Spelling is McBride's Achilles' heel

A friend of Whallah! sent us an email regarding this post on McBride's site.

Her title is "The Clinton Camp's achille's heel." Compare that to the title of this post. Would someone please tell her that when she writes a post, she'll notice, in the toolbar, a little checkmark with the letters ABC above it. That's a spellcheck.

Those Darn Lawyers

If one would actually heed what McBride says, they're heads would pop from all of the hypocrisy and self-contradictions. A prime example is her position regarding lawyers and trial lawyers.

For the longest time, McBride warns of the dangers of trial lawyers, that they support such terrible people like Governor Jim Doyle . There is also more current showings of affections to lawyers like Mike Plaisted and Illusory Tenant.

Something must have changed in the last 36 hours as that she now loves lawyers. Or maybe only if they're "super lawyers." I know Mark Chmura thinks Paul is a super lawyer.

He Was For It Before He Was Against It

McIlheran must be the Irish word for flip-flop...

McIlheran, September 30, 2006, on why it would be OK to ban gay marriage in Wisconsin:

And if we're still worried that companies will have to cut off benefits for unmarried partners, we can ask whether that's happened in any of the 19 states that already have such amendments.

It hasn't. Business groups, benefits experts, human resources consultants, even anti-amendment group Fair Wisconsin will tell you that no company has had to cut off benefits because of an amendment. And no one's tried to make a company do so.

Some government employers have run into lawsuits over benefits for same-sex couples. The straightforward answer, say lawyers who filed those suits, is for cities and schools not to premise taxpayer-funded benefits on a particular kind of unmarried relationship. Simply offer an employee-plus-one option open to lovers or disabled adult brothers equally, as some employers already do, and local governments won't be recognizing some unmarried relationships as particularly special.

McIlheran, November 20, 2007, on why we shouldn't allow same sex benefits at MPS:

Milwaukee School Board member Jennifer Morales wants the schools, for benefits purposes, to treat people who are shacking up as if they were married -- "domestic partner" benefits, it's called.

It's supposed to be the epitome of progress. Morales says it's a matter of fairness:
"Fairness for employees is fairness for employees," she told the Journal Sentinel. "It's not about me, it's not about Tina."

Tina would be the woman to whom Morales says she's married. If the schools approve this deal, Morales and Tina Owen, who works at an MPS charter school, would be considered spouses for benefits purposes.

For a more detailed account of McIlheran's self-contradictory and outrageous commentary, According to Nick lays it out.

Why did Charlie Sykes yank a post defending Muslim-bashing?

BREAKING -- IT'S BACK! UPDATE BELOW!

Earlier this year WTMJ yanked a podcast by then-talker Jessica McBride that trivialized the shooting of a young girl in the name of making fun of Eugene Kane.

Jessica was then shown the exit door.

Could history be repeating itself?

Charlie Sykes today put up a post defending the parody of the "Coexist" bumpersticker that most reasonable people would agree bashes Muslims and Islam. That was in response to a letter from those Commies at the Interfaith Alliance asking that the bumpersticker parody be taken down.

The Brawler would quote from the letter and Charlie's retort, but, sadly he can't.

That post is now gone. Straight up 404'd.

What happened? Will he, Jags and Mueller joke about it in the morning? Or maybe he could pay a visit to the IQ drain that is the Green Room and crack jokes about waterboarding. Or he could just say everybody makes mistakes.

Charlie originally slapped the parody bumpersticker on his site, declaring it "pure genius" here. Pundit Nation took strenuous exception to that charactertization. The itinerant Capper took it on as well.

Does WTMJ have rules even for the godfather? Is it going to talk about why a post has been yanked from its Web site? Cup, are you in the office this week?

UPDATE: As noted above, the "Drawing a Line" post (or something so similar to it the Brawler can't divine the difference) is back up.

It's a Sykesian masterpiece of taking a principled stand on free speech while at the same time denying accountability for controversial implications of said speech. Which is classic Sykes -- and is the antithesis of Journalism 101. As perhaps even Jessica McBride knows, if you quote someone libeling another person in a story you're accountable for the libel.

And so Charlie is accountable for the libel that Islam is the equivalent of Nazism and Communism. (And let's not play games with "Oh, the parody is just trying to be provocative." Please. The context around the creation of the libel is crystal clear: to demonize Islam based on the actions of a small group of violent extremists. And, as parody, the bumper sticker simply doesn't work otherwise.)

Read with awe the slippery prose and reasoning of Sykes:

McMahon’s bumper sticker is a parody that was intended to be provocative. Because it is provocative it was intended to spark reaction and debate and perhaps even offend some people. That does not mean that it should be censored as you suggest. It is free speech that provokes more free speech (which it did – the parody has been linked in both local and national blogs.)

