"Is the city of Madison great and/or the 'most racist' in the U.S.?"

Headline in our local alternative newspaper, Isthmus.

"Countercultural in these times means conservative."

"Fred is off the central planner’s grid; the antipode of the collective, an unroped stray escaped from the herd. Milverstedt is a freelance freedom fighter battling the steady encroachment of Bloomberg’s nanny state. From this remove, the man’s two major vices are power and speed. He expresses those vices through the language of two powerful machines: semi-automatic firearms and overpowered motorcycles. Who else would email JPEGs of his tight target grouping? Or extol the virtues of his AR-15?! That, my friends, is the difference between liberals and us conservatives. We brag on our vices; the progs apologize for theirs, then legislate reparations."

Excerpt from David Blaska's post about Fred Milverstedt, one of the co-founders of the Madison alternative newspapers, Isthmus, which I used to link to more than I do these days (now that Meade never comments there anymore). Milverstedt left Isthmus long ago, and one thing he's done since then is write a book: "One More Ride: Fred and the Craft of Motorcycle Meditations."

Sample book text:

If there ever was a time on the bike when I really thought I might need a gun, it was a day when Barbi and I were out on the Shadow on a high ridge in western Wisconsin overlooking a series of lesser hills rolling away to the south. We’d stopped, parked the bike on the shoulder and got off to admire the view.

We were on State 33, not an untraveled road but a good piece from the New York Thruway. On this stretch, there was no other traffic, no other people, no houses or barns except those dotting the valleys below.

Around the curve comes a pick-up truck, slowing as it moves into sight. It stops next to us, not on the shoulder but the middle of the road. There’s two young guys inside.

Seldom one to make snap judgments, give or take now and then, I make one here.

These guys are crackers....

"I’ll still keep up an online presence, particularly on Twitter.... I find it calmer than Facebook."

Writes Kenneth Burns, the erstwhile Isthmus writer (who's moved to Tennessee). He's deactivating Facebook at least for the summer.

Mainly, I’m weary of the politics. Understand, I’m fascinated by electoral politics, like any journalist. I have my views, and I express them in the polling booth and not many other places. Not on Facebook. I’m not interested in politics as an all-consuming leisure activity.

In my experience, though, Facebook is one rabidly political social network, and it’s not political in inspiring ways. It’s political in reductive, repetitive ways.

But why has his Facebook experience been so rabid and uncalm compared to Twitter? He's got himself to blame:

[M]ost of the political memes on my feed happen to be posted by people I don’t know. As a public figure, I regularly get friend requests from strangers, and I accept them.

Why did you accept them? I don't do that. Facebook is a way to see stuff from your family and friends and to find old friends from high school and college. But it won't work like that if you accept 1,000 requests from strangers! In Twitter, you have your followers, but you don't have to follow them. That's the difference. Even when you are following people in Twitter, their posts just flow by unread unless you look. I drop by Twitter now and then and read a few posts from random tweeters among the 121 that I follow. And as for the 4,765 who are following me, I haven't given them anything in over a month.

"Wisconsin's leather community finds brotherhood and kink at International Mr. Leather 2013."

It took me way too long to figure out whether this Isthmus article was about an actual beauty pageant or a fictional theater piece about a pageant — like "Smile" or "Miss Firecracker" or "Little Miss Sunshine."

It drives me crazy — this journalism style of withholding the who-what-when so we can ease into the story with quotes and anecdotes. Is the assumption that we want to read it before we know what it's about or that we wouldn't want to read it if we knew what it was about?
Turns out, it's a real pageant, organized by one Jeff Gruenberger, who, we're told, "realized the attire leathermen wear holds significance beyond expressing masculinity":

"While some people think it's just a fetish, just a kink, ... there's the core qualities of integrity, charity, brotherhood, honesty," he says. "Those are things that we truly believe in. The leather is just an outward sign of that."

Gruenberger breaks leather down into several categories, which he calls the "Big Five." Sirs, Daddies, Boys, Slaves and Pups. These categories co-exist in many leather communities, and are separated by power and experience.

