Why Chuckles Should Do Better Than Rip and Read

Charlie had a good time with this today before it came out that, well, just give it a look.

From Brett Davis' press release (emphasis added):

Lieutenant Governor candidate and State Representative Brett Davis has learned that the Wisconsin Department of Corrections is now
using state dollars to pay for driver’s licenses and state-issued identification
cards for prison inmates. Davis learned the policy change went
into effect on July 1 of this year.

“These absurd spending programs continue to show Governor Doyle to be hopelessly tone deaf to the will of the people of Wisconsin.”

All really good, inflammatory rhetoric that looks boffo on a campaign website. It overlooks the fact that the measure was part of the 2007-08 budget that Scott Suder and Mark Pocan put together.

I guess though, as one of Brett's constituents all these years, I kind of assumed he was reading the bills he was voting for.

Maybe he should have talked to Scott Suder about the problems that being careless with ID can cause.

Cross-poted from The Happy Circumstance

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.

Disarmingly Crazy

Charlie Sykes is having problems with these views expressed by Barack Obama:

...I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems...
...I will not weaponize space...
...I will slow development of future combat systems...
...and I will institute a "Defense Priorities Board" to ensure the quadrennial defense review is not used to justify unnecessary spending...
...I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons...
...and to seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons...
...I will seek a global ban on the development of fissile material...
...and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert...
...and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals...


Help me out here.

So it is OK to dump money into unproven missile defense systems, something that has only been rattling around our defense budget since Reagan -- oh, about 20 years ago?

So it is OK to live in constant fear and not seek some means to alleviate the problem?

So it is OK for the Defense Department to have unnecessary expenditures?

So this is one of our local opinion leaders?

So God help us.

Sykes forgets rule No. 8

Milwaukee Magazine, of which Charlie Sykes is an editor emeritus, offers a quickie review of "50 Rules" in its November 2007 issue, by Lisa Holewa:

Charlie Sykes' 50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School is based on his list of 14 rules that took on a bizarre Internet life as an e-mail attributed to Bill Gates. The original 14 were thought-provoking, clever and mercifully brief. But the book ... well, what's really the difference between Rule No. 1: "Life is not fair. Get used to it," and No. 22: "You are not a victim. So stop whining." Each rule is followed by a curmudgeonly lecture, and the effect is simply exhausting. When it appears Sykes had a secret that made it worth slogging through 150 pages -- Rule No. 46: "Check the guinea pig in the basement" -- it is just a reminder to call your grandmother. The book has some worthwhile insights, but feels so repetitive and tedious, numbingly self-centered and indulgent, that you want to remind Sykes of Rule No. 8:" Your navel is not that interesting. Don't spend your life gazing at it."

More on 50 Rules here.

Miller's secret agenda

Boy, the conservatives are onto the big issues now, like Miller Brewing's sponsorship of a gay event which is using a photo that's a takeoff of The Last Supper. Charlie Sykes is fully engaged, with breathless updates, even down to policing the website.

Jessica McBride spins a theory that this is all part of Miller's liberal social agenda, and is shocked to find some underage people drink at this gayfest (unlike the Miller Pavilion at Summerfest.)

Now it can be told. Miller's secret agenda: Sell more beer to gays.

If you find that shocking, you can always join the Catholics and boycott Miller. If only the church had been as zealous about purging the priesthood of pedophiles.

McBride actually running WTMJ Radio

Focusing on the big issues, like the station's "Standing up for what's right" slogan,the delusional McBride reveals her continuing influence at the radio station that canned her:

Do they still use that slogan? When I was there, the new program director, Tom Parker, said he didn't like it. Now, I've noticed they use "Depend on it" - which doesn't have the same ideological hint to it - on their home page. I can't find "Standing up for what's right" on the site at all, unless it's buried somewhere that I'm overlooking. It's also not on Charlie's page. Do they ever use it on the air anymore? I'm going to have to start listening to see. I know when I was there, they started changing some of our "opens" (like mine), which used to have it.