At the risk of speaking for Mr. McMahon, I believe his point was that despite the smug assurance of the original “Coexist” bumper sticker, there are some things – evils -- that we cannot simply “coexist with.” These would include Communism and Nazism. You cannot coexist with Nazism, you must resist it and fight it.

Mr. McMahon believes, and I agree, that we are now engaged in a struggle with Islamic fascism. We cannot coexist with terrorists who blow up buses filled with children, cut off the heads of hostages, and slaughter innocent civilians. We need to
resist and fight them. (Brawler: Uh, Chuck, what exactly are you doing to fight and resist them?)

By substituting the hammer and sickle and swastika in the original image, McMahon “raises the bar” for those who smugly seem to suggest that we have no differences, that we should just get along and sing kumbaya. You can’t sing kumbaya with Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin.

In your note, you take particular issue with Mr. McMahon’s argument that it would be easier to coexist with Muslims if some Muslims would “stop hijacking planes and blowing up buildings.” Whether he unfairly conflates all of Islam with terrorism is an issue you might wish to pursue with Mr. McMahon, but I am not going to remove his comments simply because you do not like them.

(God, I love it when Charlie Sykes talks tough and shifts blame! And real quick, Chuck: The crescent and star is not a symbol of "Islamic fascism" it's a symbol of Islam. A not insubstantial portion of your readership -- if not you -- look upon them as one and the same. The parody doesn't make sense without that conflation. You'd be offended, rightly, if someone conflated Christianity with the genocidal actions of the Serbia a decade back or blamed the behavior of the IRA on Catholicism. The Brawler also seems to recall you and others were upset when a local company was tied up with some "provocative" imagery that offended Catholics. If you want to "fight" "Islamic fascism," Chuck, the Brawler would suggest you would speak out against behavior that stigmatizes Islam as a whole or suggests every Muslim is a potential terrorist. That kind of shows the superiority of our way of life, you might say, and that the bin Ladens of the world are wrong when they say we're engaged in a struggle of West against Islam. And we do have, what, 10 million Muslims living in the States? Isn't showing respect for their religion the American way?

And plus, last I checked, the fuzzy headed hippies who created the bumper sticker probably left the swastika off for a reason --you can't coexist with Hitler. (Actually we did coexist with the hammer and sickle for 70-plus years, but that's a different story.) They weren't saying we could sing kumbaya with Hitler in the first place.)

McBride City

With apologies to Scott Stantis

(click to enlarge...I know it's poor quality, I'm still learning)

Will She Comment On This?

McBride considers herself the watchdog of the media, especially the local paper. She often criticizes them for what she feels to biased headlines and/or reporting.

We are waiting to see if she follows through with this regarding a story in this morning's edition of the MSJ. The headline of the article is Ziegler allegations a 'blip'. It goes on to say how Appeals Judge Ralph Adam Fine questions the need for punishment for Ziegler's unethical behavior while serving as a circuit court judge in Washington County.

However, later in the article, there is this:

But another member of the panel, Appeals Judge Charles P. Dykman, said he could not understand why Ziegler would not have stepped aside in the bank cases.

"If you're aware that your spouse has a certain occupation or involvement, how can it be that you still don't do a recusal?" he asked. "It's just sort of hard for me to figure that one out."

The judicial ethics code says a judge must withdraw from a case if his or her spouse is a director for a party to the case. The judge could stay on the case only if all sides
agreed to it.

An unbiased headline might read something like "Judges disagree on seriousness of Ziegler allegations". Or if one were to McBridize it, "Ziegler not fit to be a judge".

Whallah! will monitor to see if McBride catches the obvious media bias in this story. For another take on the Ziegler story, see our friends at Pundit Nation.

Denial Isn't Just A River In Egypt

McBride, for all her quirks and foibles, can do one thing better than anyone else. She knows how to hold on to a grudge.

In this post, she again brings up l'affaire d'Illusory Tenant. This is spurred by a post by Kathy Carpenter who reports that IT called her a name on her site. Of course, both events happened last month. Also, IT had offered an apology, which McBride accepted. But she refuses to let it go. As with her selective outrage, this, too, is old news.

But, Whallah! would like to point out the comments thread on this post. Our friend, Other Side, points out to McBride that the vitriol and venomous attacks are not a trademark of just some liberal bloggers, but also many on the right side of the cheddarshpere. He also points out that the liberal bloggers in question have apologized for their poor choice of words and personal attacks, which is more than can be said for her cohorts. To this, McBride replies:

I've never called anyone anything even remotely analygous (sic) to the C word or B word.

If they had a conscience, they wouldn't say it in the first place.

No, she has never said anything to apologize for...certainly not this, nor this, nor this, not this one either, nor this. And this was just in the past six weeks, almost the same length of time she has been holding onto her grudge against IT. And this list does not nearly cover a fraction of her transgressions. There is still the names that she has call xoff, Whallah!, and a cast of thousands of others.

