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.

McFly And The "No-Snitch" Policy

Most of the right wing bloggers, when publicly discussing l'Affaire de McFly, if they choose to discuss it at all, are either willing to throw McBride under the bus, or are just saying "to err is human."

However, there are a small number of people that are going to bat to defend McFly, especially the Mc part of it. Their approach appears to be two-fold.

One is to attack the messenger. Mary from Freedom Eden, who is even more obsessed with the story that the average Whallah follower/reader/author. She really lays into Dan Bice, who broke the story, in this post. She starts out like this:

I get the feeling Dan Bice likes the spotlight. It's heady stuff. In the past two days, he's made TV appearances, given radio interveiws[sic], received lots of reaction and feedback from the public.

It seems he enjoys being a star reporter, sort of like a composite of Woodward and Bernstein.

Naturally, Bice continues to milk the story he chose to spill, the affair between Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn and Jessica McBride.

And then she just keeps trying to belittle Bice in any way she can think of.

The same author wrote another post which highlights the rising "no-snitch policy":

Speaking of ethics, one aspect of this story that's not receiving appropriate attention is the anonymous source, the one with access to the smoking gun communications between Flynn and McBride.

[...]

I want to know how someone gets their hands on such personal communications.

I question if it was done legally. Does Bice know?

I want to know why this anonymous source would choose to take that information to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Certainly, people are aware of less than flattering happenings in the lives of public figures and they don't run to the media with the details.

I want to know who wanted to trash Ed Flynn and Jessica McBride. Was someone out to damage Paul Bucher?

Are these politically motivated dirty tricks?

Bice claims he has no clue about his source. I wonder if he's at all curious.

Jay Bullock encountered the same phenomenon with Dad29. He expounds much better than I could here:

This is dumb for two reasons: One, it suggests that somehow evidence of a transgression (and a Class E felony!) is somehow more important than the transgression itself.

Two, and this is the key, the statement perfectly encapsulates everything that went wrong with the treatment of (alleged) lawbreaking by the Bush administration in the last decade. Wiretaps being done without a warrant in violation of the law? Who told you that? CIA black sites scattered across Eastern Europe? Let's get that reporter's notes! There are photographs out there showing detainee abuse? Stop their release!

Don't worry, gentle readers, we won't let such inane attempts of diversion distract us from our mission.

Flynn/McBride - The Musical

Father Figure by George Michael:




Mary MacGregor:



B.J. Thomas

McBride's Lame Excuse

All of southeast Wisconsin is abuzz about L'Affaire Ecarlate de McBride.

McBride came out with a short release (actually an email) of an excuse, trying to protect her "professional" (as in what does she teach, anyway?) integrity. Her excuse reads (emphasis mine):

It is because the relationship with Police Chief Flynn has unfortunately become public that this statement is released. This was a deeply personal matter between two adults who have addressed the relationship with those who need to know the details. I am grateful to my family, friends and the many other people who have expressed kindness and support. It is truly humbling.

The romantic relationship did not occur until long after the reporting and editing of the magazine article on Chief Flynn. I completed and turned in the Milwaukee Magazine story on Chief Flynn on Jan. 5, 2009 and a final edit was turned in Feb. 16. The story was in mailboxes in mid-April. At that point, my professional relationship with him had ended.

The romantic relationship with Chief Flynn began in May at Brocach’s Irish pub – four months after I completed and turned in the Milwaukee Magazine article.

Contrary to a media report, I never interviewed Chief Flynn at Brocach’s. Prior to my May social meeting with him at Brocach’s, I only met with and interviewed Chief Flynn once in December 2008 at the police department with other officers and the public information spokeswoman for MPD present. At the time of the Brocach’s meeting in May, I was an academic who no longer covered Flynn and would not ever do so again.

I ask that the media now respect the privacy of all of the parties involved.

This caused some red flags to go up, but I wasn't sure why. Call it my Whallah! instinct.

Apparently, it also apparently caused Dan Bice, who continues his coverage with this new story, some suspicions:

"The romantic relationship with Chief Flynn began in May at Brocach's Irish Pub - four months after I completed and turned in the Milwaukee Magazine article," she wrote.