(Watch: Within a week of this post, the old slogan will be on the web page, just like a few days after I mentioned they were downplaying James Harris on their site, he suddenly appeared on the home page. Coincidence? Hmmm.)

She's calling the shots there. Who knew?

A review you won't hear on talk radio

"The Council Bluffs Community School District superintendent also characterized the book by Wisconsin radio and TV talk-show host Charles Sykes as an offensive publication that lacks wit and insight."

More here.

50+ things you won't learn on talk radio

OK, McBride's not a radio presence any more (if she ever was), but this effort is too good to go unrecognized by Whallah!

Wisconsin's lefty bloggers have teamed up to produce this gem, a response to Charlie Sykes's book blaming the schools for everything wrong with the younger generation.

It's posted all over the Cheddarsphere.

Here's the Milwaukee Rising version.

JBVH is warned: The wingnuts are watching

We learned here the other day that Jessica McBride thinks JB Van Hollen has broken his promise to be a partisan right wing hack as attorney general.

It's spread. Van Hollen's bona fides are now being questioned by the other half of the duo formerly known as McSykes. Charlie put JBVH to the test on his show this week, and gave him an incomplete. The wingnuts are watching, JB. Xoff has more.

McSykes is dead; long live McSykes

Some lefty bloggers used to use the term "McSykes" to denote how Charlie Sykes and Jessica McBride's mutual admiration society resulted in them writing the same thing about the same subject, or, more often, simply linking to one another's blogs to steer readers there.

"How insightful," Charlie would say, with a link to McBride's latest drivel. "What an eye for talent," McBride would respond, linking to Sykes.

Since Charlie's protege was banished from the WTMJ Kingdom, the echo chamber appears to have stopped. She still speaks highly of him, but doesn't even make it onto his blogroll of 23 right-wing Wisconsin blogs, including some that are pretty marginal.

But there's a new relationship blossoming with Sykes and the Journal Sentinel's resident wingnut, Patrick McIlheran, who have formed a new and improved mutual admiration society and send readers back and forth. Can a permanent McIlheran chair on the Sunday Sykes TV show be far behind?

So, the old McSykes may be history, but there's a new McSykes tandem to carry on. Praise the Lord.

Patrick and Charlie, we now pronounce you wing and nut. It's a match made in heaven.

UPDATE: McCarthy McIlheran says liberals aren't entitled to describe themselves as Americans, because they're really unpatriotic:

Time and again, left-leaning organizations have, in the years since, sought to wrap themselves in an outer mantle of traditional Americanism, despite their distaste for it.

Hang 'em first, ask questions later

The blogosphere merry-go-round spins today:

McBride's protege screws up in a confusing post about dropped charges against protestors at an Army recruiting center.

Charlie Sykes, Steve Egg, Owen Robinson, and probably other assorted wingnuts jump on the report -- checking no facts, of course -- and denounce Dist. Atty. John Chisholm, who had nothing to do with the municipal charges being discussed.

Illusory Tenant sets it straight.

And McBride walks gingerly, pointing out that the charges are municipal,not dissing the original post by her friend Rebecca Kontowitz Kontowicz, and reserving the right to criticize Chisholm later. What she fails to do is look at whether any charges were warranted and whether they could be made to stick. But the wingnut lynch mobs never let the facts get in the way.

UPDATE: Sykes offers a correction. So does Egg , after a little prodding.

Wake us when it's over

The McBride-Kane feud, now longer than the Hatfields and McCoys, continues.

Today's question: Is she a female robot or not?

Yawn.

Charlie Sykes, as usual, rises to her defense.

As usual, Sykes and McBride claim rampant sexism.

Speaking of sexism, Dad29 is moved to comment:

Kane's blind, too. Rarely does one see a really cute and lissome "robot."

