A protester sits in the center of the Capitol rotunda floor, day after day, with posters spread all around, facilitated by Democratic Assemblyman Brett Hulsey.

The last few times we've gone to the Wisconsin Capitol, we've encountered a woman who sits on the floor, right in the center of the rotunda. You can see her in this picture from March 15th [and at 1:39 in the video here]. She spreads posters (and a display of buttons) right where visitors are most likely to want to stand to gaze up into the dome. Children love to lie down there for dome-gazing. But this woman has appropriated the spot — not just for sitting, but for a display of anti-Walker signs.

Now, there is a list of rules about what you can't do in the Capitol, and one thing is: post signs. This is perhaps a good law school exam question: Are signs arrayed on a horizontal surface posted? Meade — Flip camera in hand — started to interview the woman about that. No sooner does the questioning begin than WI Assemblyman Brett Hulsey shows up to ask the woman whether Meade "is behaving himself"....



The woman tells Hulsey Meade's question, and Meade amplifies the issue by asking "What's to stop you from getting, you know, 100 times this number of signs and spreading out into the whole rotunda and spreading out into all the hallways?" She says: "I don't think there's anything with that except I have to pick them up at the end of the night."

Hulsey answers: "Personal restraint." Meade says: "Is that it? Personal restraint?" We see that Hulsey has turned his back and is walking away (as Meade is in the middle of thanking him). Then, hilariously, the woman volunteers: "Brett is nice that he told me that when I bring these in, I don't have to take them with me at night. I can go store them in his office overnight."

The camera pans to Hulsey, who has turned back toward Meade. Hulsey has a sheepish frown-grin on his face. Meade says "Truly?!" The woman says "yes, yes" as Hulsey nods his head a few times. Hulsey says: "We believe in free speech."

Meade: "So, you're not only approving, but you're facilitating?"

The woman: "He's not facilitating. I only just asked him if I can, I said, I come here with signs. I just asked him if I could store the signs in his office overnight and he told me I could."

There's overtalking as Hulsey says "We believe in the First Amendment, freedom of speech" and Meade is asking her if she's in Hulsey's district and the woman says "I'm in Madison, but not his district. I have friends in his district."

Now, we are in Hulsey's district, and Hulsey knows it, because Meade has talked to him on several occasions. Meade goes after Hulsey, who is turning again to walk away, and asks him, "Do you have 5 minutes?"

Hulsey lets out a long "uuuuhhhhhh" then says: "Actually I... t-t-t-to discuss what?" Why should the subject matter affect whether our assemblyman has 5 minutes to talk to Meade? Especially if he's big on free speech, the subject shouldn't matter.

Meade: "I wanna ask you questions and, uh, get your thoughts and opinions..."

Hulsey interrupts to say that Meade should make an appointment with "Terry" — "because I'm on deadlines with a couple things." The deadlines didn't stop him from darting right out to protect the rotunda-sitting lady from Meade's questioning, and indeed, when Meade goes into the office to make the appointment, Hulsey's assistant says "This is a slow week."

So... deadlines... slow week... What's the deal?

UPDATE: So, in the video you see Hulsey's assistant scheduling his appointment for 2 days later. Today, Hulsey's office called to reschedule and canceled the existing appointment (without giving him a new one). Evasive? But he's was right there when papers-on-the-floor lady seemed to need help answering Meade's questions. And, he was also right there — in video Meade took — when another legislator fell flat on the floor of the rotunda after slipping on papers protesters had put there!

Who started the restriction of access to the Wisconsin Capitol, which the state court judge has ruled unconstitutional?

If you were critical of Meade and me for refusing to wait in line and insisting on walking right into the Capitol building, then you need to read the judge's order, which says that the restriction of access "violates the State Constitution."

Instead of meekly following instructions — which, oddly enough, the anti-Walker protesters did — we felt immediate outrage and expressed it. If you are one of the many people who criticized me and Meade for selfishly jumping ahead of a line, it's time for an apology.

Let me remind you what happened. I started it. On Saturday, February 26th, the day with the largest crowd, there were "'about 70,000 people' at the Capitol, but they were mainly outside":

I walked right up to the nearest door, and a "volunteer" in an orange vest told me to go wait in a line to go in some other door. This door was for... I didn't quite catch who the special people were who got to go right in the door I'd walked up to, but I said, "This is a public building. You're saying there are 2 kinds of people — ones that get right in and ones that go wait in line? Who are you?" He was obviously not a uniformed city official. I was all "Who are you?" and "How dare you!" and, after a few seconds, I (and Meade) got right through that door.