(By the way, Jessica, the word you mispelled is analogous.)

Addendum: Isn't it ironic that McBride and company, who are constantly criticizing Senator Clinton for "playing the sexist card", continuously play it themselves. As stated before, Whallah! doesn't care about the gender (or race or religion). We only concern ourselves for what is written. If this bothers some people, like Charlie likes to say, "Get over it."

Crazy Like A Fox

According to McIlheran, the citizens of Utah recently voted on a referendum on a statewide school choice plan. The plan went down in flames. McIlheran states that the people in Utah were wrong to do so, and cites a pro-choice school businessmen that goes on to call the voters insane.

They were not wrong nor insane. They probably had read the study by the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, another school choice proponent. The study was an effort to prove that the free market system would be the best thing for education. The results were quite a bit less than what they hoped for.

From the November 2007 issue of Milwaukee Magazine, in an article by Bruce Murphy (the article is not on their website yet, but when they do post it, one can find it here):

But Wisconsin's "Free Market Think Tank" as the group labels itself, now thinks the market doesn't work so well in education. Its October report "did not yield the results we had hoped to find," WPRI senior fellow George Lightbourn wrote.

It wasn't true that parents chose schools with the best academic performance. That being the case, the impact of choice will be minimized," Lightbourn admitted to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Nor was it true that competition from voucher schools was pushing Milwaukee Public Schools to improve. "We may have oversold that point," (Howard) Fuller confessed.

Justifying the Unjustifiable

McIlheran is still trying to rationalize the war in Iraq. He cites the latest terrorist bombing that killed three children and three soldiers as proof that the invasion of Iraq is part of the war on terror.

This was a terrible act. That much goes without saying. I don't know of anyone that would disagree, except Reverend Phelps. What he fails to mention is that neither the soldiers nor the terrorists would have been there if Bush hadn't started this unjust war in the first place. All that he does manage to do is demonstrate another avoidable tragedy that didn't have to happen.

What Church Does He Go To?

Even the most casual reading of Harris's blogsite, or a passing moment listening to his radio show (whenever they decide to air it) would reveal that Harris considers himself to be a man of faith. He often states how he feels that many of the troubles in today's world would be cleared up, if only God was allowed into the hearts and lives of people.

Whallah! strongly believes in the right of the person to worship whichever deity they choose, in whichever manner works for them. That said, Whallah! also wonders which church Harris goes to. I have not heard many people of faith say the things he does, and then goes on to mock the governor of Georgia when he prays for rain. Nor do I know of any religions that would condone calling a young lady a "ho" and posting pictures of the young lady in rather sexy pictures.

And then they wonder why people mock their religions.

Wild Speculation

McBride has already demonstrated the danger in making wild speculations about other people. Apparently, the ensuing selective outrage over a side comment befogged the vision of the James T. Harris, or he just didn't care.

Harris does his own bit of wild speculation by posting about an unsubstantiated rumor regarding Hillary Clinton. He immediately follows it up with another post showing an even wilder speculation that Senator Clinton is having a lesbian affair.

Why did he do this? Was he channeling his inner Karl Rove? Does he find such idle gossip titillating? Or is he just trying to fit in with his peers of the right-wing media?

Only he could explain why he was being so irresponsible. I'm not sure I want to know the answer either. But I wonder how he would feel if someone were to be reckless enough to give him a dose of his own medicine. Like, if someone were to link to this post, with this quote:

I was frustrated and impatient, but at least I was in Victoria’s Secret, right? Wrong. Here’s the rub: there was nothing in the store that appealed to me. Nothing. I’m not kidding. I couldn’t concentrate. I’m not comfortable looking at sexualized stuff with a bunch of little pre-teen girls looking at the same stuff!

and then speculating why he was in there in the first place. I'll stop there, because I'm not that reckless.

Some Quick Thoughts

Just some quick thoughts, prompted by the local right-wing media:

• McBride asks "When did conservatives become pro-pollution?" The answer is "when they realized that it would increase their profit margins."
• Despite her husband running for Attorney General last year, McBride apparently still doesn't understand how elections work. She also apparently hasn't learned the lesson of ethics that Wisconsin was taught by Annette "Gut-check" Ziegler.
• According to Sykes and McBride, the only qualification one needs to be police chief is to use the word 'thug' in a sentence. Of course, neither of them live in Milwaukee, either, so that is easy for them to say.
• McBride credits Scott Walker for keeping taxes in Milwaukee County down. She said the same thing for Mark Green, and any Republican, really. Then maybe she could explain this article from the Waupaca County Post (sorry, small paper, no website):

County approves 5.57% increase in tax levy

Waupaca County supervisors approved a $74.6 million budget Tuesday.

The total 2008 budget will be supported by a $20.43 million property tax levy, up 5.57 percent over last year.