That's, in short, what she put out there.

Even more interesting is what she left out.

Her statement fails to address details from a letter that she wrote to Flynn last month. In that note, the 39-year-old journalist describes how it was love at first sight during her first interview with the 61-year-old top cop. She also suggests that her feelings and attitude toward the chief affected her handling of the story.

"Perceived you instantly - knew you were a good person who does things for the right reason," the letter says. "As a result, I began to struggle with the story - having to give time to vitriolic, baseless critics."

Bice goes on to give the reason for McBride's defensive and elusive response:

Overall, the tone of Flynn's statement was contrite, whereas McBride's was combative.

The stakes for her, though, are pretty high.

McBride, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has taught ethics as part of her journalism classes. Reporters are forbidden from writing about individuals to whom they have strong personal ties.

In the next year or two, McBride will be up for "indefinite status," which is similar to tenure for academic staff members. Officials in the journalism department have declined to comment so far on the matter.

The right wing bloggers are hanging a lot on this one statement from McBride. They have started to champion her again, saying something to the effect of: "See, Jess said it's OK, so there's nothing to it. Bice and all the lefties owe her an apology!"

To which I would respectfully and simply say, "Horsefeathers!" (Actually a more apropos compound word dealing with male bovine excrement would be more likely to be uttered, but you get the idea.)

The Milwaukee Magazine story was not her last piece on Flynn. Almost everyone seems to have forgotten that McBride also has a weekly editorial column for the Waukesha Freeman.

On April 25, 2009, just one week before the supposed start of their affair, McBride wrote an editorial about the open carry controversy. In it, McBride talks about Flynn's policy on how to deal with a person who is openly carrying a gun. She is somewhat critical of the policy, but she is very careful not to mention Flynn by name, as if he is somehow not responsible for his own policies.

That editorial could help make much more sense of a phrase from her mysterious love letter, in which she wrote:

"Perceived you instantly - knew you were a good person who does things for the right reason," the letter says. "As a result, I began to struggle with the story - having to give time to vitriolic, baseless critics."

It is as if she is apologizing for having to write something critical of his policy. She wouldn't want to hurt the feelings of her paramour, now would she? After all, he completes her.

Name That Outragee

Which compassionate American said this???

Again, can you imagine the 24/7 media witch hunt had Edwards been a conservative?

and

Lots of people commit adultery. That doesn’t give the next married person a free pass.

but then tells us all to just move along with...

This is none of our business. [...] Leave these two alone.

It's about being consistent in your message and acting with integrity, Kevin. Real reporters don't sleep with their subjects except in bad fiction.

This is a tragedy for at least two families but we need to remember that two adults, trusted and influential in the community, made choices that led to this result. This is not the result of an accident.

She Completes Us: What Others Are Saying

As one could have guessed, l'Affaire ecalarte de McBride was the biggest talk of the town. Here is a sampling, in no particular order:

Sykes was falling all over himself this morning, trying to present himself as the non-judgmental friend, but at the same time, taking a certain amount of glee. That was probably just relief because it wasn't him for once caught on that hot seat.

The Brew City Brawler woke up from his slumber to address this issue first with the L'Affaire de Flynn, and again tonight with a trip down memory lane with L'Affair de Bucher.

Cindy Kilkenny experiences schadenfreude (and revenge) with McBride's "gold bricking history."

Jim McGuigen finds that now McBride and Sykes now have more in common than just bloviating.

Owen Robinson is his usual verbose self: Geez.

Our own grumps finds that McBride has a new definition to the phrase: Access granted by invitation only.

Elliot Stearns is so upset, he resorts to profanity.

The Reasonable Progressive is in shock.

Asian Badger is, well, Asian Badger.

Zach of Blogging Blue is tired of her hypocrisy. (Aren't we all?)

No Runny Eggs has a fairly balanced look at the issue, except for the obligatory right wing "yeah, but, Clenis!" line.

Lady Kay refers to them as "those sex starved Republicans."

