sure I’d broadcast that I could name that taste in one lick. “Hey, this tastes like the jizz I had last night! You sure this is yogurt?”

Finally, I’ve got to give a shout out to Adrastos, as after the spunk peddler had been outed as providing this lady with a shot of salty dick snot, he came back with, “It’s Greek yogurt. It’s full of protein and it’s good for you.” I think the Greek community should sue.

Getting back to the journalism moment here, we’re missing missing the most important element:

Why.

What possesses someone to do this?

Why did he decide this particular woman was just itching for a gulp of spooge?

Why didn’t they make him do an allocution or something so we’re all not sitting around wondering if there’s a vast yogurt/jackoff conspiracy and he’s but one role player?

All humor aside, not only was this disgusting and tasteless, but also dangerous and horrifying. If the guy is doing this, who's to say he doesn't have something in that little to-go cup that couldn't cause this woman harm? It also makes you think twice about those nice people who offer samples. I had to pick up our Market Day order and the lady was pushing samples of turtle cheesecake on people for next month's ordering frenzy. I took one, ate it and was fine, but then I caught this story.

I'm sure there wasn't anything wrong with it. Or as sure as I can be.

However, I'm probably going to treat those sweet little ladies in the grocery aisle like people treated Jack in the Box after the e.coli outbreak.

Just add this story to my overflowing “what the hell is wrong with people” file.

Fandamonium

The word “fan” comes from the word “fanatic” and there’s very little good about the definition in there:

a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics.

Or sports, as the case may be.

Last week, I wrote about the idiot who threw a banana at Wayne Simmonds, an action viewed as racist or stupid or both. The guy, Chris Moorhouse, has been arrested and has pleaded to absolute stupidity, noting that the banana was merely a fruit of convenience.

This week, I finally got the chance to see “Catching Hell” the ESPN documentary on Steve Bartman and the 2003 Chicago Cubs. Bartman’s infamous grab at a foul ball became the focal point of fans’ scorn and rage, as the Cubs booted away yet another chance at breaking the Curse of the Billy Goat.

I was working that night in 2003 and managed to see just a brief glimpse of what had happened. In reviewing our coverage years later, Bartman wasn’t but a footnote. The headline instead read “Crazy 8s,” playing on the idea that the eighth inning was a mess in which the Marlins scored eight runs.

In watching this documentary, I finally figured out what made people so nuts: It was the uncontrollable urge to be fans. It was the sense that because it was “their” team and “their” World Series on the line, it was fine for them to cast out the pariah who cost them everything.

The documentary never talks to Bartman, which I think was a good thing. I hope he’s found peace and quiet somewhere safe and that this movie finally lays to rest the obsession with him. I doubt it, as people didn’t forgive Bill Buckner until the Red Sox won the World Series. As an interesting side note, when those “loveable losers” from Boston missed the playoffs this year after winning not one but TWO World Series rings in eight years, the push is on to fire manager Terry Francona. This is the same guy who could have become governor of any of the six New England states after 2004 or 2007.

Fans can be fickle.

They can also be brutal, firing off their salvo of anger at anyone with the temerity to speak ill of their team. I’ve been a victim of this when it came to the Tribe and their run at the post season. Bobby Valentine, whom the Indians had passed over for manager, was doing color commentary on a Tigers/Tribe game on ESPN when he noted the Tribe wasn’t good enough to make the playoffs. At this point, people were healthy, the pitching was great and the team had a couple game lead in the division. I was cursing and muttering and changing channels. I went so far as to mute the game, although that didn’t last long. Still, that was the privacy of my own home.

Bills fans have a different way of approaching their bile: it’s called Voicemail.

Jennifer Gish of the Albany Times Union wrote about the Bills’ 2-0 start in a way that wasn’t “Go, Bills, GO!” and found herself on the back end of some ugliness. As a fan (not of the Bills), I can understand why fans would be pissed off by Gish’s column. It’s written in a mocking tone, it tells the fans to “keep it real” and it essentially pokes the bear.

Do I think she was unfair in telling the fans the 2-0 start is probably fool’s gold? No.

Do I think she approached in a smart or well-written way? No.

Did she deserve what came next? Hell no.

The fans posted her picture everywhere and made debating her sexuality, her “square jaw and pig-faced nose” and her “moustache” a trending topic in Bills land. They  then took to the phone lines to rip the holy shit out of her. As you can imagine, being a woman in sports isn’t easy, but these fans felt it necessary to give her a gentle reminder of that:

 

So how does it feel to be both a woman and so wrong about football? I guess those two go hand in hand.

F*** yourself ya stupid C***, Go Bills!

seen some photos of you and you are as ugly as your story about we bills fans. we may lose, we may win but you will still be ugly either way.

YOU SUCK DONKEY D***! That's why females shouldn't be allowed to write articles about sports. You better not write a good article about the Bills now because then everyone will know that you really just a dumb, bandwagon slut.

I am a well educated, compassionate, thoughtful, and caring man. I still am after reading your article, but my response will not be erudite or clever; that I promise you.

Simply put, f*** you you stupid, arrogant, thoughtless b****, and stick all of your snide Bills comments up your a** ...

Well great prediction! Maybe your article will help get women like you removed from sports media. You are incompetent and really offered no unique points that haven't already been beaten to death in the past ten years in your tirade against the bills. Glad they could prove a hack borderline blogger like you wrong.

Maybe you should stay in the kitchen next time.

 

Nothing like the “class” of a fan. Of course these came via voicemail, which unlike email can’t be easily tracked back to these proud, strong men who call themselves fans.

Gish has the whole laundry list of comments here and if you read them, you’ll likely find yourself wondering what the hell is wrong with this world.

As for me, I plan to lock myself in my basement Saturday. The Badgers play Nebraska and the Brewers kick off the series against Arizona for a shot at the NLCS. I might get radiation burns from my TV by the time all is said and done.

And yes, I will curse and scream and wail. I might also cheer and cry if things go well.

Emotion is part of being a fan. It’s just hard when those emotions are the wrong ones.

Come see what's Brewin'

Although every fan thinks his or her team deserves something, I can’t help but think the Milwaukee Brewers really deserved tonight.

This is the team that wasted Robin Yount’s prime, oversaw the exile of Paul Molitor and was content to slide into the recipient role of MLB’s revenue-sharing system. Year after year, we saw mediocre baseball and year after year we stopped caring about the team by mid-July.

For years, the only thing worth paying attention to when it came to the Brewers was their Hall-of-Fame announcer Bob Uecker. Uke kept us smiling and laughing all the way through those horrific seasons of loss after loss.

In the middle of the 2000s, it was the Brewers who were the joke.

The stadium’s retractable roof leaked and it played host to the only tie in All-Star Game history. The team was on the way to a 56-106 season and any hope of respectability seemed farfetched at best. It would be the first of three-straight sixth-place finishes in the moribund NL Central.

In 2005, Bud Selig’s family finally sold the team, which finished at .500 for the first time in more than a decade. After slipping back to a sub-.500 record, they finished second  in the Central with a 83-79 record.

The 2008 Season was “The Leap.” Owner Mark Attanasio pulled off the biggest trade of the year and perhaps the most important trade since the last time the Brewers made a run at glory. He pried CC Sabathia from the Cleveland Indians for a trove of prospects. Manager Ned Yost rode him to a 10-2 record, often pitching him on short rest. With 12 games left in the season and the playoffs slipping away, Attanasio fired Yost and replaced him with bench coach Dale Sveum. The team went 7-5 over that stretch and on the last day of the season secured the Wild Card for the National League.

Things looked like they would be returning to mediocrity, with two sub-.500 seasons. With stars Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder heading toward potential free agency and the team regressing, Milwaukee had every reason to believe it was headed for disaster.

Instead, Attanasio and GM Doug Melvin stopped panicking and started building. They traded Cutter Dykstra for Nyjer Morgan.

They sent Brett Lawrie to Toronto for Shaun Marcum, giving them a front of the line starter with a moderate and consistent record.

Then, they went for it: They gave up four prospects and essentially gutting their farm system for Zack Greinke, a one-time Cy Young Award Winner.

While this could be perceived as going “all in” on one shot at a winner, Melvin picked up pieces that could be had for cheap or players whom he could control beyond this year. Unlike the Sabathia deal, which was a half-year rental, Melvin knew he could get players who were young, hungry and valuable and yet proven and strong.

The Brewers started 0-4 and finished April at 13 and 13, but after that, they never had a losing month. They gained on, caught and eventually passed the Cardinals for first place. The one-game lead grew to 10.5 before eventually evening out a bit. The papers started publishing the “magic number” for the team to clinch.

It’s been 29 years since Milwaukee had a division winner. It has won only one playoff game in that time span as well. And yet, unlike 2008, the Brewers seem to belong. They’re not the back-door slider that luckily caught the corner of the plate.

They are here for a reason. They’re fun, not funny.

And I couldn’t be more grateful.

Politically Correct Fruit

Word of warning to people who like to make professional sporting events more interactive: Know your fruit.

Philadelphia Flyers winger Wayne Simmonds, who is black, had a piece of fruit flung at him while participating in a game against the Red Wings. The exhibition, which was taking place in Ontario, has garnered a great deal of press coverage primarily because the fruit in question was a banana.

While people may be quick to jump to the conclusion that this is racism, this might be unfair to the idiot responsible. We have not heard from the flinger, so God alone knows if he was tossing it at Simmonds as a racial insult or because he ran out of other forms of animals, minerals and vegetables.

It could have been just a fruit of convenience.

When I used to cover crime in Madison, I caught a report in which a guy was walking with a couple female friends and a drunken lout made an inappropriate comment to one of the ladies. When the guy stepped in to say something, the whole thing got physical and he got the unholy shit kicked out of him. As the violence ensued, the attacker let loose with various vulgarities, including “faggot.” For this choice of verbiage, police were trying to charge him with a hate-crime enhancement.

I knew the guy who got beat up. He was a Level 24 poon hound. He spent more time between women’s legs than the Victoria’s Secret fall underwear collection. Still, the guy kicking his ass hit a trigger word and that made bad more than a bit worse.

As a matter of course, I’m leaning toward the racism when it comes to Simmonds’ situation, but I’d like to use the FD forum to suggest that idiots who feel the need to test out their throwing arms at sporting events pick a better fruit.

I humbly suggest the politically correct kiwi.

My rationale is as follows:

The size: It’s about the size of a lemon, making it convenient to carry and easy to hide as you attempt to enter the arena of your choice. In fact, if you’re wearing a big coat, have a decent sized purse or you still use a fanny pack, you can take five or six of these things, just in case you aren’t satisfied with your first throwing effort.

The hardness: Apples, oranges, lemons and pears are too hard. You hit someone with one of those from the upper-deck of a decent stadium or arena and you’re likely to cause serious injury. Peaches, nectarines and the like are too squishy, so when they hit, you’ve got to stop the game to clean the ice or scrape up the goo off the grass. Mangos, melons and grapefruits? You're looking at rotator cuff surgery. Kiwis have a nice shell on them that protects them from shattering on impact, but are soft enough inside (if you get them in a fairly ripened state) to not do any major damage.

The color: The turd-like hue can convey your displeasure and people can still see it on TV. It can show up on grass or ice. Works for either way.

The PC factor: Bananas have that same “outer-shell, mushy-center” thing, but again, there’s that whole racism thing. Kiwis are brown and fuzzy on the outside, showing a softer size of people’s general crankiness. Inside, you’ve got black seeds and a white core, living together, intermingled in harmony. If aliens are discovered and start to dominate our games, you’ve got the green fruit built right in. As these things look like fuzzy testicle totes, the only people who should be insulted are people who look like ball sacks.

Sure you could pick any one of a dozen other fruits, but the kiwi seems perfect. It’s light, small and non-racially charged. That way, when you physically attack a player, embarrass yourself and get thrown in jail, you’ll only be arrested for being a moron and not a racist.

It Gets Better...

(Ed. Note: I wrote this after a weekend in a place that had no wifi, no cell service and more deer than people. I was stuck in the Newark Airport in what appeared to be a "boarding call auction" when it came to when we were going to take off: "3:30? Got it. Do I hear 3:45? Thank you! Anyone for a 4 p.m. delay? Yes! in the corner! Do I hear 4:15... A said if I could post before midnight, I'd be fine. Consider this early by journalistic standards. Hope you enjoy it. - Doc.)

I spent the weekend in the middle of nowhere to attend the wedding of a former student. As a teacher or a professor, you get a lot of these and since the students are usually transitory, you tend to get asked to fly all over Hell and Creation trying to meet your responsibilities. In most cases, I send a card, a gift card and my apologies for not being able to make it.

This time, The Missus and I drove to Milwaukee and flew to Detroit, where we were told we might be bounced from our connection.

The reason? “Weight restrictions.”

The Missus, who had not been properly caffeinated and is likely to kill people who make “weight-related comments” to her, told the woman, “We have a rehearsal dinner tonight.” The response? “Well, I’m sure that’s important TO YOU.” 

It’s a miracle we didn’t land on the “no-fly list” after that.

We eventually boarded the connection to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where we are quite certain we dropped a load of fertilizer on final approach and began a hour’s drive to some place that gets no cell reception. We lovingly started referring to this place as “Fugawi, Pennsylvania,” drawing on a somewhat racially insensitive joke and our own sense of how far from civilization we were.

The hotel was “quaint,” which roughly translates to a shed with a bed and an air-conditioner jammed into the wall. The bathroom was well worn, with 1960s tiling and some meat bits someone recently flossed out of their teeth stuck to the wall near the sink. When I tried to check in on FourSquare, my phone just looked at me and said, “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” It was also the first time I’d seen my phone just give up on trying to find service and just slap a big “O” on the reception meter.

On Saturday, we stood in farm field for about 10 minutes, watched a kid I taught exchange vows with a woman I’d never met and then drank until we nearly froze to death. Outdoor weddings always sound like a great until it’s 8 p.m., pitch black and you can see your breath when you are asking for your third or fourth whiskey of the night.

DJ was solid, restroom was a port-o-john and the local people (read: not us) brought a change of clothes, so they were toasty and comfortable and we were not. The night went from elegant strapless gowns to women stealing every available piece of clothing off of their men. By the time the night was over, The Missus was reduced to walking barefoot through frosted grass in an attempt to find our car in a field.

