Brew City Brawler

The ABCs of Milwaukee's Right Wing

It's 2008 and an election year. That means the full force of the Milwaukee's Stupider Media -- the bloggers, the columnists, the yakkers -- are going to be upon you. 

Here's a handy A-Z guide on what you can expect to hear from them. Because to Milwaukee's right wing, words mean what they want them to mean!

A is for affirmative action. V. bad -- except when it gets Patrick McIlheran a job as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's conservative columnist!

B is for Bush Derangement Syndrome. A condition marked by the belief that George Bush is a good, if not great president,when nearly 7o percent of the country disapproves of the job he's doing. In extreme cases, sufferers will suggest that it's liberals who actually are alienated from America.

C is for Catholic. Against abortion and in favor of vouchers. As for following the Vatican's opposition to the war and support for labor and liberal economic social policies and dialogue with Islamic peoples (including Iran) ... not so much. You can adhere to the Vatican's opposition to the death penalty so long as you mention that (quietly) only once a year.

D is for Democrats. See N is for Nazis.

E is for Evangelicals. S0 long as they mind their place -- dutifully voting for establishment Republicans -- they're fine. Should they try to push one of their own as a presidentail candidate -- Mike Huckabee -- well, that's just unseemly.

F is for France. Because France was right about this whole Iraq War/occupation not being a good idea, they deserve to have abuse heaped upon them. (Neglect to mention that French troops actually are in Afghanistan.) Boycott all things French, including words (laissez faire doesn't count).

G is for Government. Governments that seek to protect the environment, protect workers and administer health care are big bad nannygestapo states. Governments that engage in illegal surveillance of its citizenry, mislead their people into a war and never-ending occupation of another  country and actively seek to push people off the voting rolls are called limited governments.

H is for humor. Retard jokes? Hilarious! Irony? That's hard!

I is for Iraq. As long as we stay there, we're winning. No matter how many people (our own and others) are killed or wounded, no matter how many hundreds of billions go down the drain, no matter how much it exacerbates regional tensions or inspires hatred of the US, we're winning. What are we trying to accomplish? We'll tell you that later!

J is for journalism.  "The smarter the journalists are, the  better off society is. [For] to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves -- and the better the teacher, the better the student body."  Warren Buffet said that. It's unclear whether he knew Jessica McBride teaches journalism at UW-M.

K is for Ku Klux Klan. A white supremacist group. A member of this group might call a group of Latinos "chihuahuas" (particularly if it was a bunch of women and kids) and inform them they should learn English or leave -- as did a prominent Wisconsin right wing blogger.

L is for Liberal. See N is for Nazis.

M is for McBride, Jessica. See here.

N is for Nazis. The political party that, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, led Germany from 1933 to 1945. It was responsible for the bloodiest war in Europe's history and its rein of terror was marked by the Holocaust, the deliberate extermination of six million Jews and many more others deemed as "unfit." Because liberals (i.e. Democrats) see an activist role for government, this puts them on a continuum with the Nazi Party.

O is for Once Upon a Time. A fictitious past that conservatives frequently hark back to in advancing arguments. For example, Owen Robinson believes that in "once upon a time" people grew old with dignity -- and without the indignity of the welfare state. The fact is, of course, that until big gummint came along, old age mean impoverishment for most working people. History is hard!

P is for Pinochet, Augusto. Chilean general who ousted the democratically elected Salvador Allende in a military coup in 1973 and ruled the country until 1990. Even though he was a dictator whose regime killed thousands of people (including the American Ronni Moffitt, who, along with the actual target Orlando Letelier, who was killed in a car bomb assassination in Washington DC in 1976), some righties think he's OK -- or at least his sins are mitigated -- because he instituted a variety of "free market" reforms. The fact that his economic policies proved disastrous and were often reversed is seldom noted.

Q is for quicheoise. A term of opprobrium for Madison lefties that was invoked by Charlie Sykes in a recent column. The coinage earned him all sorts of huzzahs from other right wing bloggers. Obviously -- as with virtually all other bon mots or insights made by this man -- he lifted it. Nothing necessarily wrong with that. But the Brawler wonders where Sykes get the stones to questions some peoples' manliness when he admitted recently that he was incapable of shoveling out his driveway so his car would get through. Charlie, it's not the length of your driveway that matters -- a real man can always carve a path through the snow!

R is for Robinson, Owen. Proprietor of the rightwing blog Boots and Sabers. He doesn't know much about history. He thinks the only things Justice Louis Butler has to run on are his incumbency and his race. He booted off a commenter over dubious charges of sockpuppetry. He posted a retard joke on his blog and said it was OK because his mom had been a special ed teacher. So you can see why he's the keynote speaker for Green Lake County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner on March 2! See also here and here.