Once in, I said "How dare they!" about 10 times. Sorry, Meade didn't video that. You've never seen video [of me] as emotional as I was right then. I got outraged for myself and for all the people that were out there waiting in that line. I was outraged about them for 2 reasons: 1. Because they were treated as second-class citizens who had to enter through the subordinate door, and 2. Because they meekly accepted their subordination.

I couldn't tell if the protesters had set up the blockage themselves or if they had somehow colluded with the police, but I was truly outraged that private citizens were assuming the authority to restrict access to the public building.

The Washington Post reports on the ousting of the overnight-sleeping protesters:

The protesters demanded to see a written copy of the order before they would go. University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Chief Susan Riseling read the order to the crowd, eliciting cheers when she read the judge's determination that the state had unconstitutionally restricted access to the building.

"We won this battle," said former Attorney General Peggy Lautenschlager, who represented unions that had challenged the state's decision to limit building access. But she also told the demonstrators they needed to leave.

From my observations, it seems that THE PROTESTERS THEMSELVES were doing the initial blocking of the door, without the police, so I'm irked by this righteous exulting. On February 26, a guy wearing an orange vest with the word "Marshall" sharpied on duct tape tried to keep me and Meade out. There were no police there at all. I call bullshit on Lautenschlager's "we won." Read the facts I observed directly and rebut the inference that the protesters initiated the access restriction.

Now the police WERE there the next day, when Meade arrived at the same door (the King Street door). Inspired by my resistance the previous day, Meade insisted on walking right in. When he got home, he said to me "I almost got myself arrested." He caught it on video, which is embedded in the post "Meade is New Media." He confronted the police, demanding to know by what authority they were telling him that he could not walk right into the Capitol.

When Meade moved to push through the door, one of them accused him of pushing a police officer. I believe that was an attempt to intimidate him into going over and waiting in the access-restricting line. The implication was that they could arrest him if they want, so he'd better get super-compliant right now. A protester who assumes Meade is a typical protester tells Meade that the police are "on our side." That is, the protesters seem to be colluding with the police in the access restriction, which seems to be why they are waiting in line. But Meade isn't with them, and he's not interested in facilitating the collusion. He's on his own.

Here's the video Meade took on February 28, 2011. Listen at 1:03 for Meade's mocking: "Ah, here are the sheep, obeying orders from the police." At 2:55, he's confronting the police about their system. At 3:34, he encounters a legal observer and questions him about whether the exclusion from the building violates constitutional rights.

In short, Meade and I recognized the access restriction as, initially, a private wrong, committed by the private-citizen protesters, and, the next day, a violation of rights by the police. When the police took over the access-restriction policy, the protesters continued to support it, because — I assume — it served their interests. One of the protesters urgently attempted to clue Meade in that the police were on the protesters' side and that he should meekly submit to the line ritual for the good of the collective.

This is what it looks like to me, having experienced it directly and through Meade. If you don't accept my characterization, PROVE ME WRONG.

ADDED: UW polisci prof Howard Schweber emails a response to this post (and gives me permission to publish it here):

Anne,

I have to object. First, the requirements of using only certain doors and standing in line were not created by the protesters, and your "reporting" gives absolutely no evidence to suggest that they were. Second, your "calling bullshit" is about something else entirely.

Meade encounters the cleaning crew scraping stickers off the marble at the Wisconsin Capitol.

The supervisor, noting that Meade is recording, tells the worker to "stand quiet" and tells Meade he may photograph all he wants. At 0:28, we see the razor blade scraper in the worker's hand, and hear the supervisor say "Don't use that on the marble."

At 0:58, the supervisor pushes Meade. At 2:20, the supervisor expresses the theory that Meade "want[s] a confrontation" then admits that he put his hands on Meade, which might have been "a sin." Meade says, "I'm not talking about a sin. I'm talking about a tort." The supervisor tells Meade to "go away."

At 3:00, we see the use of fingernails to scrape off the stickers that have been moistened with something from a spray bottle that is referred to as "fresh water" (at 5:06) but produces foam. [Instapundit calls this scandal in a squirtbottle "Watergate."]

At 4:00: A middle-aged woman says to the supervisor: "They're filming that really well and that's what everybody in America thinks this is about — how much work it is to clean up after us." With narrowed eyes, she looks at Meade and nods a few times. We then see another woman who is photographing Meade. He asks her if she's a protester, and she says, "I'm a citizen," and Meade says, "So am I," an answer she seems to find quite unsatisfying.