Kevin Fischer wails, "Leave those two lovebirds alone!!!"

Jason Haas apparently can't stop giggling.

Blogger Beer alternates between it's just people being human and it's all the lefties' fault.

Michael Horne, who obviously never took McBride's class, since he has those mad journalistic skillz, shares a journalist's point of view.

Rabbit asks, "Who cares?"

Badger Blogger takes a pass, but to their credit, at leaves an open thread line on the subject.

Harris Kane gives us Part I, Part II and Part III (III shows a picture of who Jessica really screwed.

Bipolar Nation goes after McBride until he buys her lies.

Nick Schweitzer blames the gays (with tongue firmly in cheek).

Jay Bullock does a storm damage assessment. (In the comments, you can see Daddio trying, and failing, to do damage control.)

Tom McMahon proves himself to be a real blockead.

Steve Hanson is downright giddy in anticipation of watching right wingers squirm.

Rick Esenberg states that no one is without sin, and should cast no stones. Then he starts lobbing rocks.

Dan Cody reminds us that these are real people with real feelings.

And, saving the best for last, Mary from Freedom Eden, decides to take the approach of attacking the messenger. Then in the comment thread, she comes out to say that their adultery is no big deal. She later follows this up with "See, Jess said it's OK! That's all the proof I need."

The Cookie Crumbled

Xoff told us at the beginning of the week about the cryptic fortune cookie. Said cookie crumbled today.

I have to admit, when I first learned of the story last night, I experienced more than a bit of schadenfreude, and I still do to a certain extent. After all, this blogsite was originally inspired by McBride's inane rants and her propensity for foolishness. And there is they way she can be so judgmental and condemning of anyone that crosses her.

But I chose not to post on it last night, partially because I was working on my usual Walker tirade, and partially because I wanted time to digest the news and process what it means.

I have seen some say that this wasn't even newsworthy, but they couldn't be more wrong. This affair included the Milwaukee Police Chief for goodness sake. And the ramifications of this are overwhelming.

The most obvious is that both of these people have caused their families great, and maybe, insurmountable pain. Yes, I am aware of the story of McBride and Bucher and how they ended up being together, but there are still the kids to think of.

Then there are the people and other entities that will end up being collateral damage from their poor decision making.

Flynn is supposed to be the leader of Milwaukee's best. How is he supposed to command respect or hand out discipline when the men and women who serve under him know that he didn't live up to the standards of a law enforcement officer.

And to think he was supposed to be on his way to really great things in the law enforcement field. Who knows what he did to that now?

And what will the community think of the police due to Flynn's behavior? In many areas, there is at best a strained relationship with the police. Does anyone really think that this will improve when Flynn gives them another reason to disrespect them, however irrational that reason might be?

And what of McBride? She was supposed to be an instructor of journalistic ethics, for pity's sake! Do all of her students get a refund now? I know I would be feeling confused and/or bitter if the person who was supposed to be teaching me the importance of ethics turned out to be such a hypocrite.

And then there is the Waukesha Freeman and Milwaukee Magazine, who she has written for. When there was a rash of columnists at the big newspapers that were being busted for plagiarism and/or for just making things up, their employers suffered. I could easily see these two going through the same kind of problems. That is even more so for MM, since Bruce Murphy took the stance of "So what?"

I would say that the real characters of these paramours came out after this issue became public.

Flynn stood up like an adult and admitted his wrong, took full blame for it, and offered a public apology. What he did was still obviously wrong, but he made the best of a bad situation. It doesn't excuse his behaviors, but it does make one more willing to forgive, if not forget.

McBride on the other hand, first said nothing, then came out with a lame missive that showed she was only feeling remorse over the damage she did to her reputation rather than the damage she caused everyone else. This shows her to not be a hypocrite, but a rather shallow, selfish woman that is not worthy of anyone's sympathy.

But then again, we've known that for some time now. Just ask the gang at the Folsom Street Festival.

Unprece-demented

Fools in their own words.

Maciver Blogger Supports Fairness Doctrine

Sort of.