Under ordinary circumstances, this would have the makings of a rip-roaring, sarcasm-soaked post. Instead, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the Milwaukee-to-Detroit-to-Scranton-to-Fugawi-to Scranton-to-New Jersey-to- Milwaukee jaunt that cost about as much as my first car would still be worth every dollar I spent even if it cost twice as much as it did.

 --- 

In my field, you can’t pick favorites. It’s not allowed. As an educator, you need to be fair. As a journalist, you need to be fair. Put the two of those together and you get me: the guy who has to make sure everyone feels equally good or equally shitty.

Still, sometimes, you just can help it.

The kid I went out to see was a favorite. I taught him his first major writing course and disabused him quickly of the notion that the bullshit he was used to slinging wasn’t going to work here. For years, he’d been told he was a great writer and thus, he learned to eat lunch off of that appraisal. When he got to the bigger pond with bigger fish, he still tried to rely on that. It worked in his gen ed courses and his intro courses and he seemed to think it should continue.

Despite his awkwardness, his bipolar level of self-assurance and his general ability to be a sarcastic smartass, I realized he was worth the effort. I felt like the trainer who first saw greatness in Seabiscuit.

He wasn’t the best.

He wasn’t the fastest.

He wasn’t the one you’d pick first.

And, yet he simply had something that made you want to make him better.

After that first class, I never taught him again, and yet he and I always stayed connected. I served on school committees with him, he found his way to our house for Thanksgiving and so forth. The Missus adopted him and treated him like the goofy little kid in the neighborhood who wore mismatched socks and always had a runny nose. She fed him and hugged him and when shit went wrong, she told him an important truism, long before it became a trendy term:

“It gets better…”

When he graduated, he quickly fell into a trap that befalls most of the students I taught at that university. When you are at the “best school” for anything, you feel you must have a “best school” job when you leave. The students measured their value by the size of the paper’s circulation or the market size of the TV station at which they worked. It became the purest of all dick-measuring contests and he was bound and determined to win it.

When his cohorts moved from writers to editors, he felt the pull to become an editor.

When they moved forward and upward along the circulation route, he sought worse jobs at bigger places.

When digital became a bigger deal, I wasn’t shocked to see him try to be a digital guy.

Each stop was “better,” but at each stop he felt worse and his personal life didn’t help matters.

He was a smart kid, a good kid and a kind kid, which meant that in the world of mid 20s relationships, he couldn’t find a date in a morgue. The lack of companionship was always a problem for him.

“At work, I work hard and I end up getting what I want. In school, I worked hard and I ended up getting what I wanted. In love, I work hard and nothing ever comes to me. Why? What am I doing wrong?”

Despite the best effort of his female friends and those of us who knew him well, he never felt comfortable with the answer that sometimes things don’t work out that way. It wasn’t much easier when his friends were getting married and he kept hearing the hollow cliché of “Don’t worry, you’ll eventually find someone perfect for you.”

My phone was constantly abuzz with calls from his latest outpost. He’d sadly recount his exploits and wonder if he’d ever be happy. I’d put on my best face and tell him what he needed to hear, even if he didn’t want to hear it.

“Do what makes you happy. Stop chasing pointless shit. Worry less about other people and more about you.”

“It’ll get better.”

---

Somewhere along the way, the calls of desperation and sadness slowed to a trickle before ceasing all together. He’d found a job selling websites to student media and he was good at it. He felt he was doing something important for people who aspired to be where he had aspired to be.

He met a nice girl, moved to nice place and found some peace, if not perfection, in the heart of Chicago.

Eventually, the calls started up again, but with a positive feel. He wasn’t asking anymore. He was telling.

Stories about the girl he loved and the wedding he was planning.

Stories about his home and his attempts at fixing crap around the condo.

Stories about how happy he was.

Saturday, as we watched the shortest wedding ceremony ever, I looked at him as he waited with his parents. He looked as awkward as always, but yet so damned happy. He and his bride-to-be had decided against anyone standing up for the wedding. Too many people might be insulted, he explained, as he’d stood up for pretty much every wedding from 2001-2010. (Hell, look back at your wedding photos. He might be in there.) Even more, though, I got the sense that he finally had the sense that he didn’t have to impress anyone anymore. He didn’t need to be surrounded by people who would tell him what to do or how well he was doing it.

He had become comfortable in his own skin.

As the bride made her way up the hill to the site of the ceremony, she smiled without ceasing. She had this look of unending joy about her, like she had found a treasure in that field and would give up everything to keep it.

When she arrived and they met by the minister, the happiness just glowed from them. Those of us who were with someone we loved instinctively reached for that person and cuddled in. It was the first wedding in a long time for me that didn’t end with a call to Vegas, checking the line for the couple’s divorce and then immediately taking the under.

---

We spend so much time telling high school kids who are picked on for their sexual orientation, social graces, lack of money or a million other things that “it gets better.” God love Dan Savage for his efforts in this area, because someone needed to say it and plug up the hole through which the kids kept ending up in.

However, the view that high school is the hurdle that must be conquered seems troubling to me in some ways. Sure, high school sucks, but college isn’t much better. You’re on your own, you need to find your way and you often feel that everyone out there has it all figured out while you couldn’t find your ass with the help of a searchlight and a posse. The generation before you and the one before that view you as spoiled, ungrateful mysteries that need to shut up and sack up and do it the way they did, only better.

And then it gets worse, because you graduate, smile for the photo no one buys of you in your cap and gown and boom… You’re even more alone. Your friends also are foraging for an existence, the responsibilities set in and life goes from suck to blow.

You aren’t a kid anymore. You aren’t an adult in the eyes of those who have much more experience being adults. You wonder if you somehow decided to play the wrong hand and now you have no hope left.

Or, as Athenae would say, “I should have gone with the fours, but I didn’t, because I’m a dumbass…”

And then you suddenly get one good thing. And then another. And another. Your fortunes turn with luck, skill, work and faith. You realize that nothing is perfect and that’s fine. You figure out that you are grateful for things because they’re incrementally better than they were or not as bad as you expected.

And that’s how you find yourself in Fugawi, Pennsylvania on the top of a hill in a suit, awaiting the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen who can’t wait to get to you so you can begin sharing the rest of your life together.

It’s why people from as far away as California and Georgia and as close as Hawley and Narrowsville travel to that hill and stand in appreciation of not just your love and your joy but also of your perseverance and your strength.

It’s why I find myself sitting in the Newark airport watching The Missus sleep and muttering cusswords under my breath each time Orbitz tells me we’re getting delayed again.

It’s because we all wanted to be there when “It Gets Better” came true.

Editor to bloggers: I'm sick of you doody-heads. Nyaah!

School started recently and the kids in my class learned that I have one basic rule about graded work: I will talk to you about it until your heart’s content, but you have to wait at least 24 hours before you come and see me about your grade.

The reason I implemented this was to keep the backlash to a minimum. I tend to grade lower than many (read: not everyone gets an A and a hug for just showing up), so the kids tended to see the grade, freak out and storm the podium after class.

It was rage and reaction not rationale and reason. If they could stop, think about what they were doing and then approach the situation in a more “adult” fashion, we’d probably have a better outcome.

That thought came to mind today as I was reading the farewell letter of John Irby, the editor of the Bismark (N.D.) Tribune. After four-plus years in the job, Irby was retiring because he was tired bloggers and commenters and how OMG MEEEEN! they all are:

There are no absolute First Amendment or freedom of speech protections for people making online comments. But I will never be able to convince those who disagree, so how about trying to digest this: The old days have passed. Editors are not in charge of, or responsible for, everything.

I am retiring because I am tired of being the whipping boy, by one and all. My skin has thinned. Life is too short to put up with all the noise.

I can agree with Irby on one point: when you’re sick of the bullshit associated with what you do and it’s no longer worth doing well (or at least doing passably), it’s probably time to quit. Too many people hang around for a paycheck or just bitch about their problems instead of solving them.

However, the rest of this smacks of a petulant toddler, throwing a fit at Walmart because Mom wouldn’t buy him the really, really big bag of Animal Crackers.

Forget for a moment the argumentation that these comments aren’t protected speech or that freedom of the press doesn’t extend to the digital world or that there’s a difference between a private company making choices and a government agency intervening. It’s a grab bag of argumentation that would do little here other than make lawyers rich if we wanted to fight this out.

Instead, think about the arrogance of the last sentence of that first paragraph: I can’t be in charge, the good ol’ days are gone, I can’t keep you fuckers from writing what you want, so to Hell with it.

You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more.

As an adviser and an editor, I’ve dealt with sane people who disagreed with me in a very loud and public way. I never really liked this, but I tolerated it. I've also dealt with nutballs, agenda-freaks and conspiracy-theory bloggers who made my head want to explode.

One such blogger had this strange notion that the student paper was some sort of left-wing rag that served as a lap dog for the university. She couldn’t do journalism, she couldn’t get her facts right and she was so over the top that there were days I couldn’t stand it. In fact, when she really got to me, I’d do yard work to just vent the frustration.

By the time she graduated, I had a great looking yard.

In an interesting post script, she’s now one of those “I’m a semi-hot, semi-dominatrix, wingnut, Fox News blogger/commentator who is getting by on bullshit rhetoric and low-cut tops” journalists for Fox. She probably makes four or five times what I do…

The point is, people who piss you off are everywhere. You can’t control that. There are good papers and bad papers, good bloggers and bad bloggers and everything in between. The “I’m taking my ball and going home” approach is a shitty one. Writing a column that takes a giant shit on these people as you run for the hills is even worse.

Combine them, and you’ve got John Irby.

It is possible to tolerate other people's opinions, regardless of how mean-spirited the feel, how uninformed the appear or how just plain batshit crazy they make you. Irby noted his "tough skin" that thinned over time, but in the end, he's no better than the bloggers he's deriding. He used his media post to whip shit back at the monkeys in the zoo because "THEY STARTED IT!"

As a journalist, a blogger, an educator and an adult, I’d like to offer Mr. Irby this piece of advice, which, ironically enough, I learned from a guy who blogs about Mustangs:

“Never argue with an idiot. He’ll bring you down to his level and then beat you with experience.”

Porn Folk, General Knowledge and the Latex Lifesaver

With a horribly shitty week here for the Missus and me, we decided it best to drink heavily. While drinking heavily, we also happened to discuss an ABC nightly news report I saw on the HIV test that brought the porn industry to a screeching halt. One of the biggest points argued about in this report was the use of condoms in the industry. Porn folk had argued it wasn’t a good idea because it would turn off viewers, who tuned in for “the fulfillment of fantasy.”

In earlier “porn” days, the films were required to be “educational marital aids.” People packed a theater to see a man and woman (who were married, supposedly) have sex in various ways so that married folk could learn something. A person, supposedly a doctor, would then explain various aspects of these acts, using diagrams during these cutaway shots.

Taking notes was practically required. (Yes that was a pencil in my pocket and I’m happy to see you.)

OK, so taking those two angles (fantasy and education), The Missus and I took it upon ourselves to do some heavy, heavy research and deep thought on this issue. (Remember, we’ve only done this for you. OK, and because we’re a bit drunk…)

After the break, you will see everything we learned in our endeavors.(Again, we're not approving or disapproving. We just report. You decide. We also stayed with "traditional" porn, as there's a lot of variants out there and we had to economize. Booze is expensive, you know...)

If you have no sense of humor or feel the need to get snooty/high horsey when it comes to topics like this, feel free to pass. (While my goal each and every Friday is to get more comments than the ferrets, I don’t need a slew of arguments about how I am evil for putting the letters P-O-R-N together in any way shape or form.)

For the rest of you, read on, MacDuff… Feel free to add your own thoughts to this important repository of knowledge.

 

“That sort of Negro”

A summer ritual of mine is to reread the books I can’t live without. Two of my favorites, Terry Pluto’s “Loose Balls” and Jim Bouton’s “Ball Four,” seemed particularly relevant this week.

In one part of “Loose Balls,” Pluto is interviewing Bob Costas about his rookie gig with the Spirits of St. Louis of the ABA. One of the best and most controversial players was Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, who had a habit of missing flights, missing appearances and missing out on a career. Barnes was an immense talent, who had a penchant for things that were viewed as being “controversial” in those days, which was code for “black.” He wore a floor-length mink coat, a wide brimmed hat and drove a Bentley. He also, according to myth, had a home with 14 telephones in it, back when most homes had only one, you rented them from the phone company and they cost a fortune.

After one particularly difficult stretch of games, Barnes was on some sort of tear where he explained that the people of St. Louis were not ready for “that sort of negro.” In other words, had he been a white guy, most of this stuff would have gone unnoticed. (Although, to be fair, I’m having a hard time seeing a white guy, other than Joe Namath, who could have pulled off the fur coat thing.)

In “Ball Four,” race was a frequent topic. One of Bouton’s Astro teammates noted he wouldn’t mind being called “the colored first baseman” if they referred to his counterpart as “the white first baseman.”

Even before that, Bouton recounted a semi-serious conversation several players had with teammate Tommy Davis about being a scout. The joke became that they’d send Davis to Watts to dig up black players. As the joke continued to unfold, the satire richened with the idea that the general manager wouldn’t want men of color who were colorful, which at one point they referred to as “that Vic Power shit.”

Power, a native of Puerto Rico, was often criticized by the white press in the 1960s for his flashy and unorthodox play. His greatest sin? He didn’t catch the ball with two hands. He also used humor to defuse these situations. According to author David Maraniss, Power entered a segregated diner in the South, where he was told the restaurant didn’t serve Negroes. Power responded that was fine: He didn’t eat Negroes, but could he get some rice and beans instead?

Which brings us to the recent revelation that prior to making Cam Newton the number one pick in the NFL draft, Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson questioned him about any tattoos and piercings. When Newton replied, “No sir, I don’t have any,” Richardson responded, “Good. We want to keep it that way.”

Keep in mind that Richardson is the guy who overrode his own staff to sign Jeremy Shockey, who has more tattoos than my first-period class on any given year. While he told Shockey he could do without the tattoos, that’s an after-the-fact comment and it’s not like he stuck a clause in his contract that would void it if he decided to go back under the needle.

Instead, prior to determining if Newton would be drafted first or not, Richardson appeared to warp back about 200 years when the word “owner” meant something entirely different.

The conversation seemed to smack of the “we don’t want that sort of Negro” condescension and racism that should make everyone want to throw up.

This isn’t the first time that owners and teams have had trouble in this area. In 1999, the NBA put fiery guard Allen Iverson on the cover of its Hoop Magazine, but decided his tattoos were too unruly and airbrushed them away. No word on if they tried to airbrush his cornrows into Jerry West’s crew cut.

