Preview Paddy Strikes Again

I hate to interrupt my season premiere of "Eureka" for this, but every time I think I can get out, he drags me back ... you know the thing.

Anyway, McIlheran is earning his "Preview Patty" nickname this weekend. I got this excerpt of his Sunday column--yes, the Sunday column, so no linkity-blinkity--in my inbox at a bit after 6 this evening...

That is from Jay Bullock. Read what silly thing Preview Paddy is whining about now, and how Jay must have been watching too much Iron Chef, judging from the way he fillets Paddy.

Excuse Me, Waiter, There's A McFly In My Soup

Dan Bice has another article on JSOnline about l'Affaire de McFly. This one is so chock full of goodies, it is hard to know where to begin.

Bice tells us that the two lovebirds shared over 20o emails before the affair allegedly started. In one of the emails, McBride is not so subtly asking Flynn out for drinks. In another, Flynn showed a bit of clairvoyance:

"Once the article is declared done, with the expectation that you won’t be ‘covering’ me in your professional capacity, I guess we wouldn’t be violating journalistic ethics (notice I didn’t make a smart remark) if we stayed connected and I received the benefit of your particular perspective," the chief wrote on Jan 6.

It would indicate that they were ready to "do the deed", so to speak, but were conscious of how it would look if they did consummate their illicit affair before the article was printed. Even though they might not have had the physical part of the affair yet, to give them the benefit of the doubt, it does show that McBride had already thrown her journalistic ethics out the window. Of course, we already know that she did that a long, long time ago.

McBride also admits that she cannot be an objective reporter:

Elsewhere, McBride admits she can’t be objective about Gov. Jim Doyle, whom she dislikes immensely, and once proposed doing a story on District Attorney John Chisholm for Milwaukee Magazine. But she said the magazine shot down the suggestion because Chisholm is "too boring," an assessment with which she agreed.

And why would she want to do a story about someone she found boring? The Reasonable Progressive makes some uncomfortable observations about this part of the article.

Others have also taken their turns at this. Harris Kane has one of the best titles, though, with his "McBride's Hike On The Appalachian Trail."

Illy-T notes that the commenters on Bice's story can be worse than anything us dastardly lefty bloggers could or (usually) would do.

Mike Mathias, who again forgets us here, makes note of the Sykes Connection.

On a final note, I would be remiss if I did not include this:

But the journalist quickly began filling Flynn’s e-mail account with her thoughts and opinions. For instance, on Jan. 1, she expressed frustration with a negative Journal Sentinel editorial despite a drop in city crime. "Sometimes I wish I was writing a column, not a feature story," she wrote.

Um, Jessica, you already are writing a column, albeit not a very good one.

B.O.P.

Harris Kane, the clever blogger that brought us Waterboard for Walker, strikes gold again with B.O.P.:

Please join Heartland Hollar's B.O.P CAMPAIGN today and encourage the MJS to "Buy Out Patty!"

We would like to see Patrick McIlheran gone, so if he isn't laid off for contributing to the papers drop in revenue, then maybe they will at least "Buy Out Patty."

He also has a contest going on for the tweeter crowd. Read his post for the details.

On The Consistency Of Thought And Deed

Owen has his knickers in a twist over this Internet meme being turned now to poke fun at the lame-duck Governor of a Northern state. The caption generator has been around for a while and has been used with all sorts of brunts.

But now, he's all upset that someone has captioned it to make fun of the Quitting Governor and he just doesn't like it. Not one boot-stamping, jodhpur-flapping bit. I mean, what kind of a lowlife would turn to subtitling an outake from a Hollywood film to make a joke linking someone to Hitler? Oh, that's right. It was Owen back in January of 2008.

Then it was funny. Now it's an outrage.

Speaking of outrageous, from what paragon did Owen get the tip to the Hitler Ha-Ha? Guess before you peek.

Bad Decision Making

Now that we have a new state budget, I don't know of many people that are completely thrilled with it. I also know that not many people are overly enthused with Governor Jim Doyle, because of this budget.

But there are many things to complain about, both with the budget and with the governor.

One has to wonder if it was good decision making that led to Jessica McBride to complain that the governor broke a promise.

Should He Stay Or Should He Go?

Most political junkies are already aware that Fred Dooley, proprietor of Real Dimwit Wisconsin and "official blogger" for the MacGuyver Institution threw out a racist tweet.

It's been covered by most lefty bloggers including Zach and Al at Blogging Blue, One Wisconsin Now, and Cory Liebmann. It was even covered by a right winger, Rabbit.

Mike Mathias and Harris Kane not only cover the story, but argue that Fred should be fired from the Institution.

I would respectfully disagree with this stance. The MacGuyverians do not have to fire Dooley.

This is still America, and we do have rights. Dooley has a right to write what he wants, no matter how ignorant it might be, as long as it is not slanderous or libel, or would endanger public safety unnecessarily. Just as we have the right to point out that they are being fronted by a guy that makes racist tweets, and then fails to own up to his responsibility.

Fischer Gets A Smackdown

From Greg Kowalski, regarding the Sendik's in Franklin shutting down:

...Since Janet Evans has changed her blog to only cover School Board-related issues, the only blogger left on that site to cover anything Franklin is none other than our state senator's aide, Kevin Fischer. Fischer penned a piece and basically left his arms up in the air. He hemmed and hawed over it, and from what I read the only thing I could pick up on was something along the lines of, "Maybe the economy did it...but maybe not...what we do know is "the market decided". "The market decided"? There are so many different factors to insert into what "the market" decides it isn't even funny. However since Fischer, in my opinion, simply despises people like me or fellow resident John Michlig, he won't dare come close to actually saying that perhaps some of the reasons Michlig and I have pointed out for years are actually coming to fruition. Instead, he mocks us and the people who agreed with us, saying, "It had nothing to do with the cuts of beef, pedestrian access (Gimme a break), ripples in the parking lot, or number of bike paths."