S is for Sykes, Charlie. The latest issue of Milwaukee Magazine summed it up nicely with some quotes from yesteryear.  "Syked Out:“Away from his professional cronies … his books and his daily blows against the status quo, [WTMJ-AM radio host Charlie] Sykes is an isolated man.” (July 2000). “A man of immense talent and ambitions, yet unsure what to do next in life, a man who has gained the respect and fear of the power elite while failing to win the long-term loyalty of even a single friend.” (h/t Whallah!) The Brawler would add that the man seems to get only pettier -- and lazier (want to know what Chuck's going to talk about tomorrow? read conservative blogs the night before) -- with the passage of time.

T is for T-Shirt. Few things exercise Patrick McIlheran more than kids wearing Che T-shirts. Paddy: Don't worry! You can get a Pinochet t-shirt if you want!

U is for urban. Adj. Scary.

V is for voter fraud. There's never been any evidence of organized voter fraud in Milwaukee (it never had the sort of machine that would drive such abuse, for one, at least in the Twentieth Century), but that won't stop the state GOP and its fellow travelers from raising this charge in election cycle after election cycle -- or advocating Voter ID to address an illusory problem. Meanwhile, it will never occur to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to investigate GOP-instigated voter suppression.

W is for Walker, Scott. The Milwaukee County executive whose strongest base of supprt may be with right wing pundits who live outside Milwaukee County. Ma Brawler, meanwhile, thinks he's a weasel.

X is for Xoff. A prominent member of a group known to the right wing as the "hate left." The evidence of this group's hate? Its tireless effort to poke holes in the bogus arguments of the right. (However, equating Muslims with Nazis is not hate -- it's just freedom of expression!)

Y is for yacht. Yacht is one of many many words that F. Scott Fitzgerald could not spell. Right-wing blogger and attorney Rick Esenberg is known to make a spelling mistake two, misspelling Favre -- twice! -- in one recent post.  According to the formidable logic typical of Jessica McBride (and, frankly, not a few other denizens of Milwaukee's right), this means Rick Esenberg wrote The Great Gatsby.

Z is for Ziegler, Annette. Ethics -- indeed, professionalism -- are for suckers!

(This column, particularly the intro, was "inspired" in part by a recent Patrick McIlerhan column, addressed by Mike Plaisted here.)

Is Jessica McBride an ethical journalist?

OK, so that was a rhetorical question.

Here's what the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics has to say about corrections (from the section "Be Accountable"):

Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.

When will Jessica admit that she is not a faculty member at UW-M?

UPDATE: Jessica responds here.

Jessica McBride isn't a UW-M faculty member. Why is she lying?

Over at the Brawler's pied-a-terre, Whallah!, he pointed out last night that while Jessica McBride claims to be a faculty member at UW-Milwaukee, she isn't.

She's part of the instructional academic staff. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But it ain't faculty.

The Brawler -- who is far nicer than he's given credit for -- suggested that maybe Jessica's misrepresentation was accidental. A commenter pointed out that's unlikely:

She knows. Googling shows that she's a member of a committee called the Academic Staff Legislative Subcommittee.

As another commenter said:

Ooh, resume gilding! It's an evergreen. As a seasoned journalism...lecturer...she knows that those stories are always trotted out to bring down, say, city administrators or chiefs of police.

It's 11:37 in the PM, roughly 24 hours since the Brawler laboriously pointed out McBride's misrepresentation. She has yet to correct the record. She really should.

UPDATE: Jessica's response here.

Why is Jessica McBride teaching Journalism? No, seriously: Why? Part 2

Huh. The Brawler stays away from the computer for a week and controversy breaks out over Jessica McBride and bad words.

The Brawler has little new to contribute to the debate, so he'll refrain -- that is until he changes his mind. But he would like to make this juxtaposition.

Here's what Jessica McBride had to say about a family that was being slimed by McBride hero Michelle Malkin and others for using S-CHIP (a family who even reasonable conservatives said were justified in doing so) to cover their kids health care after a devastating car accident:

If you can't take the heat, stay out of the political kitchen and keep your kids out of it too.

Here's what Jessica had to say -- in  post titled "How Dare You" -- after a commenter on another blog (his comments would not have been posted on this one) said something nasty about McBride's family -- though no nastier than the kind of stuff spouted by Malkin commenters or even McBride regular commenter "John":

What kind of a person drags someone's children into it?

(h/t Whallah!)

Here's a question for McBride's media classes: True or False: Someone who believes she and her family deserves to be treated differently from another family should teach journalism.

UPDATE: A fissure in what voice of moderation Fred Dooley would call the "hate left"? In comments, Capper  sides with McBride.