In 1994, Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott got into trouble for banning earrings on her team. When asked why didn’t want her players bedazzled, Schott replied, “Only fruits wear earrings.” She also was said to have referred to outfielders Eric Davis and Dave Parker as “million dollar niggers” and was overheard telling someone on a conference call that she’d rather have “a trained monkey working for me than a nigger.” Thus, Schott was not only racist and homophobic, but for some reason thought the heart of the problem was jewelry and the image it presented.

Truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of tattoos. I've had good friends with them (including one who got a swastika on his chest, swore it was the Hopi symbol for peace and spend six years trying to convince me he was 1/32nd Native American. Somewhere along the way he got a cover-up tat of a screaming flaming skull, which was clearly an upgrade), family with them and more.

My favorite tat story: I was engaged to a woman who got a tattoo of a sun on her breast. She promptly added 75 pounds and the thing ended up looking like a stick of melting butter.

The Missus has one. When she was looking at another one, I was cringing.

Still, their bodies, their choices. And they should be allowed the dignity to make those choices.

Richardson put himself out in the public eye as being a meddling, crusty white man with a double standard approach to self-expression and that should trouble pro football. Cam Newton might or might not want a tattoo, but it doesn’t make him better or worse as a football player or a person.

If you listen to players who have tats, you’ll find that it’s often a tribute to someone important (LeBron James has his mother’s name on his arm) or a reminder of who they are or where they came from (Iverson has “Cru Thik” on his body several places as a reminder of his friends and how they stuck together through thick and thin.)

To that end, I might suggest Richardson and Newton go get one together as a bonding experience.

Newton could get the Heisman tattooed on his bicep, as a reminder of a great college achievement. (Or if you are cynical, a wad of cash, three college transfer slips and an NCAA investigation form.)

Richardson could get “stupid rich asshole” tattooed on his forehead, as a reminder of what happens when you think money and self-importance give you the right to dictate the behavior of others.

A womb of one's own?

Not to step all over what is usually other folks’ territory on this blog, but I started calling for Jude’s meteor when I heard John Tesh discussing the trend of mothers-to-be deciding to put everything from their stick-peeing info on through to their “bump charting” on YouTube.

I figured this had to be a joke or something one random idiot was doing. After I typed “pregnancy test” into the YouTube search engine and my laptop caught fire, I realized this wasn’t a joke. In fact, some of these things go on for upwards of 15 minutes. This was the first one I found. I watched two minutes and immediately felt sorry for the kid-to-be. I also felt sorry for the state of humanity, as more than 25,000 people had watched this thing.

What the hell is wrong with people? Tesh explains:

Why is this happening? Dr. Linda Perlman Gordon is a psychotherapist in Maryland. She says that pregnant women are naturally less inhibited about their bodies. After all, they’re now sharing it with another human being, and they’re okay with strangers coming up to touch their belly and asking incredibly personal questions.

Uh… No.

One of the biggest things the women in my family have discussed, at length, in front of me is the overwhelming desire to punch people who invade their space like this. We’ve often landed at family gatherings and friend’s parties where one of the participants was pregnant. About the most “personal” question we asked of those people (who we actually knew, mind you) was “When are you due?”

After that, the conversation turned to the discussion of asshole strangers who decide that laying hands upon a knocked up woman or donning a rubber glove and checking for cervical dilation is acceptable behavior at a Hardee’s.

The Missus and Mom have both noted that every self-respecting woman they know hates the idea of random dipshits who feel that since the body’s holding for two, hey, why not make it a party?

Dr. Gordon says that what’s different now is that the “me-me” generation that grew up over-sharing is starting to have babies of their own. So, it’s natural for them to post things online that used to be private.

Not to have a “Doc says/Doc says” kind of argument with Dr. Gordon, but I’ve got a different theory.

First, this is the first generation to HAVE crap like this and be able to easily video and share information. When I was a kid, it was either breakout the 8mm projector or the slides for a night of boredom. When I got a bit older, my tech-nuts uncles each bought a camcorder for about two grand (each) and filmed all sorts of crap we were doing. It took a NASA engineer to hook it up and play it back on the TV, but we could all be amused by the shit he just shot three minutes ago that we all saw. The other day, I saw a camcorder like that at an estate sale. Price? $5. No one was even sniffing. At Staples or Office Max, you can get a USB-based Flip-style HD camcorder for $20 after rebate. Or you can record it with your phone.

In other words, you don’t have to get an NEA grant any more to put this shit together. Any moron can do it.

And usually, they do.

Second and more to the point, these people are no different than anyone else who feels the need to validate themselves with something like this because it’s all they have. This is no different than the guy who is 47 and still telling high school football stories at the bar or the woman who was regaling all of us at a kiddy gymnastics session how she went to state her senior year on the pommel horse or some such thing. It’s the people who boast about their kids’ athletic achievements or grades. It’s the people who brag about kicking the shit out of some homeless guy. It’s the people who gladly oblige during the “show me your tits” portion of Mardi Gras.

It’s not a “me-me” generation. It’s a “validate-me” generation.

I understand they have the right to post it and I have the right not to look at it. It’s what makes our country great. Well, that and beer…

However, let’s not turn this into some sort of “hey this is totally natural!” kind of trend story.

It’s been around forever. It’s called “dig me.”

Total Recallin'

I might be alone on this, but I imagined Scott Walker wandering the halls of power this week, whistling “The Farmer and the Dell” and telling Peter Barca that “I keeps one in the chamber, ‘case you pondering.”

After a titanic struggle for power, the Republicans held on to the majority in the state senate, winning 4 of the 6 races in the recall elections. The GOP margin can only grow later this month if the Dems lose either of the remaining two recalls.

Pundits have been spinning this as giving more hope for bipartisanship and more power to moderate Republicans and more hope for... Oh, spare me. Walker remains unchecked and with his signing of the redistricting bill his party jammed down this state’s throat, he’ll be on Easier Street for the next decade.

The Democrats failed for the same reason they always fail: They played a nuanced finesse game while their opponents hit people in the face with a bag of nickels.

This set of elections set records for ad buys. The money spent here, if diverted directly into the state’s coffers, could have probably put the state in the black. The Fitzgeralds could be lighting state-bought Cuban cigars with taxpayers’ C-notes and we’d still be fine.

The ads were a draw, with the outside interests attacking and attacking and attacking, while the candidates themselves tried to come across like kindergarten teachers: kind, compassionate and your bestest friend in the whole wide world! What they didn’t do, and what they should have done, is shown people a very simple diagram:

Here you are. Here is the set of things Republican X has done. Here is EXACTLY HOW THIS FUCKS YOU. It’s that last step was always the hardest and yet the one that needed to be made the most.

People are self-interested. It’s a fact of life. When they hear “tax,” they never think “good thing.” Thus, the Republicans just drive home the word “tax” and they win. The Democrats talk about goods and services and cuts to funding and education and policy and people fall asleep and drool on themselves.

I would have killed for an ad that said, “Hi, I’m Sandy Pasch and I’m done watching you get fucked over. Here’s EXACTLY how you got fucked if you are in any way connected to education, health care, women or breathing. I promise to unfuck things for you because I’m not a moron. Vote for me and prove you’re not one either.”

The Democrats have tried to spin the two pick-ups as “wins.” At the very least, Randy Hopper won’t be at my parade next year getting his sweaty mouth-breather hands on my car. Yes, a little more sanity is nice, but in the end, you can’t say this was a win. Not. Even. Close.

WisDems, be honest and look at what you actually did.

You knocked out Dan Kapanke, which is like beating a kid with no arms or legs at a game of basketball.

Kapanke essentially admitted he stole from a charity. He ran in a district that Obama carried with 60 percent of the vote and 55 percent of the people polled said they’d support any Democrat who ran. Thus, when Jennifer Schilling won with 55 percent of the vote, it wasn’t as much of a “Yay Jen!” as it was a “Hey, you’re not Dan Kapanke” outcome.

Essentially, Dan Kapanke could have lost to a bag of shit if the shit had run a “I’m not Dan Kapanke” campaign.

Yes, you took out Randy Hopper, and yes, that district hasn’t had a Democratic senator since Pluto was a puppy, but, again, look at the reality of the situation.

Hopper voted for something that crushed medicine and education, two things that play huge in his district. He took a heavy whack at the UW system and his district includes several UW branches.

He was embroiled in a scandal because he was not living in the district. It got worse, when we found out it was because his wife tossed him out after discovering that he was schtuping some 26-year-old sexual trophy. He also managed to get Barbie a job with the state AND get her a huge raise.

When Hopper and Jessica King clashed last time, none of this stuff had happened and King lost by less than 200 votes. This time, she won by about 1,250.

In other words, the Democratic Party took on a cross between Homer Simpson and John Holmes, but only managed to move the needle by about 1,500 votes.

Nearly 27,000 people said, “Hey, we don’t care that he’s a whore, a cheater and a weasel. He’s still our guy!” (At least half of these people, mind you, likely have downloaded an app for their phone that has Bill Clinton’s penis under GPS tracking 24/7.)

The Dems had played for a 6 for 6 strategy, which even the most optimistic person had to know was crap.  Cowles and Harsdorf were going to hold on, unless someone found them in a three-way with a gay monkey in a voting booth while burning the Bible and using the American flag to smother it.

And even that might not have done it.

However, they had two legitimate shots to bring home that third crucial vote and blew them both.

Olsen? He’s back.

Darling? She’s back.

And not by cheap margins either.

These recall elections reminded me of ballot initiatives for social justice issues: People say they want change, they say they want to do the right thing and they say they are good and decent people. Then, in the solitude of the voting booth, they quietly mark their ballot with a morally superior sniff and maybe a tiny twinge of guilt. After the initiative fails, they cluck their tongues softly and say, “Oh… that’s too bad…”

The Dems say they’re going to press forward with their plans to recall Walker. Getting the signatures should be pretty easy. Getting the votes won’t be.

The only hope they have is that Walker will continue to be dumber and dumber (safe bet) and that they can show people how it hurts them as individuals (50/50 at best).

When that recall does start gaining steam, they need to keep one thing in mind:

If you come at the king, you’d best not miss.

Insanity in Bulk

“You OK?” A asked me late tonight. “It’s not like you to miss a deadline.”

To be fair, it was only 9:50. I hadn't "missed" anything, Bob.

Truth be told, I’d had part of a block all day. There’s only so much you can write about when it comes to these recall elections. I swear there isn’t enough time in a commercial block to fit all of the vitriol I’m seeing during the local news. It’s also not worth complaining about education, budgets or anything else. Pondering the events of the day yielded little either.

Besides, it was a Friday in the summer without The Midget, who was spending the week with my folks, which meant a chance to poke through other people’s crap.

Ever since I was a little kid, summers meant estate sales with Mom. She’d circle dozens of entries in the morning paper and we’d hit them all day. Usually, Friday was the big day as we waded through boxes of stuff, knocked on pieces of furniture and haggled over glassware. Some days, the bargains were small, like figurines or dishes for Mom. Other times, it was something ridiculous, such as the time we had to cram a 1950s grocery cart into the backseat of my Thunderbird because Mom just had to have it.

Even without Mom, estate sale shopping has been in my blood. When I was about 12, I rode my bike to a sale about three miles away. I found a huge stack of paper placemats that had the box scores from old Milwaukee Braves games on them. For $2, I procured the stack and took them home to show Dad. He took them to one of His Guys who said, “They’re not worth much. Only about $4 each.” Each month, we took them to the local card show and sold a handful in the auction. After one such adventure, a guy who lost out on the bidding asked if we had any more.

Dad brokered a deal with the guy for about $5 each and we sold them all.

Over the years I’ve sought old wood furniture for refinishing, old tools to add to the collection and various other items. Dad and I have also bought and sold old newspapers, Playboys and Ichiro ornaments. All part of our “buy low, sell high” adventures.

The one moment that lives in infamy, however, was The Beer Can Incident.

My wife was about 8 months pregnant and we were in Milwaukee for her baby shower. Mom took her to get a mani/pedi and Dad and I were left to our own devices.

We took a walk and found a rummage sale that didn’t have much that we were interested in. The lady running the sale, for some reason, asked us, “You guys wanna buy a beer can collection?”

We had no interest in it, had never collected cans and realized this was likely to end poorly. However, as is always the case with my father, he asked a fateful question:

“How much?”

“Fifty bucks.”

We left the place and walked back toward home in silence. I finally turned to him and said, “Dad, I can hear the gerbil running around in your head. You’re thinking about those beer cans.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Because I am too.”

We went home and grabbed the SUV and drove back. The lady still had the cans and we bought them.

We loaded up the truck until bursting and we had to come back for more. When we had the second load almost ready, the lady said to us, “Don’t forget the ones on the side of the house.”

I looked down the side of the house and there were cases stacked four deep that ran almost the entire length of the house. After another couple runs, we got them into Dad’s garage and almost filled the entire stall where his Escalade usually sat.

When Mom and The Missus came home, they could tell something was up, so we showed them.

“You should have just watched their faces,” Dad told me. “I can’t even describe the look they had.”

After several Wisconsin-to-Indiana trips later, I had several thousand beer cans in the nursery, thus, setting me on a deadline: sell all these damned things before The Midget was born.

I got to know the guy at the post office on a first-name basis and I became and eBay super seller of some kind. When all was said and done, the cans were gone shortly after she was born and I had enough money to buy a video camera to keep an eye on her early moments of life. Our $50 investment had gone all “loaves and fishes” on us. Still, to this day, whenever Mom sees a beer can at a rummage sale, she pulls my father away from it like it’ll give him herpes if he gets too close.

Today, I had a much simpler goal. There was a plastic cow creamer thing that I saw online at an estate sale that reminded me of something my grandmother used to have. Figured a long drive and a cheap purchase would be enough to shake the cobwebs loose.

When I got there, the cow was long gone, but it was still worth digging around. In the garage, I found a box of programs from the 1970s Green Bay Packers. Behind it was another box. And then another. I figured there were about 100 in there.

“How much for these?” I asked the guy in charge.

“Buck each.”

I could feel myself channeling my father. “How much for all of them?”

The guy paused and counted and hemmed and hawed.

“$35?”

“Sold.”

“You know,” he said. “There’s more in the bedroom.”

“You throwing those in?”

“Uh…”

“I asked for all of them,” I pushed.

The guy took me back there and only one thing came into my mind.