Fred is demanding equal access.

Sort of.

As near as I can parse his train of thought, it goes like this. Allowing equal access to media for all viewpoints is anti-competitive and cannot be allowed but if a private company decides to not allow all competing viewpoints then they must be boycotted.

I wonder if Charlie knows about this.

Cryptic cookie

Can't imagine what it could mean, but a woman I know says she found this advice in her fortune cookie recently:

"If Jessica McBride says she wants to interview your husband for a feature story, don't leave the room."

There Is No Comparison

During the past week, two anti-Semitic events occurred. One was when an aged, white supremacist went to the National Holocaust Museum and shot a guard to death. The other was Reverend Jeremiah Wright made an idiot's comment, blaming his lack of contact with President Obama on "them Jews."

James T. Harris and Patrick McIlheran show their true colors when they try to make the two events comparable. Both of these fools show that they are the ultimate hypocrites. They preach about the value of human life, but then have the gall to take an old man shooting a security guard to death and say it is no worse than an old preacher shooting off his mouth.

Are they that frickin' desperate that they have to belittle a man's life just to defend their own built in hatred and bigotry? Simply unbelievable.

Others have noticed McIlheran's irresponsible comments as well.

Illy-T on the subject:

Nazism isn't a right-wing ideology. People only believe it is because the lefty New York Times told them so. Also because its full name is National Socialism. Therefore, James von Brunn is a liberal.

(McIlheran also appears oblivious to the fact that for right-wing kooks like von Brunn, "neocon" is synonymous with "Zionist.")

And Dan Cody (in a really must read post):

But that doesn’t stop McIlheran from picking up where they left off… with ellipses!

He manages to turn this story away from what it really is, a white supremacist anti-government nutjob who murdered an innocent man, and into a pro NRA diatribe that makes the same old tired jabs at liberals (New York Times!) that we all expect from Patrick. And as we’ve also come to expect from Pat, his incoherent rambling fails to land any of them.

There’s a place for constructive, intelligent conservative opinions in every paper, MJS included. McIlherans columns are none of those things however. They are simply a logically disjointed and poorly paraphrased version of what he saw on the Glen Beck show last night.

Wisconsin’s largest newspaper can, and should, do better.

Surprise!

Jay Bullock, blogger extraordinaire and dedicated teacher, give PaddyMac a lesson:

McIlheran Watch: I was surprised to read this blog post

by folkbum

Of course, the only thing surprising about about it is that apparently he has an editor.

With zaps like that, PaddyMac is probably longing for the days of a ruler across the knuckles.

There's No Correlation

Kevin Fischer thinks he's so smart. He's also the only one that thinks that, by the way.

Today, he condescendingly types in the words "And these people vote" and shows a video of people who are obviously not technophiles, and are describing their confusion about how to hook up their new digital converter to their TV. (I am giving Fischer the benefit of the doubt on the type of person he was referring to, since most of the people in the video are also African-American.)

I would like to see old Kevin show the correlation between technological prowess and political savvy. After all, Kevin is able to cope with the CommunityNOW blogging software, but doesn't know the first thing about good politics, usually resorting to his money-grubbing, hate-spewing ways.

McIlheran's A Liberal?

I would never have thought it myself, but apparently, Patrick McIlheran of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a bleeding-heart, pinko, commie liberal.

Or so one would believe if one could ever believe Kevin Fischer, who is complaining because *gasp* they print a column from the other side:

It’s pure garbage. It’s also incomprehensible (but maybe not considering the lefties that dominate the editorial pages and management of same at the MJS) that the paper would run such a volatile, explosive piece without a side-by-side piece written in rebuttal.

Seeing how Preview Paddy has about three columns too many each week, and has at least one or two quick hits, and spends most of the day browsing the web and copying other people's work for his blog, I would call that being prominent and dominant.

Good Question

Steven Hanson of Uppity Wisconsin is at the Democratic convention in Green Bay this weekend, and has been giving us updates.