A question for Jessica McBride; Or: Does this prove the GOP is racist?

Last Sunday Gregory Stanford penned an eminently reasonable column arguing that, for all its rhetoric, the Republican Party can't reach out to minorities. Why?

Trouble is, ill will toward people of color is central to Republicanism - that is, it pleases the party's base.

The Brawler suspects that few dispassionate observers of the American political scene (and, no, that doesn't include Michael Barone) would disagree with the claim that the Republican base consists of more than a few white folks who have trouble with colored folks.

Jessica McBride -- she who declared, apropos of Michael McGee's reelection, that "thugs vote for a thug" -- denounced the column in her inimitable droning fashion.

She concluded thusly:

So here is my question for Greg Stanford:

What's your evidence that the Republican Party is racist?

I dunno, how about this?

Listen to the late Lee Atwater in a 1981 interview explaining the evolution of the G.O.P.'s Southern strategy:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

"And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.' "

Atwater, of course, was something of a guru to George W. back when Atwater was running Poppy's campaign, which included the totally nonracist Willie Horton ad.

Why is Jessica McBride teaching Journalism? No, seriously: Why?

Does the University of Wisconsin system believe that 12 year olds are fair game for media attacks? Because it employs a journalism instructor at UW-M who believes exactly that.

The Brawler is, of course, referring to Jessica McBride who makes this interesting point in comments appending a post in which she bemoans how Michelle Malkin (who, in the 21st Century, sadly, is media) has been denounced for attacking a 12 year old boy. His crime: speaking in the Democratic Party's radio address to the nation about how he was helped by SCHIP (which is. you know, true) and in opposition to Bush's veto of the (bipartisan) SCHIP bill.

Jessica, take it away:

The assets/financial means of this family became fair game the second they stepped voluntarily into the political boxing ring because the political debate and rationale for the Bush veto centered on financial tests and where to draw that line. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the political kitchen and keep your kids out of it too.(Brawler's bold.)

For what it's worth, Jessica's argument appears to be that a thoroughly middle class family in Baltimore should sell their house (which has appreciated since they bought it a decade ago), rather than take public assistance, to cover their kids' expensive medical bills. Where will they sleep? That's their problem!

Erik Opsal has a thorough rundown of the right's utter mendacity in its attacks on this family.

But back to the Brawler's initial question: Does the University of Wisconsin believe that 12 year olds should be attacked by the media? If not, why does it employ a journalism instructor who does?

Thought provoking comments at McBride's Media Matters

Earlier this summer Jessica McBride opened her site to comments. While comments originally were unmoderated, she soon changed that policy due to purported abuse. The Brawler suspects the real reason is that she couldn't stand seeing her "insights" getting flayed by people unfairly invoking reality or facts.

Given her concern about abusive discussion -- and her scorn for those who operate behind the veil of anonymity -- the Brawler was amused to find this piece of sterling insight from one "John" who attacks the tireless john williams. Remember, Jessica approved this comment, which has something to do with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (the "madman of Iran" in Jessica's parlance)speaking at Columbia University:

john said...

Jeff, libs, live in a theorhetical world of "rights". Most libs like Johnny Williams are sissy boys, who love their rights, and masturbate to the freedoms that they have not, would not, will not nor cannot fight for nor win for themselves.
Johnny Williams has no clue what enemies of America would and will do to him, if given the oppurtunity.
Johnny Williams lives in a FREEDOM VACCUM, in which he is a spoiled PRICK, because SOMEONE ELSE made the ULTIMATE SACRIFICE, AND, Little Johnny DimWad, USES the FREEDOMS afforded him AND HIS 2 DADDIES BY OTHERS, to SPOUT ABOUT America being FREE, and HIS OWN FREEDOM to be a COMPLETE FUKJOB and LOSER.
Theorhetically, JOHHNY was GIVEN the RIGHT to WIPE HIS LAZY FAT AZZ with OLD GLORY. Johnny loves that, because it illustrates the GREATNESS of AMERICAN TOLERANCE, that SOMEONE ELSE'S DAD, UNCLE, GRANDFATHER or BROTHER earned for JOHNNY. MY 24 YEAR OLD PURPLE HEART MARINE SOON TO BE GOING BACK NEPHEW EARNED.
Johnny THEORHETICALLY is the EXACT situation that our MADISONIAL FRAMERS were thinking about!!!!
Yes, a FLABBY ASS-HAT liberal, hooked on Mountain Dew RUSH!!!
And The Adams, James Madison, John Hancock, Alexander Hamilton ET AL, had struggled to FREE, Johnny Williams to WELCOME SWORN ENEMIES of the U.S. to speak.
Yes Johnny dimwit,We could LET MAHMOUD speak. But don't INVITE him?
The Invitation by Columbia, merely EMPOWERED the IVORY TOWER pricks to POSTURE as morally superior.