Oh shit.

The whole place was filled with these things. Boxes, piles, bags and more.

“Give me another $20 and we’ll call it good.”

Now, I was screwed. Had to do it. Of course, I’d taken Betsy, not the truck so this got interesting.

I poured them into the trunk. When that was full, I filled the back seat and the foot wells. I kept going back and the guy kept finding more of them. I must have had at least 400 of these things. The guy kept stacking crap into my car.

When I told the Missus I’d made a buy of some kind, I could practically hear the panic in her text message.

“Please no bear cans.” Despite the odd text correct function on the iPhone, I knew what she meant.

I started sorting until the dust made my nose run all over the place. After several hours, I figured out what I had. It’ll take months just to figure out the prices, though.

I stood up and looked at the bounty that had covered my basement floor. I grabbed the phone and called home.

After chatting with Mom, I got Dad on the line.

“Hey,” I said. “You wanna get in trouble with me?”

After hearing about the whole thing, he muttered, “Christ, I don’t even know how you got all that home. Still, there’s no way we don’t end up ahead on this. Count me in.”

Another adventure begins.

An open letter to Jessica King

Dear Jessica,

I don’t purport to speak for anyone but myself when it comes to your attempt to defeat Randy Hopper in this upcoming recall election. I don’t know if “a majority” of people agree with me or if people are “on my side” when it comes to this topic. However, as one voter (probably two, as The Missus and I actually agree for once), I wanted to let you know that we need you to be better than you’ve been. If your last run at this office is any indication, you probably need to listen to this. When you lose to a guy like Hopper by less than 200 votes, every vote counts.

I hate politics. I’m not keen on politicians. To me, they are like the dentist: you know they can do some good, but it’s likely they’ll hurt you and no one is really clamoring to deal with them. I almost married a city council rep once and listening to her and her friends chatter on and on about some Machiavellian maneuver they were planning to divide the city amongst themselves was exhausting to me. 

Still, when Hopper decided to screw this state, I figured it was time to screw him back. I signed the petition, voted for you in the primary and plan to vote again in the general.

Once the stage was set for your rematch, there was no holding Hopper and the Republicans back. Their ads attacking you were something to behold. The “63” ad, which PoliFact rated as “pants on fire,” was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. The Hopper camp’s rationale that even though you voted against the pay increase, you were complicit in taking it because you eventually voted for a budget stretches credibility.

Their God-awful mailer material about you being “wrong for Wisconsin” was despicable. And I don’t think they could have found a photo that made you look any more like a lesbian trying to take a shit and pass a pool ball if they actually had a look-a-like lesbian doing so.

That’s Randy Hopper.

That’s not you.

That’s why your campaign offends me.

In both a TV ad and a mailer, you’ve attacked Randy Hopper for not paying his taxes. This is like playing basketball with a toddler and calling her for travelling: If you’ve gotta reach that far to win, you’ve got a major problem.

You’re quoting a 3-year-old article from the Beaver County Tidbit and you’ve bent the truth so far, even PoliFact had to rethink its category for this. The reality is he didn’t owe taxes so he didn’t pay them. We can go around and around on that if we want, but he’s not on the “List of Shame” for the state and no one says he did anything wrong in balancing taxes versus tax breaks.

Worst of all, this stuff is coming directly from your campaign. It’s not some hatchet-job PAC that is working on your behalf. It’s you.

Randy Hopper’s record is horrific. The only way it could be worse is if he voted in favor of slavery and the legalization of child porn.

He did vote in favor of Scott Walker’s ass-raping of this state budget.

He has consistently been against Planned Parenthood.

He took collective bargaining rights away from state workers, even though they in no substantial way impacted the state budget.

If you want to kick him in the balls on the personal front, he was living outside of the district for a while, after his wife found out about his affair with a much younger woman.

He got his mistress a job with the state and got her a 35 percent pay increase. Best of all, she never actually applied for the job.

Various sources reported that Hopper’s own wife and maid had signed the recall petition against him.

In other words, you’ve got plenty of fertile ground regarding Randy Hopper’s idiocy without having to almost make shit up. As it stands, you’ve really not done much in convincing me that this guy is horrific for Wisconsin. You’ve also not told me SPECIFICALLY what you’ll do to fix this Republican clusterfuck.

As much as I don’t want Randy Hopper representing me, I don’t like the idea of voting for someone just because they’re not Randy Hopper. If that’s the best your campaign can do, I feel bad for you and sad for this state. Our elections can’t be like this scene from “Hot Tub Time Machine,” where we tell ourselves “You’re better than this guy! Not by a lot, but a little!”  You’re not The Violator.

People like me throw our hands up when we see a system like this. We decide it’s better not to participate than to cast our lot with the lesser of two evils.

We want you to be good, not just better than the other idiot.

We want you to stand for something, not pull a Scott Walker and innocuously hang back until you’re elected and THEN breakout the shit hammer.

We want you to lead. We want you to speak. We want you to act.

Absent that, we don’t want you.

And that’s not what you want.

You’ve got about two weeks left to show Wisconsin you are what we need. You can show me that you’re better than Hopper by a long shot. You can give me a reason to vote.

Pull the stupid ad. Cut down on the bullshit hyperbole. Shine a light on Hopper and watch him scurry away like a roach.

Then, tell me, “I’m Jessica King. Here’s my plan.”

Best of luck,

Doc

Life after Jeffrey Dahmer

I remember being about 17 and working at the garage when a local cop came in for his usual oil change. The guy was a big friendly dude and we usually had some decent banter. That day, however, he was withdrawn and quiet and just out of sorts.

I asked him what was going on.

“I can’t even tell you what it was I saw last night,” he told me. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

This guy was one of a throng of cops on the scene 20 years ago when the horror that was Jeffrey Dahmer came to light. Dahmer was a worker at the Ambrosia Chocolate factory who had killed at least 16 men and boys in the Milwaukee area. Beyond that, he was known to eat their flesh, keep parts as souvenirs and dissolve their corpses with acid.

The details that came out in the weeks that followed bordered on the plot of a Rob Zombie flick. At that time, Milwaukee had competing papers (the Journal and the Sentinel), while the State Journal was a powerful force as well. Add in the local TV and the national media and you had a constant stream of Dahmer-vision.

Accusations of racism and homophobia emerged, as many of Dahmer’s victims were gay or a minority (or both). The accusations were codified when a 9-1-1 tape surfaced that had a black woman calling for help in regard to one of Dahmer’s victims. A young Asian boy was naked and disoriented in the streets. When police arrived, Dahmer convinced them that the kid was his boyfriend and that they had a disagreement.

The officers radioed back to dispatch, laughing that it was a “he said/he said” argument.

The boy was turned back over to Dahmer. Hours later, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone was dead, his skull kept as a trophy.

Dahmer was tried, convicted and sentence to life in prison. I can still remember the phase of the trial where family members were allowed to offer their thoughts for sentencing. A young black woman was trying to hold it together as she spoke about her lost relative. She finally lost it, screaming “JEFFREY!” and rushing at Dahmer. Officers restrained her as she kicked violently in Dahmer’s direction. They had to “bleep” out about every third word.

The creepiest thing was that Dahmer remained like ice. No movement, no emotion.

Years after his conviction and subsequent death, I had pondered analyzing his case as a dissertation topic. I thought about comparing media coverage from inside and outside of the state.

I bought a couple books and exchanged a couple emails with Anne Schwartz, the Journal reporter who first broke the story. In a strange twist of fate, Schwartz now serves as the spokeswoman for the Milwaukee Police Department.

I also contacted the police to get a copy of the full report on Dahmer. When they told me it would cost me nearly $1,000, I was suspicious. I figured this was a fee-based suppression. I was wrong. The report was about 4,000 pages and the cost was a quarter a page.

The requests in the subsequent years for Dahmer’s report had been so voluminous that the police had created a “Best of Dahmer” file that could be had for about $60. It included the primary on-scene reports, the confession and a few other important reports. It skimmed out all the dead-end stuff and anything else that wasn’t germane to the horror that was Dahmer.

I read the report and wondered how the officers who had to write it slept at night. I eventually abandoned the topic at the urging of my adviser. I think she did me a favor.

I was back in Milwaukee a couple weeks ago and the TV was ablaze with the “20 years later” stories. The paper seems more subdued, although I shudder to think what Saturday’s paper is going to look like on that “anniversary” day.

The city has tried hard to squelch any sort of monetization of his life and death. I remember reading a story about someone thinking about buying the apartment building and turning it into a tourist stop. A local philanthropist quietly stepped in, bought the land and demolished the building.

When an auction of Dahmer’s possessions was set to raise money for the victims’ families, Joseph Zilber, a local real-estate tycoon, helped raise more than $400,000 and and brokered a deal to buy them all. He then destroyed them in hopes of preventing a sick cottage industry of Dahmer memorabilia from emerging.

According to legend, they are buried in a landfill somewhere and the location has never been revealed.

Despite the best efforts of Zilber and others, the Dahmer legend remains on the fray. A grindcore band named Dahmer emerged in the mid-1990s in Quebec, composing songs about serial killers and other various topics.

The band Macabre released a concept album called “Dahmer” in 2000. The album, which details Dahmer’s life, includes tracks such as “Konerak,” “Drill Bit Lobotomy” and “Do the Dahmer.”

Movies, comics and even trading cards have hit the market in the past 20 years.

A quick check of eBay revealed 78 items under “Jeffrey Dahmer” including one item listed under “decorative collectibles.”

It’s a coffee mug that contains his mug shot.

The asking price is $19.50.

 

Education breeds hope

It’s a little thing, but it gives me hope.

When I went to cast my ballot Tuesday, the community center was rather clogged with people. When you live in a town that’s about the size of a Milwaukee high school, that’s a bit strange.

I bristled a bit when I got near the front and saw the giant sign that said, “Be prepared to show your Wisconsin ID.” I thought about making a huge scene, but The Midget was with me, the line was a bit long and I was bound and determined to cast my ballot against a fake Democrat.

I ended up showing my ID three times. I’m not sure I needed to on that third run, but, again, I wasn’t about to let an obstacle like failing to show a piece of plastic stop me.

The chances of the fake Dem winning were remote, which was why this whole crowd thing felt strange. Then, I got my ballot and I figured it out: The school district had put its bond referendum out there again.

A few months ago, I wrote about the stupidity of people who aren’t willing to pay ANYTHING for ANYTHING, especially when it comes to schools. In this case, the ballot asked for slightly less than last time to patch holes in roofs and fix infrastructure problems. If approved, it would raise more than $1 million and cost each taxpayer about $9 per $100,000 of assessed property value.

I looked around and recognized some of the people from my area. They were the same people who had donned red T-shirts and supported Randy Hopper at the parade last week. Hopper himself was there and he stopped by my car to talk to the mayor. All I could think was, “This asshole is touching my car. He’s touching my car. Resist the urge to scream or ask him if he found a new place to live.”

(Funny aside: Hopper’s people were getting all the cheers when they walked the route, The Missus said. Jessica King, the Dem running against him, was getting almost no love. My mom, who drove up from Milwaukee to see me roll down Main Street at 3 mph, saw King walking the route, screamed like a schoolgirl in support and ran out to shake her hand. “Beat this guy,” she said. I love my mom.)

I filled out my ballot and checked off the “approve this funding for the love of God and all that is holy” box. Truth be told, I didn’t have a self-interest stake in this ballot. In the fall, The Midget was going to Catholic school, so she’d be out of the district. However, I believe we ALL have a stake in education. When one of Hopper’s drones called me to push poll last week, I hung in there until the question on “which of these things matters most to you?” I picked education. It does matter. I finished the poll to make SURE that the message got across.

When I got home after a late meeting, I checked my Twitter feed and found the tweet: Third time’s the charm. The people of my fair city had approved the measure by a 57-43 margin.

I don’t know if the people just got worn down or if the “heavy Dem” turnout might have swayed the issue. All I know is that in this quiet little hamlet, you can’t throw a rock down the road and not hit two Republicans. You will more easily find a muskrat in your backyard than a Democratic supporter. And yet the people out here found it in themselves to say, “This isn’t a political issue. We all could use more cash. However, it’s $9 for most of us so sack up and pay it for the good of our children.”

We might never be on the same page for most things, but it was a little thing and it gives me hope that some people can be reached if we speak well enough.

Good night, John Mackey

When it mattered most, John Mackey had an incredible sense of timing.

In Super Bowl V, with the Baltimore Colts trailing 6-0, the Hall of Fame tight end made the most of a broken play, grabbing a ball tipped by two other players and racing 75 yards for the game’s first touchdown.

Baltimore would go on to win the game 16-13, in what was later dubbed “The Blunder Bowl” for all of its turnovers and penalties. Still, the victory helped wash away some of the sting from the Super Bowl III loss, which was highlighted by Joe Namath’s “guarantee.”

Mackey, who died Wednesday, helped revolutionize the game on several important fronts.

After being drafted out of Syracuse in 1963, he helped move the tight end position from  being that of a blocker to one of an offensive weapon. At 6-foot-2, 225 pounds, he was a mammoth receiver for his day. Teammates said he’d almost rather run through you than around you, even though he could do the latter with ease. His speed had the Colts using him for punt and kickoff returns in the mid-1960s.

Today, tight ends like Jermichael Finley and Kellen Winslow are common in the passing game, but they owe their role in the offense to Mackey and his contemporaries.

They owe their livelihood to him as well.

He served as the president of the players’ association during the post-NFL merger era. His efforts brought more than $11 million in pension and benefits to the players, a sizeable sum now and a hefty one in 1970.

His anti-trust suit in 1977 helped overturn a rule requiring heavy compensation for teams that signed free agents. Mackey’s argument was that this penalty prevented players from moving freely from team to team.

According to all accounts, Mackey was an intelligent man who understood that you couldn’t play on Sunday forever and you needed some sort of fall-back plan. He fought for players’ rights to his own detriment.

Despite being one of the best receiving tight-ends of his era and being named to the All-Century Team at his alma mater, he didn’t enter the Hall of Fame until 1992. Many speculated the 20-year gap between his last game and his gold jacket was due in large part to his union efforts.

Mackey didn’t have much time to enjoy his life as a Hall of Famer. The punishment he suffered in the “if it ain’t broken, you’re playing” era led to a series of concussions. He spent the last years of his life suffering from dementia that required constant care.

For those of us who remember seeing Mackey at his most eloquent, the sight of him in that giant cowboy hat and sunglasses, begging his wife for a ride in the car was almost too much to bear.