At 5:28, there's some camaraderie between Meade and the worker who's doing the cleaning, and we learn some details about the difficulty of removing different kinds of tape from the "polished marble." "Scotch Tape is the worst."

8:46: Meade asks, "So, is it just water?" and the supervisor intervenes. Meade inquires whether they are doing anything that they think they should hide. Supervisor: "This is something that he does every day." Worker: "Only not in such great multitude."

9:34: Meade asks, "When did they catch on to the idea that they should use blue painter's tape?" Worker: "I'm not sure." Supervisor: "Just don't give him any comments... probably not the press, because he's no credentials, but just another one of the bloggers."

"Hillary is outdone in first major Iowa test as Bernie Sanders calls for a 'revolution' and Martin O'Malley has some Clinton partisans on their feet – and she talks mostly about HERSELF."

The headline at The Daily Mail, covering an event that I watched live on C-SPAN last night. Meade and I were not in the same location, and he texted me that Hillary was on C-SPAN. Here's the (slightly expurgated) texting that followed:

meade: Hillary live on cspan/Now Martin Omalley

althouse: Missed h/O sounds like he's seeing the speech for the first time

meade: Same thought/The energy is waiting for Bernie/O's S's whistle/O has an impressive forehead

althouse: The i voted for you refrain worked on me

O'Malley ends his speech with a repeated line, "I voted for you," which you're asked to picture yourself saying that to your grandchildren someone who asks you who you voted for in 2016. Intellectually, I find it corny, but physically, I repeatedly got chills, even after my mind told my body to cut that out. Next up is Bernie Sanders:

meade: Bernmentum/Revolution!/I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore

althouse: Angry old man

meade: White man

althouse: Not working on me/Too yell-y

meade: Plus he obviously wants to tax you more/Enough taxes will never be enough/We are coming for your wealth/You greedy person you

althouse: Going back to the Hillary part on line/Very wooden

meade: Don't stop thinking about/Socialism/Jim Webb -- token military/We need to be more like Germany

althouse: H attacks walker

meade: Jim Webb is obviously running for vice president/Webb is putting Iowa communistdemocrats to sleep

althouse: Hilary's delivery is so harsh. Not persuasive/Watching Webb now

meade: She had to compete with harsh angry old Bernie who was persuasive/Webb seems anti Obama

althouse: Wow. No applause at all/He pauses to dead silence

meade... He's bombing/Bombing Iowa

althouse: He's not really a democrat

meade: FDR gets his biggest applause

Webb ended his speech by observing that he'd finished without consuming all his time. I guess the speechwriters allowed time for the applause lines. Awkward! Then there's meeting and greeting in the crowd. (It was the Iowa Democratic Party's annual Hall of Fame dinner (whatever that is).) All the candidates were out there on the floor mingling... except Hillary:

meade: Where the hell is hill?

althouse: She stalked off as quickly as she could. Right after speech. It was weird. Her heart isn't in it. She wants to be unopposed

meade: She came back/Huma made her/But her feelings are hurt/Again/I'm starting to get depressed for Dems/Oh!/Lincoln Chafee!

ADDED: Here's C-SPAN's video of the whole 3-hour event. Scroll to the middle to get to the part with the candidates, beginning with Lincoln Chafee whom both Meade and I missed. Scroll to 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to the milling around part. Bernie dominates. People crowd around him and want to meet him. The camera backs up and we see the surly Webb, getting interviewed by one reporter. The awkwardness of it is painful to watch. The camera pans around and eventually we find O'Malley and Chaffee. Lots of attention to O'Malley. I'm watching half an hour of this, seeing everyone but Hillary. But where is Hillary? Meade wrote, "She came back/Huma made her," but I never see her. What I saw — what I was referring to when I said "She stalked off as quickly as she could" — was the end of her speech, 1 hour and 50 minutes into the recording.

The Wisconsin protesters are losing their grip on reality.

The point of that last post — "I have professors that received doctorates..." — is that as the protest drags on and protesters are sleep-deprived and frustrated and tired of nothing happening but standing around chanting and listening to drum-beating for hours on end, logic and proportion is flopping away. There was some serious aggression yesterday.

You saw Meade's video where 2 over-aggressive protesters interrogated a couple of nice ladies who drove into Madison just to stand quietly, in the sea of Walker-haters, and hold their pro-Walker signs. In the video, you can hear that the 2 protesters are not making that much sense, and when Meade tries to mediate — meadeate — for them, other protesters in the area close in on Meade.