"Really cute and lissoms?" Dad apparently is old school and believes flattery will get you everywhere. Could he lay it on any thicker?

"No sexists here but us conservatives."

Cutting her loose

Charlie Sykes, creator of McBridenstein, appears to have gotten some distance from his failed experiment, Brew City Brawler notes.

McBride's 'replacement' gets a blog

James Harris, being groomed by Charlie Sykes & Co. as the next black conservative, has been advanced on the up escalator. He's getting the McBride treatment, only at a slower pace. Like all deliberate speed.

Although he's only on the air two hours a week, Harris says he will begin blogging on WTMJ Radio's site next week.

His readers, commenting on it, are skeptical, and warn him repeatedly to keep backups so he doesn't lose all of his material when WTMJ pulls the plug on him.

They're referring, of course, to what happened to Jessica McBride. What they don't seem to recall is that WTMJ intended to keep her blog on its website, but McBride was in a snit (after being fired)and asked them to take it down:

WTMJ 620 AM has asked to continue my blog (that's why it's still up), but I have no interest in doing so. I will be asking them to remove my name and blog from it.

To the rescue -- 10 years later McBride, Sykes get it wrong again

A classic example of how things spread on the Internet when bloggers are in such a rush to post something that they don't read carefully.

Jessica McBride on the "thought police:"

James Harris is under attack for quoting an author who said this:

“There is only one force in this world that is capable of controlling a teenage male: his father. Women, you can either let black men rule their households as husbands and fathers or hide in your homes with doors locked as they rule the streets in roving gangs. If you don’t believe me visit any inner-city neighborhood, if you dare.”

Her source was Charlie Sykes , who wrote:

James T. Harris infuriated some state bureaucrats the other day.... actually enraged them. How?

By quoting this:

“There is only one force in this world that is capable of controlling a teenage male: his father. Women, you can either let black men rule their households as husbands and fathers or hide in your homes with doors locked as they rule the streets in roving gangs. If you don’t believe me visit any inner-city neighborhood, if you dare.”

However, if you bother to read what Harris himself wrote, you'll find this:

“There is only one force in this world that is capable of controlling a teenage male: his father. Women, you can either let black men rule their households as husbands and fathers or hide in your homes with doors locked as they rule the streets in roving gangs. If you don’t believe me visit any inner-city neighborhood, if you dare.”

I spoke these words at a black state employees’ convention. It was part of an anti-affirmative action address that I gave for a breakout session.

Yikes!

My words were not well received.

I had to be escorted to the organizer’s room. Every step of the way, from the podium to the sanctuary, was a step through anger. People were pissed off. I got the feeling that I was no longer welcome.

I wasn’t. I left.

Those words, however, were not my own. I borrowed them from the famed sociologist, George Gilder. Mr. Gilder first uttered the same words on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the mid 1980s, and it got him kicked off the show. To this day, I believe Mr. Gilder has the distinction of being the first and only person kicked off ‘The Oprah.’

Oprah apologized to her audience for inviting a racist onto the show.

Here we are a decade removed from my borrowed comments and nearly two decades from Gilder’s original utterances, and as I write this I am looking at yet another story of a little girl shot in the face because she left the safety of her home, to play in streets, ruled by angry, aimless, homicidal black teenage males.

McBride tries to rally the wingnut blogosphere:

As conservatives, we should all speak up when a fellow conservative is under attack by the politically correct thought police for supposed "offensiveness," especially when it deals with race, which is the favorite tactic of the left (cry racism) in its efforts to silence conservatives. If any of us stays silent or mutes our response for any number of reasons, we hurt the conservative cause. I wonder what would happen if Harris said this same thing on his radio show?

My only problem with the passage above is that teenage girls need fathers just as badly. Everyone needs a father. Fathers matter, despite what some cartoonists think.

I strongly support James. Don't let them get you down, James. You are exactly what this community needs.