The pension he received, which had not grown much in the years since he secured the benefits, only provided $2,500 a month to him. The cost of his basic care far exceeded that amount.

The man who once ran over players was now required to run to them, pleading for help not just for himself, but for the others who would be sure to follow. In response, the NFL and its players created the “88 Plan,” which provided care for people like Mackey. Critics of the plan argue it’s not enough and fails to fully address the needs of retired players who are suffering untold damages.

Today, the family of John Mackey is making plans for his funeral. While his body may be committed to the earth, his brain is going to Boston for study at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. The center, hosted at Boston University, has the brains of more than 30 players and commitments from dozens more as it attempts to establish a link between violent sports collisions and dementia, depression and suicide.

Meanwhile, NFL players and owners will continue their wrangling over how to divide the proceeds of a multi-billion-dollar business. One of the areas of discussion has been how much of what is being earned now should be used to help those who played earlier. Retired players have also requested a seat at the table for future contract negotiations.

In his final act on this earth, Mackey’s death may serve as an impetus for stronger consideration of both of these topics.

Once again, it appears that John Mackey had incredible timing when it mattered the most.

I love a parade

When I was about 4 years old, I got my first taste of life in a parade. My grandmother’s husband had a shiny blue convertible (the make and model escape me, but the thing was a damned boat) and he had volunteered it for the local parade. For reasons past my understanding, Dad ended up driving it and I got to ride shotgun.

The guy in the back? Clement J. Zablocki, a Milwaukee-area politician who spent almost 35 years in the U.S. House, serving from 1949 until his death in 1983. A school not far from my folks’ house is named after him now, as is the VA medical center in the western part of the city.

He could have been the pope or a homeless guy at that point. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I figured all these people were there to stare at me and the car, so I waved like hell and threw candy all over the place. (I think I threw it primarily because Dad wouldn’t let me eat it all. One of the downsides of being on that side of the looking glass…)

After that year, we didn’t get involved again. The car was sold or broken or something at that point, and convertibles were required. Instead, we’d gather with the family on great-grandpa’s porch and watch the parade roll right down his street. These were Bohemian-Czechs from the old country, who felt it was their job to make sure you were properly lubricated for the parade.

Great-grandma always required my 5-foot-2, 108-pound mother to drink “something sweet,” which usually consisted of three fingers of sljivovica, an old-world plum brandy, or a similar amount of rock and rye out of a mason jar.  To refuse was to be insulting to an old woman. To accept was to commit yourself to being under the table before 10:30 a.m. I often was sent to my other grandmother’s to play on days after parades so Mom and Dad could suitably recover.

The guys who fired off the rifle shots to commemorate the Vets knew where my great-grandfather’s house was and always managed to lock and load one just in front of his porch. The spent shell casings were like treasure and the boys always went after them like there would be no tomorrow. I recall following these guys for a half a block, hoping they’d shoot again and I’d be there. No soap. Still, I think I’ve got at least one of those bits of brass still bouncing around a junk drawer somewhere.

Later in life, Fourth of July was kind of a drag. As a Boy Scout, we were required to march in at least one parade per year. It was always in full dress uniform, including the long-sleeve shirts and the high woolen socks. You were sweltering under that red woolen beret and since you didn’t throw candy, no one gave a shit about you. Since I stayed active in scouting until my early teens, I had a lot of parades and caught a lot of shit. It was like this: Your friends were on the side of the road, eating ice cream and laughing at you as you marched your ass up and down some part of Howard Avenue, sweating to death with a bunch of Webelos following you around because you were the cool older guy.

Once I moved out of state, we usually travelled for the Fourth. No real reason to stick around and watch a high school marching band that comes from a high school you’ve got no ties to. Even after The Missus moved down to be with me and we moved on to other confines, we usually missed the parade. Too hot. Too nasty. No real point.

When we got back to Wisconsin and decided to become Grownups © we figured we should start getting involved in community things. The Midget went to the local school, we started buying the local paper and we started looking for things to do around here that just screamed “This is good, old-fashioned, small-town fun so get the hell over here and eat a pale wiener on a stick, dammit.” One such event was the parade.

We’ve got fewer than 3,500 people out here in this giant farming area, but everyone seemed to be cramming onto Main Street to see a pretty good parade. The first year or two, the fire trucks really seemed to freak The Midget out. She’d scurry into our arms, cover her ears and shake. Later, when she realized that candy came from these trucks, she covered her ears and ran toward the candy.

I do not have a stupid kid.

The floats were solid, usually from a religious group or two. The best float, though, came from a local grocery store that had a giant grocery cart with a drag racing engine (I kid you not), which roared and squealed the tires. The people who walked alongside the float handed out fresh produce, which ran the gamut of apples and oranges to pineapples and watermelons.

The local dance school always put a pageant of twirlers into the parade, which just about gave The Missus and I hives. Not a kid over 12 and they were all tarted up with makeup that would have made Tammy Faye Bakker say, “C’mon, y’all. Let’s use a little less blush.” The scouts were there as well, sweating as profusely as I remember… The Midget asked me at that point, “Daddy, how do people get to throw candy?”

“You have to be in the parade, sweetie,” I explained.

“Can we be in the parade?”

“Probably not.”

At that point, the world’s ugliest beat-to-shit 1972 Mach I Mustang rolled by with some B-list politician in it. The hamster in my head climbed on the treadmill.

“How would you like to ride in Betsy in next year’s parade?”

She giggled and twirled and squealed.

Now I was stuck.

About two months ago, I called city hall and asked how you get involved. They sent me a form as to how to get a float into the parade. I had to be part of a group to get in. I sent emails to politicians, volunteering to drive them. No responses.

I finally gave up.

Two weeks later, I was in city hall paying my water bill when the lady behind the counter noticed Betsy.

“Nice car.”

“Thanks. I volunteered it for the parade, but they never got back to me.”

She had this stunned look on her face.

“That can’t be. Here. Go over to the community center and ask for Jesse. He’ll want to talk to you.”

I went over and the guy was gone, but I left my name and number, explaining what I was after and I figured I’d never hear from the guy.

Two hours later, he was on the phone, even though he had no idea why.

“I understand you wanted to talk to me about something,” he said, with that “who the hell are you and what do you want” sound in his voice.

I explained that I had a car, I was interested in the parade and if he needed it for any reason, I’d love to take part in it.

He paused. “How’d you like to drive the mayor?”

I told him I was thrilled, but that it wasn’t a convertible and I’m sure the mayor would want to be in something like that. Plus, I knew the guy from the local car club always drove him in a convertible that bordered on a trailer queen.

“It’ll be great,” he assured me. “I’ll email him and see if he’s game.”

Two days later, I found out the mayor loved the idea and I’ll be driving him down Main Street for all to see.

I’ve never driven in a parade and this is getting weird. I’ve cleaned out the garage so I can clean and store her the night before. I’ve practiced driving at about 4 miles per hour around my neighborhood to get the feel for it. The car doesn’t have air, so I’m imagining the mayor sweating his ass off as he’s waving to people from an open quarter window.

I’ve also been having these strange dreams that the accelerator sticks and I’m running over Shriners and twirlers as the mayor screams, “STOP! STOP! Those are VOTERS!”

Still, I couldn’t wait to tell The Midget her dream was coming true. She spent part of the week up with my mother-in-law in the northwoods, so when I called to check in, I sprung the news on her.

“Guess what? We get to be in the parade! We’ll drive the mayor in the Mustang!”

“Yay! Daddy, does that mean we get a box of candy?”

“No, sweetie. The mayor throws the candy if he wants. We don’t keep it.”

“Can I still catch candy at the parade?”

“No, sweetie. We’ll be IN the parade.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes, doodlebug?”

“Can you just throw candy to me and Mommy and Uncle B when you drive past?”

Criminal Minds

You can call this irony, congruity or whatever, but apparently the governor's budget signing is on the back burner as his staff just figured out he'd be signing the bill at a business owned by a guy with six felony convictions.

Best line?

Werwie described the situation as a "breakdown" by the governor's staff.

DeCaster was convicted of six felony counts of income tax evasion in the mid-1990s and was sentenced to three months behind bars. DeCaster also was sentenced to two years of supervised released and fined $10,000.

"It was something we wish we would have known on the front end," Werwie said.

How could you NOT vet this guy? When you decide to pick a place to sign a budget that a ton of people hate, that is likely spawning recalls and might get you tossed out of office in a year, you can't have something like this happen. You need to go get this signed in front of a bus load of nuns or blessed by Oprah or something. Had you known about the past about this guy and made a deal about how you knew and you were giving people a second chance and that's Wisconsin being open for business, OK, maybe you get past this. However, the blank stare coupled with the drool coagulating at the corner of Cullen Werwie's mouth when THE MEDIA has to reveal this jem isn't the "Onward" moment the Walker Administration was shooting for. 

Dan Bice is a great reporter, but he's not getting this crap from Deep Throat. He probably looked it up in one of those spiffy court databases that Governor Deadeyes wants to kill.

If Bice could figure this out, chances are, so could the crack staff at the Capitol. If not, maybe you should hire the guy.

Script Doctor

Governor Deadeyes has noted that people are in “full campaign mode,” thanks to the nine recall elections that will be happening this summer. If the phone calls I’ve been getting lately are any indication, he’s finally right about something.

In the past week, I’ve received at least four phone calls polling me about recalls. I say “at least” because several times, I’ve found that someone has called me from an “unknown number” or was a “private caller.” Nothing like stealth and secrecy to really make me feel the warm glow of open-door politics.

One of the calls was a straight-forward poll that asked the basic “how do you feel about this?” kind of questions. It was computerized and I was fine punching buttons.

The other three, however, got my blood boiling.

Two people and one computer started off with the line “State workers are forcing costly recall elections…” After that, I was too pissed to listen. I think the word “unnecessary” was in there as well, but the blood was pounding in my ears too hard to know for sure. I hung up on the computer and told the two humans (as politely as possible) “You should hang up now.”

If this isn’t the textbook definition of “push polling,” it’s probably close. If not, it’s at least what’s known as priming, in which you set people’s thoughts in the order the way you want in an attempt to get them to lean a certain way. However, if I thought for a minute that I could help these people to understand why they sucked at polling, I would have offered some advice:

First, you’re lying. It’s not state workers who are forcing the recall campaigns. I’m quite sure that there are at least six or seven signatures on those recall petitions that didn’t come from state workers. My wife signed one. I watched her. She works for a private company. Whenever people tend to disagree with you, I know it’s a lot easier to try to blow them off as being some fringe group of self-serving idiots. Your governor tried it with the supreme court election with his “there’s Dane County and then there is the rest of Wisconsin” cracks. Didn’t work then. Isn’t working now.

Second, if this was all about state workers hating on something, how is it possible that three Democrats are being recalled? I don’t remember state workers being irate that the Democrats left the state. I don’t remember hearing that the recalls were simply a case of a petulant child breaking toys to prove a point. Both sides of the political spectrum are recalling people.

Finally, and most importantly, if you are correct that state workers, as a single group, accounted for 25 percent of the people who voted for governor in nine senate districts, what do you think the odds are that you might be calling a few of them? If you’re wrong and state workers accounted for less than that (because they were all too lazy and overpaid to bother signing something on their three-hour lunch break), what do you think the odds are that you might be calling a non-state worker who signed and thinks you’re full of crap?

Try on a few of these potential poll starters:

“Women are such emotional and fragile creatures that they can’t be trusted to do anything outside of birth children. We would now like to ask your opinion of women in the workplace…”

“Illegal aliens are coming across the border in droves, paying no taxes and taking away jobs from real Americans. We would like to know your opinion of President Obama’s plans regarding immigration…”

“Homosexuals are bent on wreaking havoc with the American family and engaging in hedonistic activities that undermine the fabric of our society. We would like to ask you a few questions about the state’s position gay marriage…”

This kind of “Fox-ification” polling is better than a campaign ad. It masquerades under the guise of fact-finding and it gives people who hate you reason to hang up while the “good, honest Americans” stay on the line to tell youse guys how right you are. It skews the poll because it’s hard for people like me to answer questions with vomit in our mouths.

I'm not old. I'm a classic.

In seeking inspiration for the week that didn’t involve a) Vancouver, b) The budget, c) a smirking Republican or d) something else that made me want to reach for a sharp object, I came across this on a student media site.

Despite the author’s claim, it’s a bit trite as an idea for a story. “Guess what, kids! Your professors didn’t come out of the womb wrinkled and gray! Let’s find out more!”

Still, my birthday is this weekend and I’ve long passed the point where this is an anticipatory event. I don’t dread it, but it’s just another moment in time. I long ago passed the “cool” birthdays of driving (16), voting (18), drinking (21) and lowered car insurance (25).  I “lapped” my students a while ago, in that I was twice as old as the freshmen I taught. I have no shot at the major leagues, the NFL or the NBA.

As Pop Fisher told Roy Hobbs in “The Natural,” “You don’t start playing ball at your age. You retire.”

Oh, yeah. And I never had the talent for that anyway…

The thing that always gets me about these stories or the retrospective movies like “Hot Tub Time Machine,” which I watched for the 1,732,436^th time last night, is the yearn for a younger self. I know I’m getting older. I know that each day I live, it’s one day closer to the end. I’m fine with that (except for the dying part. I don’t want to get into a right to die argument here, but while The Missus doesn’t want to be kept alive through extraordinary measures, I’m thinking I want a plug in every hole I got. It’s like the line in “Wolverine” when the guy says he’s not afraid to die and Victor Creed says, “How do you know? You’ve never tried it.” Anyway…)

The point is I’ve never envied the kids I teach their youth. Sure, I miss having a full head of hair and the ability to randomly grow the world’s ugliest beard. (Dad saw me with a raging beard when I came home for a break. His response: “Christ, you can’t grow a beard. Without the mustache, you look fucking Amish.”)

But that’s about it.

I watch the kids in the newsroom talk about how “he didn’t call” or how “she’s avoiding me” and I’m grateful I never have to date again. The Missus and I considered a pre-nup that said the first person who forces the other back into the dating pool gives up his/her rights to all of our shit.

I see them struggle to complete a degree and fight for internships and sell plasma for money. None of those things seem like “the good old days” to me. I spent nine years in college getting a shit-ton of degrees. It took forever for me to find the right person, hang on to her and start a life. None of these things were easy. None of these things ARE easy.