There's very tense confrontation, and it flips into paranoia and incoherence. At 4:35, you hear a woman say, "Are you a plant?" At 4:57: "I think we know you're a Walker plant?" At 5:00: "You [are a Walker plant] on this gathering and we can tell." At 5:17, a large man barges into Meade and grabs the Flip camera, and actually gets it out of Meade's hand. No one in the crowd does anything to help Meade in this assault, and Meade grabs the man's arm and wrests the camera out of his hand. This man says "Get your hands off me," as if he's a victim. After he assaulted Meade, he acts like he's the peacemaker and says — referring to Meade and the 2 pro-Walker women — "They are fools and idiots and just ignore them." He continues to bump his large body into Meade as he's saying that. A woman says, "These are Walker plants."

I see some people descending into irrationality — beginning to form a cultish mentality that demonizes outsiders. Meade was at a demonstration, photographing it. A demonstration is — to a clear-thinking person — a collection of people asking to be seen, wanting to be photographed. Yet when they perceive that Meade isn't one of them they flip — it's a Flip camera — into fear. Meade had been trying to talk to them rationally about why the pro-Walker woman might not want to debate her ideas in that setting, and instead of seeing Meade as a citizen who's finding out what's going on and helping 2 women who are surrounded and outnumbered, they spread their "plant" theory. And it's not just a theory. They know he's a plant. 

But he's not a plant. He's a human being. An individual human being. And so are all the protesters, but I fear they are losing their grip on that reality.

Abe Sauer — blogging at The Awl — goes on a bizarre rampage about Meade getting in to see Scott Walker's budget address.

This wasn't anything sneaky. Remember? I blogged a couple photos Meade iPhoned from the assembly chamber just before the speech began. And this guy Abe Sauer imagines he's uncovering some kid of scandal:

What kind of special access was granted to the assembly chamber that day? How did everyone get in? Let's look at Larry Meade...

His name isn't "Larry," Abe. Abe Sauerkraut.

Meade did not have press credentials. When I asked Althouse about how he got in, she told me, "Legislators had tickets to give out, and he was given one. With a ticket, you got in for the speech."

Which legislator let Meade in? Althouse and Meade live in the University Heights area of Madison, which is represented by Brett Hulsey (D-77). Their Senator, Democrat Fred Risser, is currently in Illinois to prevent a quorum and was not the source of the pass....

Representative Hulsey's office confirmed that it did not let Meade in—what's more, that "no tickets were allotted to Rep. Hulsey."

Ann Althouse did not respond to further questions about Meade's presence in the gallery or who let him in.

Abe Sauer published that after sending me 2 emails, the first, which I answered as quoted, and the follow up, which I hadn't noticed yet in my overflowing email inbox. He makes it look like I was covering up. Meanwhile, it seems he's calling my representative's office and asking personal questions about me and Meade! That's pretty creepy.

Meade spoke to Hulsey's office yesterday, and they said they would not disclose such information about their constituents. Maybe Sauerkraut thinks it's important, newsworthy information about me and Meade. Is it? I think you'd first want to know what the procedure is for getting into a Governor's speeches and whether there's anything amiss if a legislator gives a ticket to someone outside of his district.

Sauer didn't bother to do the research before he began flinging mud shredded pickled cabbage around. Meade, however, did the research. It turns out the Governor's office controls the tickets to his speeches. That's true now, and it was true in the past when there were Democratic Governors. The Governor's office distributes some tickets directly and gives other to the majority and minority leaders of both houses, who then pass those out however they want. (If Hulsey, a freshman, didn't get any tickets, it was, I think, his own party leader's decision.) Now, the minority leader of the senate is one of the fleebaggers. So no tickets went that way. Anyway, one of the legislators who had tickets to distribute offered me 2, and I accepted the one for Meade. (I had to teach a class.)

The idea that legislators must only give tickets to their own constituents is a figment of Abe Sauer's imagination. Several legislative staff members told Meade that tickets are distributed to nonconstituents all the time and have been for years, by Democratic and Republican legislators! If Abe Sauer's made-up ethical rule were in place, that would mean that someone like me, who lives in a Democratic district but looks unfriendly to the Democratic agenda, couldn't get access. And if you were a Democrat in a Republican district, you'd have a hard time. It would be an access-restricting rule.

So: two prominent local cheerleaders of Governor Scott Walker had access to the address, without going through their Representative (who was, interestingly, provided with no tickets, in any event), while thousands of Wisconsin citizens remained locked outside. This is the sort of thing that raises questions about the extent of special access in Madison, in light of Walker's relationship with Koch Industries and the makeup of the audience in general for the budget address.