[...]

Unfortunately, Fischer seems to be too proud of his boss's campaign contributor to dare question anything about it, much less perhaps say, "Hey - maybe Kowalski and Michlig were right about some things...". "The market" could have been there, but the council at that time (2007) was too quick in giving off approvals and too much in love with their own campaign contributions from Mr. Carstensen to even bat an eye at the situation in general. If the council would have done its homework, much like I did back in January (which ended up in several posts), they would have seen something could have been wrong with the data given. They would have seen that things might not have all been 100% there, and thus could have shaken some confidence in general. Last but not least, they should have made the very simple observation that, hey, why on earth are we putting in a big box discount retailer in what the city wanted to be its future civic center district.

Kind of shows where Fischer's head is in all this, now doesn't it?

He Did Not Complete Her

Poor Dan Bice. Jessica McBride dropped him as a friend on Facebook:



We here at Whallah! extend our congratulations condolences to Mr. Bice.

Ask A Silly Question, Get A Silly Answer

I asked a question last week:

How much longer before Team Walker can announce endorsements from Governor Mark Sanford, Senator John Ensign, Senator David Vitter, Senator Larry Craig, and of course, Jessica McBride?

I got a silly answer yesterday.

Maybe she will do an in depth interview with Walker, and we can eliminate two problems at the same time.

McBride's Ethics, Or Lack Thereof, Back Into Play

Bruce Murphy, editor of Milwaukee Magazine, came out earlier this week in a strong defense of Jessica McBride's journalistic integrity. Some on the right pounced on that, also coming to her defense.

Today, however, is a new day, and with that comes new developments. Such as Bruce Murphy stepping back from his defense of McBride:

I must regretfully agree with the vociferous objections of some readers. I think I was too defensive in reacting to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story reporting the affair between McBride and Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn. Worse, I am guilty of the same thing I accused JS reporter Daniel Bice of: I failed to do due diligence regarding the situation.

Specifically, I neglected to demand from McBride all of the e-mails between her and Flynn. I have now done that and was taken aback at what I received. The e-mails do confirm that, other than their one interview in December, McBride and Flynn never met face-to-face until May 1, at their now-infamous encounter at an Irish bar. (In fact, Flynn was using his office e-mail account until then, which suggests neither McBride nor Flynn thought they were doing anything wrong; these are all public records.)

But the e-mails also suggest the two got chatty and friendly – strictly through e-mail, granted, but it’s a lot of e-mail – as soon as McBride finished reporting her story on Jan. 5. I’m also not confident I’ve seen all the e-mail, as McBride couldn’t be sure she hadn’t erased some. That’s all rather disturbing.

But that ain't all, folks. Harris Kane, of Heartland Hollar, has been putting in some time considering a different aspect of this story:

The "official story" from the MJS hasn't been that she was precluded from covering Bucher "once they began dating," but rather that she was precluded from covering Bucher once they "learned" she was dating Bucher.

Here is what the MJS wrote last week, "When editors learned that she was dating Bucher, McBride was precluded by the company's ethics policy from covering stories involving the prosecutor, according to Journal Sentinel Editor Martin Kaiser."

There is a big difference between "once they began dating" and "when editors learned they were dating" unless you believe that McBride told her editors that she had begun dating the married and elected DA of Waukesha County at a time in 1995 when she wasn't covering him. Ya think?

Yet a third angle comes from Mike Mathias, who believes that the paper would be better off by getting an ombudsman.

Right Wing Radio Show Host Arrested

(Un)fortunately, it wasn't one of our local ones.

Heartland Hollar has the full scoop.

Interesting Endorsements

We all know that Charlie Sykes has been carrying water for Scott Walker for a long, long time.

Now, Newt Gingrich is coming to town next week to show support for Walker.

How much longer before Team Walker can announce endorsements from Governor Mark Sanford, Senator John Ensign, Senator David Vitter, Senator Larry Craig, and of course, Jessica McBride?

Q & A With Jessica McBride

Q: Jessica, now that you've been outed for having an extramarital affair with the subject of one of your magazine articles, having smeared your own personal and professional ethics, putting the future of not one, but two, families into serious jeopardy, and possibly ruined your own career, what are you going to do next?

A:



Via Vicki McKenna's Facebook page.

The Intellectual Elite Of The Right

A faithful reader cued me on this one. Vicki McKenna, the version of Jessica McBride that still has somehow hung on to her show, has a number of Facebook pages.

On her page, someone posted this:

Here it is blown up:



Would someone tell me how your suppose to even have a conversation with people so ignorant that they consider this to be cute?

She Takes Us To New Heights

While reading Jay's post which I cited in the previous post, I noticed that he commented on how the story brought new readers to folkbum's. This caused me to wonder what McFly did for Whallah!

I really wasn't sure since I am busy with some other projects, like my own site (shameless plug, yes, but so what?). When I finally remembered the password to the sitemeter for here, I almost fell out of my chair:



On behalf of myself and my co-authors, I would like to thank the gentle reader, as well as Jessica McBride, who made it all possible.