In his most recent one, he is talking about Ben Masel who raised a very good point to ponder:

He [Masel] also made an interesting observation that many right-wing radio shows are being largely supported by advertising paid for by government agencies. This is particularly interesting in view of the declining financial status of Clear Channel radio - so the question here is why is the government supporting the radio shows of people like Rush Limbaugh?

It's time we get rid of these free loaders who keep feeding at the government trough.

What Do You Do When You've Got kNOthing?

You launch a new website.

The great thinkers have deferred to Ted Nugent to name the newest conservative flavor of the weekend and are fronting it with Vicki McKenna wannabe, Jerry Bader.

Now, normally these websites turn out to be little more than pop-ups in the grand scheme of political discussion. Does anybody remember the Wisconsin Institute for Leadership? That disappeared like smoke as soon as the checks all cleared. But this one has a hook on which to hang its silliness. Bader doesn't want to race to the bottom but, gosh darn it, he just has to.

I do not make Hitler analogies lightly; nor would I compare Barack Obama with Adolf Hitler, the greatest mass murderer of all time. BUT the dramatic changes that took place in Germany in the 1930’s and America today ARE analogous; in fact it’s happening even quicker here.

You may have seen some of Bader's listeners outside the Pres' Green Bay appearance. They were the ones holding signs that called for, "No Health Care," without a shred of awareness of the irony.

Bader has a chiseled himself some market share outside the Milwaukee/Madison AM reach and is using it to mobilize the Fox Valley to chant, "Stop That." No matter how he spells it, "kNOw means No."

No Talk Radio On Mars

Zippy The Pin Headed Journalist

Preview Paddy is never more at his worst than when he thinks he's being clever.

Today, he blogged about the high speed trains that he doesn't think is so high speed:

Seventy-eight mph to Minneapolis? Wow. That’s, um, well, that’s as fast as pretty much half the traffic in I-94 now travels, and those cars will actually get you to wherever you’re going, not just to the train station.

Really now. I suppose in the summer, if it's not raining, and if it's not rush hour, and you have a good traffic fairie sitting on your shoulder, that could be true.

But this is Wisconsin. Often, you don't get those kinds of breaks.

I'm Feeling Smarter Already

One of our regular readers and commenters is "Dan." Well, old Dan has had enough of just being a spectator and has gone for being a blogger himself, with a site he calls The Las Vegas Badger.

Since he was always kind enough to come visiting here, I would humbly ask the gentle reader to give him a visit as well.

My only dilemma now is this: When he screws up, do I correct him here or at Cog Dis?

They Taught Her To Be Illogical

From the scholarly Jason Haas:

UWM teaches elementary logic and other such logic classes.

Logic is a very good tool for turning the hollow arguments of right-wing squakers on their heads.

UWM also teaches journalism.

You need to take a class in formal reasoning in order to graduate with a journalism degree.

Jessica McBride is a non-tenured journalism instructor at UWM and a known right-wing squaker.

Therefore, a UWM journalism major taking Philosophy 211 or another course in reasoning and logic can turn Jessica McBride’s arguments on their heads.

Logic is a beautiful thing.

Don't Adjust Your Set

Yet another visit to that alternative reality known as conservative thought.

Help Wanted: Journalistic Babysitter

From Heartland Hollar:

We don't expect the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to provide a correction because of course to do so would be such a slippery slope that would amount to doubling their costs and creating an entire new paper to keep up with McIlheran. But we have a better idea (again), why don't they just fire the guy.

He is not only factually wrong more often than he is "right on," his "thoughts" have such a clearly narrow and shrinking appeal he makes bad business sense for a paper that is losing money. Any other worker who made this many mistakes would be shown the door.

What makes McIlheran so privileged, so entitled?

The least they could do is offer some "competition" on their own pages with an opposing (and accurate) view. Or they could simply provide the journalistic babysitting that McIlheran so obviously needs.

Read the whole post to see what Preview Paddy got wrong this time.

McIlheran Wrong On Rights (But What Else Is Old?)

Preview McIlheran undermines the Constitution by saying that the protected right to vote is not as important as attending a teen pop rock concert.