...County Finance Director Jim Bernhagen told the supervisors that the Finance Committee had approved raising the tax levy by the full amount allowed by the recently enacted state budget. The county's levy for debt service, which is not under the cap, was increased by12.84 percent...

There are two things that the gentle reader should be aware of. One is that Waupaca County is such a stronghold of Republicans, that the Democrats from Waupaca County had to join forces with the Democrats from Waushara County to have enough people to make any sort of impact. The other is that her hero, Walker, is also proposing to enter a debt program to cover his short falls. Doesn't seem too financially prudent, now, does it?

Would Someone Please Give Her A Dictionary?

UPDATE: Jay Bullock has added his own take on McBride's new-found interest in women's issues.

Once again, McBride uses her astounding control of selective outrage (doesn't she know any other way to argue?), to complain about the way Hillary Clinton was treated. This time, she is stating that the media is using sexism in picking their questions to Senator Clinton:

This was the nails-on-chalkboard question of Thursday's Democratic presidential debate. It was also, arguably, sexist. They ask the female candidate about jewelry????!

One must wonder if she knows the meaning of the word sexism. After all, it was her that posted about how "hot" Fred Thompson's wife is (her opinion, not necessarily Whallah!'s) and what kind of impact that would have on his campaign.

Then she gets confused on the meaning of the word feminism (apparently she thinks women's rights mean they're always right):

...If they're going to plant a question, at least make it a good one. Like,

Hillary, since you claim to support women's rights, do you think Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey were telling the truth?

How Symbolic

A couple of months ago, the conservatives were foaming-at-the-mouth mad at Miller Brewing for being the corporate sponsors of the Folsom Street Festival. Led by Sykes and McBride, they were supposedly outraged about an advertisement for the event that had a group of leather-bound people doing a parody of the Last Supper. They claimed their righteous indignation came from having this group mock a painting of a Biblical story, and started a boycott of Miller products until Miller finally offered up an apology. The moral of the story appeared to be that everyone has the freedom of speech, unless it mocks their religion.

Apparently, that moral only applies to their religion. Today, Charlie Sykes posts on his website a posting that was originally posted by another right-wing blogger. The essence of the post is their umbrage at this bumper sticker:

Apparently, they feel threatened by peaceful coexistence.

Anyway, this other blogger photoshopped this bumper sticker into another form. (Due to the reprehensible nature of the photoshopped sticker, Whallah! is choosing not to post it, but if you really need to, you can find it on Charlie's site.) The gist is that two symbols of the original, the e and the Star of David are changed to the Sickle and Hammer and a swastika, respectively.

Yes, you read that right. They changed the Jewish icon, the Star of David, into a swastika, the symbol of Nazism, which hates the Jews, and tried to eradicate them in the Holocaust.

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Now, Whallah! recognizes the fact that everyone has a right to free speech. Whallah! also has it on a good, reliable authority, that the original author is a respected, if not affable person, who can say dumb things at times. Then again, who doesn't say things they later regret? I would not begin to speculate if the original author meant this maliciously, but would rather prefer the opinion of my friend that feels it was just an awkward blunder to prove some point.

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Likewise, even Charlie has the right to free speech, even though he doesn't feel the same to others. But it has to be noted the Journal Broadcast Group, which is affiliated with the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal, TMJ4, and 620TMJ radio, pays Charlie his salary to do this, pays for the site, and provides the technical support for him to do this. Does this mean that the Journal advocates this? Should we boycott the Journal, Channel 4 and the radio station until they apologize for this perceived bit of anti-Semitism?

I would vote no, but then again, I don't have the hypocrisy and the selective outrage thing down pat like those in the right-wing media. And besides, how else can Whallah! continue to monitor their foolish antics?

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For a different perspective of the same issue, check out Pundit Nation.

We Are Not Alone

Whallah! often ponders why McBride is allowed to teach at UWM. Just as often, Whallah! ponders what she teaches at UWM. We are not the only ones.

Michael Horne, at Milwaukee World, did a lot of work and found out some of the names of staff members of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that have chosed to take a buy out from the paper. He then shares that list of names with us.

Our McBride posts on the list, and links to Mr. Horne's site, but gives acknowledgement, in the form of a hat tip, to James Widgerson. She later tries to explain it away as that she saw it first on Widgerson's blogsite. As is her wont, she not only fails to apologize, take responsibility for her error, and fix it, but chooses to get defensive and snarky about it. The best part, though, is in the comments thread, in which Mr. Horne confronts McBride on her faux pas:

Why the hell are you hat-tipping "Wiggy" when I'm the one who wrote the damned thing? How disingenuous. I'm ready for a hat-tip "Horney(sic)."I did the research, and that should count for something. Are your standards of attribution the norm for what is taught in journalism schools nowadays? Horne

Mr. Horne, we share your concern.