McIlheran, MJS Are Not To Be Believed

Last November, Jay Bullock of folkbum's rambles and rants, wrote this post about a column by Patrick McIlheran, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's in-house propagandist. Besides the column just being plain foolish, PaddyMac had notified Jay of the column in advance of it being published in the paper or on JSOnline:

I am a lucky guy. I think. Somehow, after all these years of duels and ripostes, in the last couple of weeks Patrick McIlheran has added me to his mailing list. That means every few days or so I get an email from him with the full text of a column of his slated to run in the next day or two.

Thursday night I got his preview of Friday's column*. (Confidential to PM in Bay View: Next time, use the BCC field. Your sole liberal correspondent might feel a bit weird about being your sole liberal correspondent, and was probably happier when he believed there was a more even distribution.) "Here’s an early look at my column in Friday's Journal Sentinel. You’re seeing it because I send a heads-up to a select group of talkers and bloggers whose work I admire. You’re among them." See? Lucky!

Gretchen Schuldt, of Milwaukee Rising, understated the obvious by pointing out that this was a violation of journalistic ethics. She also took it another step by getting in touch with George Stanley of MJS, who said that it Paddy's actions were inappropriate and shouldn't have happened (emphasis mine):

Patrick McIlheran’s pre-publication sharing of a column with a generally right wing bunch of bloggers was a mistake that shouldn’t have happened and shouldn’t happen again, according to Journal Sentinel managing editor George Stanley (previous posts here and here).

Gretchen later wrote in the same post that if PaddyMac ever did do it again, he should have "his butt kicked up between his ears." I expressed my doubt about believing Mr. Stanley with that claim in this post.

Well, I hope Gretchen has some good ass-kicking boots, because he went ahead and did it again.

Jay has another post up regarding McIlheran's poorly thought out propaganda piece that is due to hit the papers tomorrow (again, emphasis mine):

As sometimes happens, my inbox was graced this afternoon with an email from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Patrick McIlheran, who retains a place of high regard in my rogues gallery even if I don't bother writing about him much anymore. (Tom Foley has taken up a lot of the slack.) The email is pimping his column in tomorrow's paper, which is about the study of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program that was released earlier this week, which I wrote about here. Here's a line from the email:

Anyhow, in Sunday morning's paper, I'll look at the idiot notion that the school choice study results mean the program ought to be shut down.

Which threw me for a loop: I've followed the release of the study, the reaction, and the news about it, and I haven't read or heard a single person use the study as the basis for a call to shut down the program.

The rest of Jay's post points out how McIlheran is basically lying through his keyboard about school choice, and fails to accredit Jay by name (or by link on the website version of it, even though he wouldn't hesitate to do that for Rick Esenberg or Dad29).

This pretty much answers the question of whether McIlheran or the MJS have any integrity left.

But it does leave two other questions:

1. Will the MJS give us subscribers a chance for sneak previews, or if not, then a discount seeing that we are not receiving the same service?
2. Will Gretchen gives advanced warning so that we can bring a video camera and a lunch for when Paddy's buttocks ends up between his ears?