O'Reilly Claims Victimhood In Tiller Murder

From Griper Blade (my newest must read site):

I wasn't going to comment on Bill O'Reilly's reaction to the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Keith Olbermann is right to call him "Bill-O the Clown." O'Reilly's just a self-important blowhard idiot with a tremendous ego, a braying ass who freaks out over made-up non-issues like his childish "War on Christmas," where saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" is just the worst possible insult to the Christian faith. He's impossible to take seriously. Sure, he's got a top-rated cable news talk show, but that's a case of being big fish in a very small pond. In terms of market share, O'Reilly probably gets his ass kicked nightly by reruns of Everyone Loves Raymond on TBS. Why anyone takes him seriously is beyond me.

The author goes on in a must read piece highlighting the psychoses of some right wing extremists, and end with this:

And O'Reilly didn't just feign surprise, he pretended (or maybe believed) he was being attacked unfairly by people pointing out his hate speech. "Now it is clear that the far left is exploiting the death of the doctor," Bill-O said in response to Tiller's murder. "Those vicious individuals want to stifle any criticism of people like Tiller. That and hating FOX News is the real agenda here."

That's right, a man was shot dead in church -- in front of his family -- but Bill O'Reilly and FOX News are the real victims here. Because people are being mean to them. Bill then moved on to what he considers the "real" news -- a story about comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and rapper Eminem. Bill's US Magazine-level intellect has never been so apparent.

You're not Hal Turner, Bill. You're really not. Apparently, there's someone out there who's even more stupid and irresponsible than you are and who can't see that line you do your highwire act on. But you aren't Edward R. Murrow, either -- as much as you obviously believe you are. You're just a melon-headed fool who's been lucky enough to find an audience of idiots more simpleminded than even you.

Damn, but to be able to write like that.

Melanin Is Skin Deep, But Racism Goes Down To The Bone

Preview McIlheran has a simple philosophy in life: If it didn't happen to him, it doesn't exist.

This can be seen on subjects like waterboarding, which he claims isn't really torture. In other words, since he's never been waterboarded, he's never felt tortured, so waterboarding isn't torture.

He gives us another fine example regarding racism.

National columnist Leon Pitts, who is African American, wrote an article which was reproduced in Friday's issue of the local newspaper. This article pointed out some of the way that many people will fabricate stories to cover their own misdeeds. These fabricated stories have an overwhelming chance of involving a white person being allegedly attacked by a person of color, and go as far as being heavily laden with typical racial stereotypes.

PaddyMac, who has never been called the "n word," or labeled as nappy-haired, or have been falsely accused of a crime based on his skin color alone, believes that Mr. Pitts is making all of this up:

And, hey, while you’re at it, why did you – yes, you again – deny Pitts a job and then call him a thief? Read to the bottom of his column. That’s what he says you did. And you blew up his school and then called him ignorant. Why did you do that, huh? Why did you kill his father and then complain he was filled with rage?

What, you say you didn’t? You were born after Jim Crow died, after MLK was already regarded a martyr? You grew up thinking black people were just as good as anyone else because “Sesame Street” and every adult you’ve ever known has told you precisely that?

Hmm. Must not have been you Pitts was thinking of. He was addressing his own ginned-up boogeyman, I guess.

Perhaps PaddyMac thinks that these types of things only happen in faraway places and that is why they don't really exist in his mind. Well, let me see if I can jar his selective memory with this name: Jesse Anderson. If that was insufficient, read further:

Anderson was serving a life sentence for killing his wife, Barbara E. Anderson, whom he stabbed 23 times in August 1992. Anderson had blamed two black men for attacking him and his wife (both white) as they left a Milwaukee restaurant, T.G.I. Friday's, at the Northridge mall. Anderson presented police with a Los Angeles Clippers basketball cap he claimed to have knocked off the head of one of the assailants. When details of the crime and the cap were made public, a local teenager told police Anderson had purchased the hat from him a few days earlier. Anderson eventually confessed to the crime.

The incomparable Emily Mills has more on Paddy's perverse view of reality.