The professors in the stories told here don’t seem to want to go back either. Sure, they envy the students their youth a bit, but to be fair, they’re a lot older than I am. I guess if I fled Nazi Germany and spent my youth scrapping for a life, I’d envy the kids at Columbia in 2011 as well. And we can always look at the kids today and wonder what life would be like for us in this day and age. It’s the same reason sports fans argue how fast Jesse Owens would have been with 3-ounce shoes or how many homers Babe Ruth would have hit with today’s equipment and training programs. Taking people out of their temporal context is often a fun flight of fancy.

Still, the other day, as The Missus begged me one more time, “Please, for the love of GOD, tell me what you want for your birthday!” I found myself thinking about “old person” gifts like tools and underwear.

After she went to work, I scanned a few websites for gift ideas and found myself reading about Governor Deadeyes, the budget, the recalls and the chaos around us. I realized that maybe life would be easier if I could go back, somehow, and relive my youth. Fewer problems, fewer concerns.

Later that day, I woke The Midget from her afternoon nap and slid her into the backseat of the Mustang.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Appleton,” I said. “We’re taking Mommy out to dinner.”

“Are we going to Chuck E. Cheese?” she asked, her voice rising to a hopeful pitch.

“Probably not.”

I sped down the outlying county highways on the back roads toward Appleton. Rock music that my students consider to be “classical” (no shit. Not classic. Classical. Like Beethoven, Mozart and Crue.) blaring through the speakers. Cotton candy clouds dotted the bright blue sky.

The Midget rolled down the quarter window in the back seat, stuck her head up by the hole and let the wind blow her hair everywhere. She giggled with delight.

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, Peanut.”

Why would I want to go back?

LeBron and Me

(Got a "hall pass" from A to post as long as it was before midnight. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. -- Doc)

One year ago, I took advantage of an off-day “hall pass” to complain about “The Decision” and the loss of LeBron James from my beloved Cavaliers.

I then spent every second of my basketball watching hoping that he would hurt as much as I hurt.

Every Miami loss was a celebration, every bad game, a triumph.

As the playoffs began, I found myself watching game after game, hoping that the Heat would get bumped off.

Each game they won, I wondered if there really was such a thing as karma.

I started getting very emo.

“If there is a God, how can he let this group of mercenaries and self-centered assholes win?”

“If life is fair, how can this be happening?”

“If I have to say, ‘NBA Champion LeBron James,’ I might start Betsy up in the garage, close the garage door and turn on a Cure album.”

Tonight, I realized that it had to be this way for karma to fully bloom.

For James to hurt as much as I did, several things had to happen:

• He had to be teased.
• He had to get as close as possible, only to have the diamond snatched away from him.
• He had to be crushed under the weight of his own ego.
• He had to lose in the worst way.

Mission accomplished.

He lost, not in the first or second or third round, but in the finals. He got there, got close and got kicked in the balls.

He lost to a team led by a guy who never asked out of town, never threatened to leave and never went on TV talking about himself in the third person.

Dirk Nowitzki said in an ESPN interview that when he was available as a free agent, not a single team called him. It wasn’t due to their lack of interest or his lack of talent.

They knew he was staying in Dallas. Why bother?

Loyalty.

A word that tested Dirk when owner Mark Cuban let his running partner and point guard of the gods, Steve Nash, bolt for Phoenix.

A word that angered Dirk when media pundits argued he’d need to leave the Metroplex if he were to ever win a title.

A word Dirk saw every day at practice, as it was tattooed down the left arm of Shawn Marion.

Marion, one of the pieces that Cuban quietly brought to Big D in an attempt to give Nowitzki one more run at a title, was no longer the Matrix.

He was more name than game.

The same could be said for the other broken toys that Cuban added.

Jason Kidd, the same point guard that was sent from Dallas to the Phoenix Suns in 1996 for Michael Finley, A.C. Green and Sam Cassell.

Tyson Chandler, a former first-round pick of the Bulls who never lived up to expectations.

J.J. Barea, an undrafted 5-foot-9 point guard who was best known for dating Miss Universe 2006.

Brian Cardinal, Brendan Haywood, Ian Mahinmi, DeShawn Stevenson, Corey Brewer and more. All guys who were bit players, castoffs or otherwise damaged.

All of these guys played meaningful minutes in a finals series built for crunch time.

Three of the six games came down to the final shot.

In none of those games was it James who delivered.

----

 The thing that kept playing in my head all night, as the clock wound down and the Mavericks’ lead grew to an insurmountable level was the opening scene of “Miracle.” When the Olympic hockey committee is yammering about how the Russians beat their guys, the NHL, the All-Stars, a clearly perturbed Herb Brooks makes the passing remark, “It wasn’t because you weren’t good enough.”

When the men cast an incredulous stare upon him, Brooks elaborates with, “All-Star teams fail because they rely solely on the individuals talent.”

That was the Miami Heat: An insanely talented group of individuals.

Not a team.

A team knows where it’s going when the chips are down. In two of the finals games, it was Nowitzki making the final plays, calling for the final shots and making the crucial decisions.

A team knows how to step up. When Nowitzki started off Game 6 with 1-for-12 slide, Jason Terry and DeShawn Stevenson stepped up, drilling shot after shot, holding off the Heat until reinforcements arrived.

A team knows to have faith in each member of that team. When Haywood couldn’t go and Chandler got into foul trouble, Mahinmi and Cardinal played gut-check minutes, despite lacking the Heat’s star power or talent level.

A team wins, because it’s greater than the sum of its parts.

That was always Brooks’ message.

It’s one I doubt the Heat won’t get tonight.

It’s something James will never understand.

---

A river of schadenfreude is likely flowing freely through the streets of Cleveland tonight. Sure, we didn’t win the NBA title, but neither did the man who quit on us and then pissed on us and then tried to pretend like we should all get on with our lives.

He walked down an empty hallway to a locker room that was devoid of championship goods. No special hats, no T-shirts, no champagne.

Tomorrow, thousands of kids in Nairobi, or wherever we send the losing merchandise, will likely be donning “A Ring for the King” T-shirts that were supposed to be flying off the shelves in Miami this week.

Tomorrow, he can read the clever headlines, the pundit columns and the general bile directed at him.

Tomorrow, I’ll get up and he’ll get up and we’ll be exactly the same.

Two guys without an NBA title.

Only this time, he’ll be hurting.

And I won’t be.

Primary Colors

When it comes to financial waste, the Republicans are against it.

Unless, of course, they’re doing it.

The MJS reported today that a member of the Republican Party has filed papers to run as a Democrat in the recall election of Alberta Darling. This isn’t a flip-flop, but rather a strategy that, if successful, would force the state to hold a primary election and push back the general recall by almost a month.

Gladys Huber, the Ozaukee County Republican, has no hope of winning, nor does anyone associated with the party care. She is part of what Scott Fitzgerald refers to as a set of “protest candidates” that the Republicans are running throughout the state.

Dan Bice of the MJS reported first the use of these fake candidates, who will likely be popping up in all six of the state’s GOP recalls. Fitzgerald said this is an attempt to give the Republicans more time to steal the silverware work on the budget and get their message out to the people of this state. Fitzgerald also said the recalled senators were aware of this and were fine with it, a statement most of the senators are treating like it were a wad of plutonium in their underwear drawer.

State officials have argued this would cost tens of thousands of dollars. Money well spent if you’re desperately trying to avoid reality.

If Fitzgerald wants to talk about messages, here are the ones I’m getting out of all this:

We’re broke, but we’re fine wasting money on a Machiavellian maneuver to hold on to the senate.

The people support us, but let’s not rush to let them tell us that.

When the Democrats left the state they used a procedural trick to undermine the will of the people of this state, which is deplorable. Let’s give that a try…

And, of course the biggest message of all:

We don’t give a shit about what you think you want. We know better. Get out of our way.

Looking at what’s being done here is like watching your house burn to the ground. Even if the firefighters save some of it, it’ll never be the same again.

We’ve arrived at a place in which getting what we want is more important than anything else. We are in a place that says, “Because we can means we should.” We are here, Wisconsin, where compromise and honor have been replaced by a game of three-card monte.

The primaries will likely come and go, with the obvious results. The general will be pushed back and the only question remaining is if the Democrats will try something equally shitty or be happy to let the Republicans keep their spot on “Wisconsin’s Got Assholes.”

Look at where we are. Ask yourself if you ever thought we’d be here. Cry a little bit if you think it will help.

O-H! Oh NO!

The news that Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel resigned this week wasn’t a shocker. The national media had been pounding on him for weeks about his lack of honesty when it came to the “memorabilia-for-ink” scandal. The story goes that several of his players had traded championship rings, jerseys and other iconic pieces of merchandise for discounted or free tattoos, among other things. One of the tattoo artists was in the crosshairs of the Feds as a potential drug distributor, so the scrutiny was a bit tighter than it might have been otherwise. The NCAA was peeved at all of this, but that’s not what got Tressel run out of town. He denied knowledge of this whole thing, even though he possessed emails from a concerned alumnus, stating this was going on. He kept denying until the emails came out and the shit hit the fan.

It’s also not shocking that the OSU student newspaper, The Lantern, helped bust this story wide open. In advance of a long, painfully drawn out story in Sports Illustrated, which showed this stuff had been going on for years, the paper got an exclusive interview with a player who not only ratted himself out, but said that a ton of others had been doing it and that most of the players “don’t think about the rules.”

Student journalists are often at the frontlines of stories like these and they do a great job because a) they’re better connected than the national media who sweep in and expect to catch up in a day or two and b) they’re tenacious as a cockroach and as unrelenting as a toothache. They’ve not been stripped of their soul yet.

Here are two things that ARE either surprising, disappointing or just plain stupid:

1) Both Tressel and former wide receiver Ray Small, who was the primary source for the Lantern piece, denied saying, doing or even thinking about any rule breaking. Immediately after the situation began to unravel, Small talked to multiple national media outlets, including ESPN, and said the paper “just flipped my words around.” Although denials happen every day, Small’s interview was recorded and he KNEW it was recorded. After he accused the paper of lying, the staff of the Lantern put the audio online. It was worse than what was in the story.

This isn’t the Nixon White House. You know that you’re being recorded (or in Tressel’s case, you know “You’ve Got Mail!”). Denying that you said or heard or did something makes absolutely no sense and only makes you look dumber and more weasel-like in the process.

When I was in grad school, I had a confrontation with another TA over some sort of union action she wanted me to take. I disagreed as politely as possible until she left. When she was gone, I turned to my officemate, whom I liked quite a bit, and said words that are unprintable, even here. He politely heard me out and then said, “You realize that’s my fiancée you’re talking about.”

I could have done the Tressel thing. I could have done the Small thing. Instead, I just said, “Sorry about that” and let it go. He stopped talking to me for the rest of the term, but I understood.

For people who are in such a “manly sport” where you “man up” and “take it like a man” when punishment is delivered on the field, these guys are acting like little bitches.

2) A recent ESPN report has noted that Zack Meisel, the Lantern’s editor in chief, has been getting death threats regarding the publication of the piece. For starters, it’s not his fault this was going on. The paper wasn’t running a “turn in your championship shit for FREE INK” ads, entrapping these idiots.

Second, the end was coming down the tracks anyways. The Feds were involved, SI had a huge cover story coming out and the Columbus Dispatch had set up camp in Tressel’s rectal cavity. It’s not like this kid single-handedly killed your program. It was a great story and a big part of this, but he’s not the David Stanley of OSU.

Finally, and most importantly, what the hell is wrong with people? I understand sports are vital to many people (and I count myself among them), but it’s not really life and death. Tressel was a great coach, a good motivator and he was 9-1 against Michigan (the true measure of an OSU coach). He was not Gandhi, MLK or John F. Kennedy.

A threat like this should come with some heavy penalties. It probably won’t, because, hey, the person sending the probably was upset or didn’t mean it or was just having a bad day or hyperbolic.

Please. Spare me the bullshit.

We tend not to take these threats seriously, which is why we have a U.S. representative recovering from a bullet to her brain and why six people are dead today in Arizona. When it comes to the media, we tend to be even less serious about it. When it comes to STUDENT media, it almost passes without incident because, as one colleague once told me, they’re only “playing reporter.” Not really, but even if it’s just “pretend journalism,” it could be a real gun.

Threats against the media should be treated as an affront to the foundation of our nation. The Framers didn’t put “freedom of the press” in the First Amendment because they were trying to round it out and figured it sounded good. They knew that without free and open discussions via the media, we’d be no better off than we were under English rule.

When you threaten to take away that right through acts or threats of violence, you debase our country and you undermine our citizenry.

Use the Ballot to Decide on the Bullet

I lived in Missouri about 12 years ago when citizens there took up a “right to concealed carry” bill. The bill passed in all but about 10 counties and yet it was overwhelmingly defeated. A map outlining the passage of the bill told the story in beautiful simplicity. The entire state was red, except the areas around St. Louis, Columbia and Kansas City. This was a very simple city mouse-country mouse divide. To the people in the rural areas, gun usually meant “personal freedom.”

To the people in the metropolitan areas, gun usually meant “thug.”

Despite living in a town in which hunting season is viewed as a perfectly acceptable reason for your kid to miss a week of school, I don’t get guns. I never really have, despite my time with a .22 at Boy Scout camp and my obsession with first-person shooters for the Wii. Maybe it’s being raised in a city that started off too many 10 p.m. news casts with reports of shootings. Maybe it’s that Dad wasn’t a hunter, so it never rubbed off. Who knows?

The Legislature’s move toward a concealed carry law here in Wisconsin made me think about my position a bit this week. Eugene Kane, a columnist with whom I often disagree, has a pretty solid breakdown of what he calls the “sane” version and the “insane” version (both of which he opposes).

Trying to convince either side that the other is wrong is a waste of space, time and breathable oxygen. If you like guns, you like them and you want the right to carry them as you see fit. If you don’t like guns, you don’t want to be afraid that the guy you just beeped at in the parking lot at Menards will whip out a Glock and show you who’s boss. Never the two shall meet.

What is more perplexing to me than the gun/no gun issue is the approach the state is taking toward it. The Republican Party, which describes itself as a hands-off, freedom-first, party-of-the-people group, is taking the legislative route to this. In other words, the government is stepping out on this one.

If the people of this state TRULY want the ability to pack heat in the grocery store or carry them in the Capitol (and why do we have metal detectors there, by the way? To find nail clippers and benwa balls?), why not make it a referendum? Let the people across our state, red, blue, purple or whatever, say, “This isn’t about politics. This isn’t about who’s party won the last election. This is about the will of the people.”