DESPITE THE USE OF THE PLATFORM FOR PROPAGANDA AGAINST US/U.S.
These bastards take themselves, way way too seriously, and the damage they do, is REAL.

September 25, 2007 1:23 AM

It's stuff like this that reminds the Brawler why the GOP is the party of ideas.

Recall that in July, Jessica said this: "I will not allow anonymous trash comment postings on my blog. If people don't have the guts to say who they are, they are not welcome to comment on my blog."

Jessica, how do you define "trash"?

And yes, the Brawler moderates comments, due entirely to a nasty comment someone posted here about ... Jessica McBride.

Jessica McBride forgets the 9/11 victims -- quickly!

On September 11, Jessica McBride threw up this post:

Sept. 11, 2001: Never forget

I can't write anything more powerful than the video/audio I posted at right of a woman named Melissa Doi. So, I won't even try. Listen to it, and get ready to cry. Get ready for goosebumps.

We owe it to the Melissa Dois to win this fight and to not shrink away in defeat. We owe it to the Melissa Dois to remember who our real enemy is.

It's not George Bush.

How sad and tear-inducing was it?

So sad and tear inducing that by the evening of September 13 she replaced it with a video of  Roseanne Barr "hitting on"  Fred Thompson  Fred Thompson "hitting on" Roseanne Barr.

If Melissa Dois' story was so "powerful" to McBride, how could she switch it out for a fricking Roseanne clip?

Or was Melissa Dois, whose killers had nothing to do with Iraq and whose killers' allies never would have been able to obtain WMD from Iraq (imagined or otherwise), just convenient 9/11 filler for McBride?

The Brawler struggles for words.

(Yes, the Brawler realizes he's supposed to be on hiatus and has sworn off the all-too-easy task of taking shots at McBride. But given McBride's incessant calls to recall the victims of 9/11 or the Americans killed in Iraq to justify an endless occupation of Iraq that will lead only to more dead Americans (but prevent George W. Bush from losing a war), the Brawler felt morally obligated to point out McBride's pathetic display here. A victim of 9/11 ... bumped after two days for a clip of Roseanne Barr "hitting on" Fred Thompson Fred Thompson "hitting on" Roseanne Barr. Sweet Jesus.)

Oh, yeah: Why is Jessica McBride teaching journalism?

Sykes to McBride: You're dead to me

When Jessica McBride was canned from WTMJ, who could forget how Charlie Sykes described her on-air as his friend? Or how he wrote this on his blog:

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.

Oh, the compassion! And Jessica was not shy in sending some love Charlie's way:

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

It's touching stuff.

You would have thought that, after all this mutual appreciation and emotional support, that Sykes would have continued supporting his pupil.

But apparently not. The easiest way for Sykes to help McBride would be by continuing to link to her blog. Which he no longer does on his overhauled site (also, it appears the treasure trove of lies that is his archives has been vaporized in the redesign as well). Although he does have links to the intellectual powerhouses at Tom McMahon, Real Debate Wisconsin and, humorously, Boots and Sabers. Was it her crazy talk after she was canned that's led Charlie to distance himself from her? Her crazed support for Vang Pao's planned coup in Laos?

For what it's worth, fierce McBride defender Jeff Wagner no longer links to her either.

Jessica once referred to her blog as "widely read." For how much longer?

Nothing

That's exactly what Shark and Shepherd, Patrick McIlheran and Owen Robinson have had to say about the Preznit commuting Libby's prison sentence. The Brawler is perplexed. Do they agree with the commutation and are rightfully ashamed to admit it? Or do they think it was a gross abuse of presidential power and don't want to lose their right wing bonafides? The Brawler doesn't know. He wishes they would enlighten us.

I mean, the Brawler understands why McIlheran wouldn't want to weigh in, given his problems with the truth in things Plamegate. But you'd expect Ol Lady Owen would have published a snippet of the AP report with a line saying "This is cool" or something like that. And, seriously, the Shark thought the fact Roger Waters hates George Bush was of more moment than the Libby affair? (The Shark, reasonably, took exception to Waters comparing Bush to Stalin. But the Brawler has to admit there's something vaguely Vyshinskyesque in the commutation: If you're a member of the party you don't pay any penalties for a crime. If deviate from the party, you are a traitor. There is no struggle but the GOP struggle! Also: To quote John Lydon, I hate Pink Floyd!)

At a minimum you'd think they'd want to help out a former WTMJ talker who's been trying to defend the commutation ... and has been doing a less than stellar job at it. (OK, maybe Owen wouldn't.)