The fact is that he's not "under attack" and was relating a 10-year-old story.

But never let the facts get in the way of some good conservative outrage over race.

File under Glass Houses

From my blog on Uppity Wisconsin (Gee, is that racist?)

State Rep. Tamara Grigsby (D-Milwaukee) suggested she might outfit State Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) with a cone hat and a sheet for his opposition to affrirmative action. Which brings Jessica McBride -- who's always big on apologies as long as she's not the one doing it -- to say Grigsby owes an apology to Grothman. Says McBride:

This is a common tactic on the left, and it needs to be called out whenever it's spotted. When a conservative disagrees with a liberal, they often accuse them of being "racist" to shut down debate because they can't win on the merits of their argument.

Oppose illegal immigration? You're a racist. Oppose Michael McGee Jr.? You're a racist. Oppose gangsta rap? You're a racist. Oppose affirmative action? You're a racist. Want to lock up criminals? You're a racist. Criticize Eugene Kane? You're a racist.

Glenn Grothman has every right to express his opinion against affirmative action without being compared to a KKK member.

Spare us the righteous indignation, please.

How would Grigsby's comment compare, do you think, with this radio commercial that McBride's wingman, Charlie Sykes, produced and ran over and over again on his show, comparing Jim Doyle to racist segregationist governors Orville Faubus and George Wallace?

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT: Fifty years ago the Supreme Court opened the school house doors. But the fight hasn’t been easy. And the fight isn’t over.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT: In 1957 a governor named Orval Faubus stood in the school house door in Little Rock Arkansas to keep nine African American students from getting an education.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT: In 1963 a governor named George Wallace stood in the door of the University of Alabama to keep two African American students from going to school.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT: Now, in 2006, don’t let a governor named Jim Doyle stand in the schoolhouse door again. This time, blocking hundreds of African American students right here in Milwaukee.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT: Students who just want a chance.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT: A chance to go to the school of their choice.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT: If Governor Doyle doesn’t lift the cap on school choice, he’ll be standing in schoolhouse door, just as surely as Governor Faubus and Governor Wallace.

Governor Doyle. Let Our People Go.

Governor Doyle: Let Our Children IN.

Governor Doyle. Let Our Children Learn.

Governor Doyle: GET OUT OF THE SCHOOLHOUSE DOOR.

Sykes says: (This spot is not authorized and paid for by anybody -- at least not yet. It's free. Mikel Holt, production genius Jim Gilles, and I put this together with the help of students from Messmer High School.)

Doyle's still awaiting his apology.

Playing the victim

There's a right-wing Milwaukee talk radio host who has written a book asserting that the United States has become "a nation of self-proclaimed victims," in the words of a Publishers Weekly review on Amazon.com.

Who is the author?

Hint: It's not Jessica McBride. As Mike Plaisted points out, McBride and her supporters play the victim card themselves. Sykes, according to the Library Journal, would say:

This perception of ourselves as a nation of victims represents nothing less than the decay of the American character. (Author Charles) Sykes calls for a "moratorium on blame" and a return to the acceptance of personal responsibility for one's actions.

Wouldn't that be refreshing?

Now we know who to blame

If it weren't for Charlie Sykes, I wouldn't have a blog. Charlie Sykes encouraged me to start my very first blog.

-- Jessica McBride. But she loves Belling, too.

Bottom line: McBride didn't sell

Charlie Sykes writes:

When all of this calms down I hope folks remember two things: in radio ultimately our fates are determined by the marketplace; and although these are controversial and painful issues, they do involve actual people.

In other words, despite all that Sykes did for her as his protege (some would say creation), she could not find an audience.

Maybe even WTMJ listeners are more discerning than we give them credit for.

Tim Cuprisin agrees, and says Mark Belling is just trying to stick it to his rival station with his comments supporting McBride. It would serve WISN right if McBride got a little airtime there -- but it would clearly not help their bottom line.