Things that are truly believed in...

"A Dad or father figure teaches a boy certain things growing up," he says. "You learn respect, being very structured. You're learning all those qualities from a Sir or a Daddy."

As a Boy becomes more involved in leather, he may ask around his community for a Sir or Daddy. He can later become a Daddy or Sir once his mentors feel he has earned the title. Gruenberger says this categorization is not universally accepted, nor are the boundaries as rigid as the labels suggest. But he thinks the model helps provides stability and perpetuates leather's history.

"We're one of the few communities in the gay community that's kind of like that," he says. "The leather community comes from a military background, the World War II military veterans. When you think of it in that terms, it just makes sense."

Things that just make sense.

"The Giving Tree" — "Remember that book - written in the early 60's by Satanist, Anton LaVey?"

"The story follows the lives of a female apple tree and a male human who are able to communicate with each other; the racist kingdomist tree addresses the human as 'Boy' his entire life. In his childhood, the boy enjoys playing with the tree, climbing her trunk, swinging from her branches, and eating her apples. However, as time passes the tree becomes mean, jealous, and stingy...."



ADDED: Reading that Meadepost, I made the association — for the first time — between the Xs on the eyes that signify death in the language of comics and the XX signifying the female in the world of chromosomes.

A Madison, WI proposal to authorize community street painting projects to "bring people together."

We're not talking about water soluble paint, but permanent paint jobs, the equivalent of murals, but on the horizontal surface that cars drive on. The alderwoman who proposes the new ordinance — Marsha Rummel — got the idea from Portland, Oregon, "where community members paint an intersection to give it a sense of place and create a public square."

There would be a permit process, including a petition "indicating approval from at least 60 percent residents, businesses and non-residential properties within a 200-foot radius of the proposed location"  and "assurances for the city that hold the design's applicant responsible for maintenance of the painting and requires them to have insurance." (I'm quoting the Cap Times article, not the ordinance, so I don't know whom to blame for the irritating ambiguity.)

"You can't just say you want to come in and do this. It needs to be maintained over time. Paint fades. It needs to be repainted from time to time, just as we go and repaint traffic lines," said Arthur Ross, the city's pedestrian-bicycle coordinator.

Which is why it's obviously a terrible idea.

"What it really is is a community building activity. It gets people out of their houses and working on something together," Ross said.

And what about when it breaks them apart because it's ugly, it makes the neighborhood look trashy, and it's not properly maintained.  I loathe these government dreams of bringing people together. Leave us alone! I know it's Madison, but people have their own private ways of getting together.

Here's Wisconsin State Journal columnist Chris Rickert mocking the proposal by stressing the provision that forbids "text, numerals, symbols, overt messages or any images designed to convey a message of any kind." Obviously, this provision is needed to avoid making street painting a public forum incurring First Amendment protection from viewpoint discrimination. Rickert jokes that in his neighborhood pretty much everyone hates Governor Scott Walker: "In my ’hood, liberal politics are a building block of community, a distaste for Walker one of the glues that hold residents together," so the things his neighbors would get enthused about painting on the street will be rejected. What if Madison risked permitting messages and accepted the legal proscription on viewpoint discrimination?

Residents could get their Wisconsin-shaped fists and [Obama] “Hope” images, for example, but would have to accept the risk — albeit a small one — of getting portraits of the governor and Ronald Reagan, too.

No doubt the latter would play havoc with traffic in my neighborhood, where drivers would surely wonder just where they made a wrong turn and how they got so horribly lost.

Long-time Madison politico Stu Levitan — in a thread on the Isthmus forum titled "Why does Rickert even bother?" — acts like no one can tell what Rickert actually thinks and accuses Rickert of not even knowing what he thinks. Here's what I think: If you want to make fun of lefties and actually hurt their feelings, you have to use your sledgehammer!