Double Standards

From Harris Kane:

Their theory goes something like this. "The media" has given more attention to the murder in Kansas because "the media" is biased against the shooter, a radical, right-wing extremist.

The problem with this false argument is that the shooter in Arkansas is a radical, right-wing, extremist too. He is Muslim-convert who has embraced the Islamic jihad, something the wing-nuts incorrectly believe is a "left-wing" movement. It's not, but that doesn't fit their frame so they all parrot the misinformation in order to have it fit neatly into their "media bias" whine.

Read the rest here.

Nice Racks

Today was the official unveiling of the bike racks on Milwaukee County buses. County Board Supervisors Chris Larson and Patricia Jursik gave them a ceremonial tryout to introduce them this morning.

Sykes had a little stroke about them. He wailed about how the racks were paid for with "free money" and mocked the two supervisors for their excitement on this. Sykes then complained that this was a big boondoggle and claimed that no one would use them and they weren't good for this climate.

Sykes was, of course, lying through his teeth again. First of all, cities with much worse climates than ours have found great success with them, and where ever the bike racks have been tried, there has been a great increase in ridership.

Secondly, the federal tax dollars came from a program under the Bush administration and had nothing to do with the stimulus funding that the right try to dismiss as being "free money." The local match came from a bicycling group.

If Sykes wanted to complain about a real waste of taxpayer money, he should have talked about how Scott Walker sold the grounds and used some of the proceeds to rent the land he just sold. Or on how Walker wanted to use the rest of the proceeds, as well as the County's share of the "free $91 million" transit grant from the feds to give the beneficiaries of this land deal their own private rapid transit bus and bus route.

But the really amazing thing is that Sykes, given his past history of behaviors and attitudes, was unable to appreciate these really nice racks.

You Don't Mess Around With Slim

Some people learn the hard way. Kevin Stevenson got the boot from his job as spokesman for the Republican Party of Marathon County. His crime? Not genuflecting enough and daring to question the authority and infallibility of the head of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh:

Kevin Stevenson said he believes his March guest column in the Wausau Daily Herald criticizing Limbaugh turned local party members against him.

"They felt I was too moderate in what I was speaking and printing," he said.

Stevenson, who characterizes himself as a "John McCain-type of Republican," said the conflict was a microcosm of a national debate about what political message to put forward. A debate at a local Republican meeting on Thursday "got hostile and it got personal," he said.

When Stevenson criticized Limbaugh for saying he wanted President Barack Obama to fail, other local Republicans wrote to the newspaper, arguing that conservatives ought to want Obama's policies to fail.

"This is just part of what you're seeing nationwide," he said. "(Party members) know that I don't agree with Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh is hurting us more than helping us."

It only gets funnier:

Party Chairman Joe Wachtel said he disagreed with the decision to remove Stevenson as spokesman, but that he also disagreed with a moderate position."I don't think the Republican Party and the conservative movement is going to be served by being Democrat-lite," Wachtel said.

Apparently, they don't like ancient Greek or Roman artists either.

Their Silence Is Deafening

Not too long ago, Charlie Sykes, Patrick McIlheran and the rest of the Posse Comatose were simply outraged at organizations like MoveOn.org, when they called General Patraeus "General Betray Us." They were completely beside themselves that those dirty liberals would try to belittle and smear one of America's greatest military minds, or so they said then.

Now, they are completely silent about their military hero. Probably because of this (emphasis mine):

Speaking with Radio Free Europe on Sunday, General David Patreaus came out with two very clear statements that are not likely to make former Vice President Dick Cheney very happy. In short, Patraeus is siding with President Barack Obama on the matters of closing Guantanamo Bay prison, and ending the government sanctioned practice of torture on detainees.

As Charlie would say, "Cue the crickets."

See also Heartland Hollar.

The Obvious Flaws

From Illy-T:

iCelebrated Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel advertorial calumnist Patrick McIlheran promises them here. Needless to say, he delivers none.

That's how obvious they are: they just go without saying.

[...]

Although I'm not inclined to voice the concern, many others have: Maybe this is why newspapers are going down the tubes?