The gun lobby doesn’t want that risk. If you’ve got a sure bet, why not take it? In this case, they know that the Republicans control the dice and are more friendly to their position. The people in rural areas, many of whom have legitimate reasons to want to carry weapons everywhere, don’t want to lose out because more people live in cities and city guns are usually seen as “thug” guns.

In short, when it comes to hands-off government, personal freedom and the will of the people, these folks are fine abdicating all of those things if it means getting their way.

We don’t want the government folks in our affairs, unless of course, they agree with us and get us what we want. But things can’t work that way.

If the people of this state need guns to feel whatever they need to feel, fine. But then let THEM tell us that. Get this out of the Legislature and put it before the citizens of this state.

 

Bring out the gimp

There’s been a lot of stupid out here in the north lately, but fortunately for Wisconsin, we’ve got Minnesota to make us look good. Sure, we have Governor Deadeyes and his merry band of idiots passing laws that will have pollsters screaming “Papers, please! You must have your papers in order!” prior to voting, cutting funding to public land programs and making decisions that have yielded about 912 legal challenges to about everything he does.

And yet, Minnesota has Timberwolves GM David Kahn. This guy makes Scott Walker look like a Mensa candidate. Or at least a college graduate.

Minnesota had the best chance of landing the top pick in the 2011 NBA draft this week, only to be undone by the bad luck of the Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers, whose woes are explained here in unending detail, traded their unprotected lottery pick in this year’s draft to Cleveland as part of a salary dump. When the Clips traded the pick, they had less than a 5 percent chance of winning this thing. By the time the season ended, the odds had dwindled to 2.8 percent.

Of course, their ping pong ball bounced to the top of the draft lottery, giving the Cavs the first pick in the draft.

Representing Cleveland was Nick Gilbert, the 14-year-old son of the team’s owner Dan Gilbert. Nick suffers from neurofibromastosis, a disease that has tumors popping up on his body wherever and whenever. The way most teens get acne, this kid gets tumors. He’s lost vision in one eye, gone through tons of cancer treatment and suffered through brain surgery. Dan Gilbert called his son, “my personal hero” and sent him up there as a good-luck charm for the luckless Cavs.

When he won, it was a great story. Too great to be a coincidence for Kahn:

Wolves general manager David Kahn said he knew Minnesota was "dead" when it got down to the final three of himself, Utah executive Kevin O'Connor and Nick Gilbert.

"This league has a habit, and I am just going to say habit, of producing some pretty incredible story lines," Kahn said. "Last year it was Abe Pollin's widow and this year it was a 14-year-old boy and the only thing we have in common is we have both been bar mitzvahed. We were done. I told Kevin: 'We're toast.' This is not happening for us and I was right."

In other words, the fix was in. If you bring a widow or a kid with a freakish illness on the stage, the NBA (where caring happens) will find a way to give you a reason to smile.

Kahn tried to backpedal out of this by telling the media later he meant this to be a joke. If you heard it live, you know it really wasn’t. It was a grumpy old man being grumpy that his franchise didn’t get what it wanted. In doing so, he insulted a kid who was having the time of his life (he told one reporter “What’s not to like?” spawning the next generation of T-shirt slogans for Cleveland). Kahn also called into question the integrity of his own business, something for which I’m sure Commissioner David Stern will lighten Kahn’s wallet.

The most disgusting thing, however, is that Kahn played the “gimp card.” He didn’t say it directly, but it was right there. You could practically hear the gerbil huffing and puffing inside his head as he thought to next year’s lottery:

“I need to go out and get my own hard-luck story to prop up here. Wonder if I can find the mother of a  kid who died after a terrorist threw him in a farming thresher or a guy with VD so bad it’s crawled up onto his hands and eats the wood off his pencils…”

There are a hell of a lot worse things in life than not winning the NBA’s number one pick (especially in a draft as shitty as this), and Nick Gilbert is living with one of them. When the NBA decides to hit Kahn with a fine for being an idiot, I hope they make him cut the check to Washington University’s School of Medicine.

It hosts the NF Center, which is positioning itself as an international leader in research and support for people who suffer from this illness.

School Daze

As another semester comes to a crashing, screeching and rather painful halt, I’ve noticed a lot more whining than in the recent past. Maybe I’m getting older and I’m less likely to tolerate bullshit. Or, maybe it was just a bad semester (it felt like it). In any case, here’s some things I found while spring cleaning my brain in hopes of preparing for a stress-free summer:

 - When a student “fails” to turn in an assignment or “fails” to meet the minimum basic requirements of an assignment, why are they shocked that it’s not at least worth a B? I had kids do a story in which they were required to have a MINIMUM of five people quoted in text. Several kids had three or four people quoted and were shocked that they received no points for their efforts. “Well, I tried…” was the answer I got from one of them. Well, I tried to give you a good grade, but you made that impossible.

 - Got an email from a student complaining about failing my class. His rationale was that I was being unfair because “I have never taken a journalism class before that requires writing so I was never taught the basics of writing articles such as the ones we were required to write in this class.” (This was a 400-level (senior level) course and it was an elective.) I’m not sure how taking a class that was beyond your level of preparedness is my fault. And yet, I’m sure it is…

 - Note to students: When you turn in your final exams, especially in a writing-intensive course, the material does not pass through my body somehow, automatically become graded and get posted to the Web. Thus, asking if I’ve figured out how you did about six seconds after you emailed me your final project isn’t all that smart.

 - Students must think the only thing professors do is sit by their computers, refreshing their emails while saying “I wonder if Bill turned in his paper yet… OK, refresh again… No… Refresh… No… COME ON! I WANNA GRADE YOUR BRILLIANCE!” Otherwise, there is no logical reason for this: A kid emailed me an assignment at 1:05 p.m. By 1:25, I had three “Did you get it? DID you GET it? DID YOU GET IT?!?!?!? MUST KAN KNOW!!!” emails in my inbox. Oddly enough, I was in the garage working on something and not dry humping my inbox. I found something interesting to do that didn’t involve his comparative analysis of yams and turnips or whatever the hell he thought was of epic importance.

 - Jim Bouton used to say that he could calculate his ERA almost after every out. I lack those math skills, so asking me, when I’m nowhere near my computer, what your grade looks like either shows you have no sense of reality or you think I’ve morphed into Rain Man. I also can’t tell you without looking if the last thing you turned in moved you from a B to an A. I also don’t know what time Wapner is on.

 - When making an argument that you shouldn’t have failed a class, make sure you tell the professor that you took another class that was in no way similar to this one, and that you got a B in there. This will not only demonstrate your complete lack of analytical ability, but also will make the professor dislike you even more. Nothing makes “Divorced Dad” feel less like doing something than telling him that “Mom’s Cool New Boyfriend with the Harley” lets you do it.

 - Why is it that the professor who failed a student is the one in the wrong all the time? When a kid gets a B from one and an F from another, the underlying assumption for that student is that the F professor is wrong. Why hasn’t a student ever once thought, “Thank God for that moron who didn’t see through all the bullshit I wrote while I was half stoned and watching ‘Happy Days’ on Nick at Night. If not for his complete lack of standards, I might have failed two courses.”

 - I wonder if students realize that grading is a process in which subtle things can come into play. For example, when I’m grading and the Indians score posts and they’ve just crapped the bed against the Twins, I tend to stop grading. No sense in taking out my frustrations on the kids just because the Tribe went 1-for-19 in RBI situations. With that in mind, when I tell you that you shouldn’t pester me about if I’ve got stuff graded six seconds after you turn it in and you keep doing it, what do you think that does to my mind during that “subtle process?”

 - When you’re about to take a test in my class and you’re waiting outside of my classroom, I can still hear you. Bragging loudly that you “totally fucking bullshitted” your way through the test you just took is probably not the smartest thing to do.

 - Nothing convinces a professor that he or she might have been too tough on your writing like an email filled with misspellings. If you’re pissing and moaning about having “recieved” a failing grade, you’re really losing more ground than you are gaining.

 - “I put a lot of effort into this class” is neither an excuse nor a bonus when your grades are being calculated. That statement is a) unable to be quantified, b) the last vestige of the failing student and c) what the hell you were supposed to be doing. When you tell me that you went “all the way out to the gym” on campus to interview someone for a profile on someone who works at the gym, it’s not extra credit. The same goes for the students who tell me that they “turned almost everything in on time” and “made sure to attend almost all of the classes.” No way! And we haven’t named a street or playground for you yet? What do you want, a cookie?

Next week will be better. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself...

Doc

Class-based politics

A fine line exists between academic freedom and politicking when it comes to classroom discussions. This week, a professor up in Wisconsin learned that the hard way.

Stephen Richards, a criminal justice professor at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, has found himself the darling of right-wing talk radio and the blogosphere for taking a position on the recall of Randy Hopper during his class. In a recently released recording of one of his classes, Richards talks for almost 10 minutes about the recall and notes that some students were hanging around with recall petitions if anyone wanted to sign them. The recording was made in March; the university dealt with the concerns and life appears to have moved on.

However, the recording landed on Charlie Sykes’ desk over the past week and has been posted on the state Republicans’ website as well. Media fervor quickly followed, as is to be expected and university officials have declined to issue any additional statements about the matter.

For his part, Richards has remained silent on the issue, saying the university told him to keep is mouth shut, a charge the university denies.

If you listen to the recording, which you can find here, it’s clear this wasn’t a passing moment of some kid asking “Hey, how can I get involved in a recall thing?” and a professor saying, “There are petitions around campus. See me after class.” Richards spoke at length on the issue and clearly brought his own opinions to the table.

While most of the crying, wailing and gnashing of teeth on this is a load of crap, that doesn’t excuse his actions. This was a ton of dumb from an educated guy.

The outcry of students saying, “I’m paying good money to go here and not have my time wasted” is total bullshit.

Spare me.

If he decided to let the class go 10 minutes early, there wouldn’t be a huge hue and cry. Also, based on the number of texts, Facebook updates and other technology-based distractions students engage in, something tells me they aren’t coveting every moment of class time. Yes, you can be upset that you were subjected to this, but let’s not pretend that a professor never wasted time in some other stupid way or that you didn’t blow off at least one minute of your academic career. To complain in this way is disingenuous at best.

The Republicans who are calling for this guy to resign are going after a fly with a sledgehammer, and for good reason as well. The recall elections will likely see six Republican senators fighting to keep their seats in hotly contested races. Hopper appears to be the most vulnerable among these. Media reports have questioned if he’s actually living in the district he represents, if he got his mistress a sweet-heart state job and other things you don’t want hanging over your head in an election cycle.

Best way to get the story to change? Make the story about someone else.

Thus the story goes from “Randy Hopper: sex machine, cheating husband and political twerp” to “Randy Hopper: target of indoctrinating professors and zombie-voting students.”

The public reaction, however, is most disturbing. The student newspaper reported that several people had heard this guy was getting death threats. In addition, the comment boards have been on fire with people calling for his job and saying he’s indoctrinating students.

First, no matter what he said in class, the threat thing is way over the top. If citizens were allowed to kill people for saying stupid crap, Glenn Beck and Donald Trump would already have their faces on a commemorative stamp set.

Second, and more importantly, no one is being indoctrinated. Most of my students (and those of most professors) will tell you that students don’t do things just because you tell them to. If it worked that easily, I’d have more kids studying for tests and fewer of them spelling things wrong.

College students are adults. They can think for themselves. Just because a professor says, “I think Randy Hopper’s an idiot,” it doesn’t necessarily follow that the students will all stagger into the streets craving brains and bad Randy Hopper jokes.

The more important argument here is that there is a perception of undue influence. Professors have authority over grades, which you can argue are one of the more important things a student deals with. A professor can fail a student, forcing the student to retake a class or costing the student access to scholarships and financial aid. If the professor is a big name in a particular field, going against that professor can be career suicide for a student.

(Should grades matter this much? Not in my book, but kids view them as important and thus they are in their world. Perception is the word of the day here at the ol’ FD.)

In this case, none of those things might happen, and only one allegation of undue pressure has come to light (An “unnamed” student made allegations here. As a journalist, this wouldn’t have passed the sniff test for me, but it is something to ponder.). However, several students noted that there was a sense that you might get a bump up or a bump down depending on your petition position. That’s not good for the classroom and that’s not good for democracy.

Richards might think Hopper should be recalled, but the classroom isn’t the venue for that discussion. Had he been in a field like political science, journalism or even a gen-ed on current affairs, maybe he gets a little more leeway in terms of the topic, but not his approach.

Regardless of if he was pro-Hopper, anti-Hopper or a bunny-Hopper, Richards should have understood his efforts put his students in an untenable situation.

Lucky

Truth be told, I hate animals. Maybe not hate. Too strong of a word. I’m just not all that into pets.

For this, I blame my parents in a way. They both worked and said owning a dog (the pantheon of childhood desires) would be unfair to the dog. They couldn’t see leaving him or her home all day alone. It makes sense now, but as a kid, it felt unfair. I remember surveying all my friends without stay-at-home moms to see if they had pets. I then returned with my best Robert Shapiro/Atticus Finch routine. It fell on deaf ears.

When I was about 10, my grandmother bought a dog for me. The dog was mine, she said, but it would live at her house. The Yorkie-Manchester mix was adorable, and I loved him to death. Eventually, though, I grew up, he grew old and he was put down. I was in college at the time and it practically crippled me. I still have the card from the vet who put him down. Every time I even think about that card, it kills me.

Pets are fine, but you will out live them, unless you do something smart like The Missus’ friend, Rachel. She and her husband bought a baby tortoise, which has a 100-year-plus life expectancy. The place they bought it from apparently made them fill out a form to explain who would be getting the animal after they died. Still, you don’t hear a lot of stories about how kids snuggled in on a cold winter night and watched “It’s A Wonderful Life” with their tortoise. You also never get to take it for a walk some place or play “fetch” with it.

Pets are also messy. Between kids and animals, your house goes to crap. We bought a rabbit several years ago and no matter how hard you clean, her corner of the world looks like a disaster. She’s litter-trained, but has some how managed to piss on every corner of carpet we own. She also manages to get food and poop in her water dish, no matter where we put it, creating an algae bloom that is likely to attract Asian Carp.