***

Meade frequently comments over at the Isthmus, and I can't tell you how many times the cocooned lefties there simply cannot understand his gentle verbal comedy. For example, here's a blog post written by former Madison mayor Dave Cieslewicz, who's writing about bicycling without coming to a full stop at stop signs:

To be clear I wasn't promoting the flauting of the law. I was being honest about what most bikers do at a quiet intersection. Let those drivers who have never exceeded the speed limit cast the first stone.

Meade comments:

I see Dave has now become Jesus on a Bicycle.

Then, noticing the misuse of "flauting" for "flouting," adds:

Jesus on a Bicycle, tooting his legal flute. (Although he doesn't promote it.)

Dave, instead of laughing, gripes:

See, now this is why I usually don't read the comments.

This is the first time Dave responded to Meade in the comments. Indeed, just a few days ago, Dave was blogging about how he doesn't usually read comments on his blog (which he said was "not a blog") and how he has a special problem with Meade. (I blogged about that here, noting that Dave accused Meade of repeatedly calling him "a liberal idiot," which is not a fair description of Meade's comments.) Meade responds:

I'm trying to help you, Dave. With word usage, spelling, etc. (Do I need to use a sledgehammer? Compare flaut with flout.)

But your sense of humor could also use some tweaking, Dave. Why the thin-skinned Mom, Laurence is being mean to me! My advice: roll with it! Ride right through those stop signs if need be. Laugh at yourself more. Who knows? - it might even help you get your old job back.

By the way, you still owe me a correction, Dave: I've never called you "liberal", "idiot", or even "liberal idiot". Check - as President Obama might say - the transcripts. Although I will admit - some of what you say on your blog is amply dumb.

Hey, thanks for the reply!

Again, Dave responded:

I don't want my old job back, Laurence. I'm happy misspelling stuff and using poor grammar as a non-blogger.

And as for the liberal idiot stuff, while you may never have used the exact words, that's the gist of much of it. I'm not offended. I've never denied that I'm either liberal or an idiot. I am who I am.

And so it goes, in Madison, Wisconsin, where one can have a hell of a time looking for witty conversation. You may wonder why Meade puts his writing over there instead of hanging out in the comments here where people adore him. But that's Meade. You may similarly wonder why we live here in Madison, Wisconsin!

People have their own private ways of getting together.

"We're all trolls."

Writes Meade (at the Isthmus forum): "This very thread, started by someone who hides behind his troll name, fisticuffs, is an example of spiteful trollery. The question is: do you want to be an affable interesting troll - like Meade - or do you want to be a grumpy old ill-humored boring troll? Like Galoot or fisticuffs."

"John Doe probe of Scott Walker office closed with no new charges."

"Sorry for anyone who got their hopes up."

The 301st post in a thread titled "John Doe probe of Walker makes another move." I don't have the energy to comb through the whole thing looking for the most egregious bloodlust, but I'm glad to see it's over.

ADDED: "Out of the left oozed a mixture of disappointment, bitterness and indignation."

Scott Walker proposes expanding the school voucher program beyond Milwaukee and Racine...

... to 9 new districts, including — gasp! — Madison.

Here's what Walker said last night in his budget speech:

For communities where some schools fail to meet expectations, we include an expansion of the parental choice program in this budget. Since wealthy families have a choice because they can pay to send their children to a private school, we give low income and middle class families an opportunity to also choose a viable alternative for their sons and daughters.

Interestingly, some communities have both high-performing schools, as well as some that fail to meet expectations. Green Bay is a good example. Keller Elementary in Green Bay is a school where more than 70 percent of students are economically disadvantaged, yet Keller Elementary exceeds expectations. In this budget, schools like this will be eligible for a performance reward. At the same time, in that same district, there are other schools that fail to meet expectations. Other districts like Madison, Beloit, Sheboygan, and West Allis/West Milwaukee have similar situations.

People in Madison like to think we have fabulous public schools, so it's rough seeing Madison grouped with those other places. And of course, people in Madison tend to loathe Governor Walker. Obviously, the liberal viewpoint is that if there's a problem with the public schools, more money should be given to those public schools, not diverted into private schools. Here's the discussion in the forum over at the Isthmus, where liberal Madisonians tend to talk amongst themselves (and where Meade injects a bit of the kind of diversity they don't celebrate). I love the way the separation-of-church-and-state topic is playing out. First:

Does it bother you that taxpayer money will be spent for sectarian religious instruction?

Someone else:

If my kid went to a school with overcrowded classrooms and wasn't getting the attention he or she needed for whatever reason, I wouldn't hesitate sending him to a Catholic school if I could for free. Would you? Would you put up with a crappy classroom just because you didn't want your kid to take a half-hour of Bible study each day? I don't know many parents who would in a similar situation....

A third person (boldface added):

I don't think anybody's really upset about vouchers to send kids to Catholic schools. The Catholic schools can't take many more kids, but they are run by local parishes and nuns with good intentions and without a profit motive. It's not foremost a constitutional issue but a quality one. We're upset about a bunch of profit-motive business types setting up private schools to make money for themselves by providing services that work poorly and exploit public funding the same way the University of Phoenix does with adult students. Why anybody thinks replacing so-called overpaid teachers with overpaid executives is an improvement beats me. And that's exactly what we'll get if we don't guard against it at every turn.

The lefties really hate business! Meade provides the comic pushback. Quoting "bunch of profit-motive business types":

But enough about the teachers' unions. School choice is coming to Madison. Choice is good.

"I successfully edited Wikipedia!"

Meade exclaims. It's his first time. It was over there in the page on The Gettysburg Address (which I linked to earlier today, as perhaps you noticed). His edit is in the third paragraph, which, before his edit, read:

Beginning with the now-iconic phrase "Four score and seven years ago," referring to the Declaration of Independence during the American Revolution in 1776, Lincoln examined the founding principles of the United States in the context of the Civil War, and memorialized the sacrifices of those who gave their lives at Gettysburg and extolled virtues for the listeners (and the nation) to ensure the survival of America's representative democracy, that the "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Meade took out the "the" before that last quote. Have you ever noticed that there's no "the" before "government" (even as there is a "the" before each of the 3 "people"s)?

... we here highly resolve... that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Do you see what a big difference a "the" would make in that sentence? Meade had gotten into a back-and-forth over at the Isthmus forum (a site dominated by typical Madisonians, i.e., left/liberals).

The topic was the 2d amendment and, more generally, what rights are. Responding to TheBookPolice who'd asserted that rights are "100% about the government telling people what they can and can't do," Meade said:

Thank you but you have that exactly backwards, TheBookPolice. Check your high school Civics textbook. The amendments in the Bill of Rights are all about protecting the people from the power of the government. I know that concept can be a little difficult for Liberals and Progressives to grasp, seeing as how they begin with a fundamental utopian assumption in government we trust. But government - even a democracy - can become corrupt, coercive, authoritarian, and tyrannical. So if you look at the text of, say, the 2nd amendment, you'll see that it is addressing the government, not the people. The people's right shall not be infringed. Infringed by the people? No, of course not. The right shall not be infringed by the government. Take a closer look at the entire "Bill of Rights" and I think you will see that the first ten amendments to the constitution are completely about restricting government from infringing the people's rights.

TheBookPolice dragged in the Gettysburg Address:

Abraham Lincoln described the government of the United States as being "of the people, for the people, and by the people." Sounds to me like we're all in this together. You on the other hand seem to treat the government as a panther stalking the outskirts of your jungle village, waiting for the opportunity to snatch a wandering child unawares.

Tell me: who makes up the government you fear so much?

And Meade came up with this "the" point, which I'd never thought about before:

That's just it, Police -- I don't fear the government at all. Thanks to the constitution. And thanks, in particular, to the first ten amendments.

Now take a closer look at the text of the Lincoln speech you alluded to. Notice: he does not put the article, "the" before "government" and yet he uses it each of the three times he repeats "people".

Let that sink in for a minute.

Lincoln was not talking about preserving the entity that is The Government, that might overstep its bounds and oppress us.  He was talking about preserving government by the people, that is, preserving democracy. Or that's how it's sunk in for me.