A year or so ago, The Midget asked us for a dog. We explained that we had a rabbit and that sometimes bunnies and puppies don’t get along, so it wouldn’t be fair to the bunny. Her response? “But we can take Abby to the pet store and trade her in for a dog!” My child. Totally, my child.

Having said all of this, I had to write about pets this week because my child will soon be experiencing the anti- “Miracle of Life.” My in-laws waited until after Easter, so The Midget could spend some time with him, but earlier this week, they decided to put their dog, Lucky, to sleep.

Lucky was a blonde medium-sized dog that was more kangaroo than cocka-poo when they bought him. My father-in-law was fond of telling a story about standing near the refrigerator, eating a sandwich, when Lucky kept hopping up trying to get a bite. Eventually, he managed to hop up to the point where he was staring my father-in-law in the eye. He got some sandwich, I believe.

The dog loved to chase squirrels and there were plenty of them in the Northwoods. The chipmunks would sit out on the porch as well, eating acorns and mocking him. The dog would sit by the front door and growl, begging for a chance to get those little bastards. He rarely got the chance.

When the family bought a cat to chase mice that had invaded the garage, there was some initial tension. The dog would grab the cat by the back of the neck and toss it about while the cat would claw back. Eventually, this became a playing ritual for them and we all just let them roll around until they got tired.

The eating rules also changed when the two of them were around. The dog would try to eat the cat’s food and the cat would try to eat the dog’s food. It was like sibling rivalry. Eventually, Mom had to feed the cat on the kitchen table across the house from the dog.

Eating was one of Lucky’s main hobbies. The Missus’ grandmother often found him a spare piece of her bacon or some other food off her plate. Lucky eventually ballooned up to the point where he was no longer springy or fast. He also couldn’t sit on the linoleum floors and beg, as his protruding ass made it hard for him to keep his legs underneath him. Diet and exercise got some of that under control, but he was like the Shawn Kemp of dogs: fat, thinner, fatter, thinner and don’t expect to see him in a fitness magazine.

When we last saw him this weekend, he’d really slowed down. Mom had to let him outside using a different door because he couldn’t get down the porch steps easily. He had a trot and a limp. He also had a sad look on his face, like he just didn’t want to hurt anymore.

On Easter Sunday, we fed him bits and pieces from our plates when we were done and let him lick the plates as we put them in the dishwasher. Disgusting and unsanitary? Yes. The right thing to do? Absolutely. The Midget hugged him all weekend and the three of them (Midget, cat, dog) snuggled into a bean-bag chair to watch “Tangled” for about the 921^st time. When it was time to go, The Midget hugged him, even though none of us knew he would be gone less than 48 hours later.

When I got the text message about Lucky’s demise, I felt sad for a moment. I probably should have been nicer to him, even though I didn’t like pets. I should have given him more ham on Easter. I should have…

Then, I thought about my child. When I was about her age, my grandmother had her poodle put to sleep. When I came over and discovered the dog was missing, I asked what had happened. Without missing a beat, Grandma said, “He ran away.” I spent the next couple months sitting on her porch, watching for the dog, just in case he came home. I was 25 years old before I found out the truth.

Whatever we decide to tell The Midget, it won’t be that the dog ran away.

Some people are pet people. My mother-in-law is one of them. I think if it came down to feeding her pets or feeding herself, she’d starve and buy extra for her animals. In a way, I really admire that and wish I were more like that. Perhaps it’s my upbringing or my pathological anxiety when it comes to dealing with death, but I seem to lack that “pet gene.”

Still, I ache for her and the family and I do feel the sadness of loss. However, the dog had a good, long life and I can’t imagine anyone treating him better than my mother-in-law did.

So, good night, Lucky.

You were aptly named.  

A box of cards

(I’m filing this missive from the upmost reaches of the North Woods, so it won’t be one of beauty or news value. Still, it’s something that I thought of the other day and figured I’d share.)

When I was a kid, card shows were some of the best Sundays ever. We’d go to church on Saturday so we could spend as much time as possible at the shows. We’d eat our hot dog or our pizza at the concession stand, we’d buy some cards here and there and we’d participate in the kids’ auction. It was always a great day.

The only thing that made it better was on the rare occasion that Dad found a great deal on a box of cards. When we needed to start building sets or when the new edition started coming out, Dad would pony up the big money and buy a box of wax packs, 36 little containers of glory and promise.

The drive home would seem to take forever. When we arrived, Dad would set up the ottoman in the living room or the coffee table and we’d start digging in. Open carefully, throw away the brick-hard gum and get down to business.

“Hey I got a Robin Yount!” I’d exclaim.

“Good,” Dad would say. “Put it on The Pile.”

The Pile was where we kept the “good” cards. Stars and commons were separated so we didn’t accidentally give away “good” cards in trade.

In opening the cards, we’d find some guys who were old enough to be playing out their string as a DH some place that Dad would remember as being a player from when he was younger.

“You shoulda seen this guy hit,” Dad would say, pointing to an old guy who was probably hitting about .182 at that point. “I saw him hit three out of here at the Stadium when I was dating your mother.”

We’d sort, we’d pile, we’d talk. The Packers would be on in the background. Dad would have the local radio guys on with the TV’s volume down. So much better to listen to Jim Irwin and Max McGee instead of the TV twerps.

The radio used to match the TV’s live feed before the term “wardrobe malfunction” became part of our lexicon.

In the years that followed, we’d opened fewer boxes. We’d buy by the vendors’ cases and we just sort. Packages became a lot more expensive, so did boxes. Specialty boxes, autograph packs and such just took over.

About two weeks ago, I was back home, helping Dad get ready for a card show. He was digging through a part of the basement in which Mom is not allowed. It led us to discover a box of 1953 reprint Topps cards. The set wasn’t popular, the reprints were a bit weak and quite frankly, most of the cards weren’t worth much. Still, a reprint Mickey Mantle is worth something…

“You wanna open ‘em?” Dad asked. “We can pick out the good ones.”

“Sure,” I told him. “Let’s go upstairs.”

We rooted through the cards, the Mantles and the MacDougals alike.

Dad dug out a Ted Kluszewski. The guy had to have his sleeves removed from his shirt because he had such huge biceps.

“You shoulda seen this guy hit,” Dad told me. “Jesus…”

We sorted and picked and had a day of it. Dad told stories and I listened. It felt good again.

Later that week, a package I sent out to a former student who was doing me a favor came back to me. I’d promised him a football from the Rose Bowl for some help he was providing me. I checked the address and found out that his Nawlins mailbox had blown off in a storm and that all of the packages to that address had been sent back “return to sender.”

We emailed a couple times and he was telling me about how he’d be making room for the piece by shifting around his Reggie Miller jersey and some other stuff.

Once he assured me the boxes were back up, I repackaged the football. I thought for a moment about Dad and that weekend. I dug into my collection and found a half-opened box of 1990 basketball cards. I poked through a couple packages, looking for Reggie cards. After I found a couple, I thought about the remaining packages.

I tossed all of them in the box, sealed it up and sent it on its way.

Two days ago, I got an email.

“I wanted to thank you for the package! I still get giddy over trading cards (probably more than a 26-year-old should get), but needless to say, I was elated to find so many basketball cards. And a lot of the ones at the top were former Pacers' players!”

I don’t know why, but that made me smile. Perhaps it’s the sharing of something you love with someone else. Perhaps its that the cards aren’t worth shit and the fun was opening them.

Perhaps we’re all just kids at heart, waiting to open something that makes us happy.

For the record, don't be a dick

One of the hardest things I had to deal with in both the professional and academic journalistic realms was getting people to understand the concept of “off-the-record.” This term is horrifically misunderstood and misused. Even people who deal with it every day have differing understandings of it. However, here are a few things I’ve found to be universal, or at least I teach them as such:

1) You’ve got to AGREE to go off the record with the source. In other words, when the gasbag you are interviewing starts off a sentence with “Well, off the record, I think…” The quote starts at “Well…” The source can’t unilaterally decide to go off the record.

2) There has to be a good reason WHY you let them go off the record. Whistleblowers are always risky, as you never know who has an axe to grind, but in most cases, you get good information out of them. People who are victims of crimes, have undergone procedures that are viewed as extremely private or have a realistic fear for their safety or career fit this category. The asshole who doesn’t want to tell you how great of a time he’s having at the Beaver County Fair and Tractor Pull doesn’t get anonymity just because he wants it.

3) The information you are gathering can’t be found via another source or without this person. If you’ve got Deep Throat in a parking garage, you’re pretty much stuck agreeing to a lot of deep background. If you’ve got one employee out of 100,000, all of whom know the exact same thing, you might want to do a bit more digging before giving one guy the golden ticket to anonymity.

I teach more than that, but those are pretty standard. Most journalists would probably agree to that or at least acknowledge that this is not outside the realm of what a good journalist should have heard. That’s what makes the situation at Columbia’s public lecture program so appalling.

 The university shifted its policy on its public journalism lectures to be “off the record” conversations with editors in the magazine field. This started with Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair. The journalism department made this rationale:

The j-school's reasoning, according to Elizabeth Fishman, associate dean for communications, is that these lectures, unlike other public events that take place there, are designed primarily for the benefit of the students--students who, it should be noted, are paying top dollar to enroll in Columbia's yearlong program. (When this reporter was enrolled during the 2007-2008 academic year, base tuition, not including living expenses, was more than $40,000.) Members of the public are invited as a courtesy, Fishman said, and while no state secrets are being revealed here, the idea is to "allow the conversations to be as candid as possible. Some editors are not going to be as candid if it's on the record." She also noted that the talks are becoming "increasingly covered."

 In other words, holy shit, JOURNALISM might be involved and one of these people might actually say something NEWSWORTHY! We can’t people hear that kind of shit. And what kinds of things did Graystock Monsignor the XXXVI have to say that were SO PRIVATE they couldn’t POSSIBILY be released to the non-Columbia crowd? Check out this guy’s Twitter feed and you’ll see.

It’s the kind of stuff James Bond would kill for, obviously. (And of course, the irony is that someone couldn't stop this guy from liveblogging the event. So much for "off the record...")

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. In 2008, Indiana University invited former U.S. Security Advisor Meghan O’Sullivan to speak at a public lecture. When the student newspaper attempted to cover it, the kids were told that if the whole lecture couldn’t be “off the record,” O’Sullivan wouldn’t speak. In other words, “Don’t fuck this up for all of us.”  The kids called bullshit and O’Sullivan came down with an upset stomach that was so severe, the lecture had to be cancelled. The illness, however, wasn’t bad enough to keep her from showing up at a dinner that night in which the school honored her and presented her a plaque.

In bringing guest lectures to his classes at the University of Pennsylvania, professor Ted Hershberg has hosted these lectures as being “completely off the record.” The reason:

In 2009, Deirdre Martinez, director of the Penn in Washington program, thought it might be a good idea to record guest lectures, but her request was refused, even by speakers who weren’t speaking off the record.

“No one wants to get caught recorded saying something embarrassing,” Martinez said

 

I get the difference between class lectures and public speaking engagements. However, here’s the problem: these are JOURNALISM people whose JOB it is to GET IMPORTANT INFORMATION and convey it to THE PUBLIC saying, “Oh, well, we wouldn’t want any of this to get out, now would we?”

You idiots are the ones training the next generation of people how to be the quiet, polite journalists who just write shit down unless they’re told not to. In opposition to this, we get the journalists who hang in trees to try to get a cock shot of Justin Bieber as he snorts coke off the chest of a 10-year-old girl. By not teaching people how to be responsible, we’re creating a dichotomy that is shitty on both ends.

If you don’t want to have a public lecture because you might call your boss an asshole or because you might reveal the size of your dick, fine. There’s no rule that says you have to get on stage and make a fuckwit of yourself. However, you can’t say “open to the public” and then not be “open.” If Grayschmeck Von Dickenhole the MCMLVIII wants to talk off the record, promote the event for what it is:

“Columbia University presents a catty discussion with one rich asshole who will now be speaking to you other rich assholes the way rich assholes do behind the backs of the unwashed masses. No recording devices or photos, please. We wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea.”

A self-feeding loop of stupid

The big showdown in Wisconsin this week was for the Supreme Court. You can call it a non-partisan race if you want to, but that’s as disingenuous as Archie Bunker saying he’s not racist because he lived next to George Jefferson. In Milwaukee, the big question was if Chris Abele or Jeff Stone would win the county executive seat that Governor Deadeyes left behind. As most of the “good” TV comes out of that area, the exec race became almost statewide news as well.

Lost in the shuffle was the self-feeding loop of stupid that more than a dozen cities and towns helped push along. School districts throughout the state saw at least one school referendum fail. In Omro, two questions failed while in Racine, all three failed.

Schools sought funds to improve facilities, augment technology and extend educational programs. In most cases the figures would add very little to property tax bills or were key for essential repairs.

The $1 million asked for in Omro, for example, would have added $9 per $100,000 of assessed value to the average property tax bill.  In New Glarus, the $10 million would go to adding classroom space to a school that was last renovated in 1962. It would also do major repairs to the roof and the mechanical systems. The Highland District in Iowa County sought $535,000 to replace the roof on the middle school, upgrade the kitchen and repair a parking lot. All of these were rejected.

Eau Claire wanted to build and early learning center. Racine asked for money to continue educational programs that were started with stimulus money that was running out. Both were denied.

Improvements to schools are important, but with Walker’s budget repair bill and his upcoming budget bill in the works, funding from these referendums is vital to making these things happen. Walkers plan will cut, on average, more than $500 worth of state aid per student to school districts in the state.

As a total package, the Republicans are making schools dark, creepy, leaky places with antiquated systems and low-end technology. They’re also telling people that the reason WHY these places are dark, creepy and old is because all the money goes to the teachers and their union. Thus, when the under-informed/brainwashed voters arrive at the polls, they say, “Shit, no, I’m not funding that! Let the teachers make do.”

Never forget, in the Republican reality, teachers are the enemy. They have good unions in many places. They’re smart. They have education beyond what the governor and many legislators have. They question things that don’t make sense. They are rarely persuaded or dissuaded by arguments that can fit on a bumper sticker. Worst of all, if they’re good at their jobs, they’ll train the whole next generation of children to be the same way. Smart, educated questioners who think for themselves will then abound.

So the best way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to keep education at a minimum. Make the schools stay shitty. Don’t give schools money to improve education or technology. Make people think all teachers take their daily constitutional on a gold-plated toilet and wipe up with C-notes.

Then and only then will the state be safe for these politicians who thrive on the ignorance of others.