There's the conspiracy thinking tell: Koch. And if it's so interesting that Hulsey didn't get tickets, why didn't Abe Sauer try to find out why? The answer lies with the assembly minority leader, a Democrat. But why find out the fact? It's so much more exciting to take a few data points and fantasize.

Utter conspiracy bullshit from Abe Sauer and The Awl.

UPDATE: Sauerkraut Balls.

This is what democracy looks like — in Madison, Wisconsin — as Meade seeks access to our assemblyman, Brett Hulsey.

You remember Brett Hulsey. He's the member of the Wisconsin Assembly who represents our district, the 77th, and Meade has been trying to talk with him. Hulsey has been running away, as you saw in this video, recorded on Monday. There, you see that Meade was forced to make an appointment, even though Hulsey darted right out to intervene in support of a protester whom Meade had started to talk to, a woman who had been occupying the center of the rotunda, sitting with a big array of posters on the floor. In that video, we learned that Hulsey allows that protester to store her posters in his office. Hulsey's office later canceled the appointment.

Not having heard back from Hulsey's office about the promised rescheduling, Meade dropped in today to see what was going on. I edited his video to make it very short...



First, Meade encounters the papers-on-the-floor lady. She's no longer plunked down in the center of the rotunda, but relocated off to the side. Why? "There's a blogger...." She denies that anybody ever slipped on her posters, but the blogger — me — stated that somebody slipped on papers in the rotunda — not specifically her papers. And here's the video (at 0:37). It's a big old legislator man who took a fall... and Brett Hulsey was right there when it happened.

Next, Meade goes with the woman as she walks into Hulsey's office to store her things. She doesn't speak to the office assistant or ask permission. She just makes the place her own. Unlike Meade, she is not one of Hulsey's constituents. He's simply facilitating the protests, even as he avoids Meade, who would like to talk to him about things like that.

In the office, Meade briefly encounters Hulsey, who admits he has "a beef" with Meade. Meade is told again to schedule an appointment with the office assistant, but she won't do it.

Basically, our assemblyman has cut off access. The reason that's interesting is that the protesters — to whom he gives super-access — have made a big deal about how the Republicans aren't listening to them and how democracy requires legislators to listen to everyone, even those who are their vehement opponents, even when they are not from their district. But Hulsey is resisting a man who has sought politely to speak with him, who is in his district, and who even voted for him.

***

Why did Meade vote for him? He had a strong challenger to his left. We live in Madison.

AND: Here's the email Meade sent to Hulsey tonight. (I had no role in drafting this letter. It's 100% Meade.)

"I liked Senator Goldwater because he was a rugged individualist who swam against the political tide."

Reading the previous post out loud to Meade, I get to that quote, and he says "Bob Dylan!" And I say, "No! That's from Hillary Clinton's memoir!" The post is mostly about Hillary, but Bob Dylan is in there too. Meade thought it was something Dylan wrote in his memoir "Chronicles."

What Bob Dylan wrote was:

I had a primitive way of looking at things and I liked country fair politics. My favorite politician was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who reminded me of Tom Mix, and there wasn't any way to explain that to anybody. I wasn't comfortable with all the psycho polemic babble. It wasn't my particular feast of food. Even the current news made me nervous. I like the old news better.

I'd blogged about that when "Chronicles" came out and Meade's Hillary/Bob mixup got me looking for that old post. Searching my blog for "Dylan Goldwater," the first thing I found was this post from June 2008, about none other than Hillary Clinton.  She's everywhere! Just then, she was withdrawing from the presidential race. She gave a good speech, and I'd said: "Oh, Hillary, why weren't you like this all along?"

There's no mention of Bob Dylan in that June 2008 post. And, interestingly, the first commenter is Meade (a man I had not yet met). He quotes Hillary's "So today, I am standing with Senator Obama to say: Yes we can" and adds "Gag me." Despite Meade's tendency to bring up Bob Dylan, it wasn't Meade who dragged him in. It was a commenter named L. E. Lee who hijacked the thread to say:

"I was even more surprised that Bob Dylan said that he supports Barack Obama this past week. I do not remember Dylan ever endorsing a candidate for political office before."

Meade responded: "L.E.Lee, It's widely known that, like Hillary..., Bob Dylan was a supporter of Barry Goldwater in 1964." Lee demands evidence, Meade tells him to Google "Dylan Goldwater Chronicles," and I make a comment:

If you do that Google search for Dylan and Goldwater, I hope you find this old post of mine where -- as I elaborately blogged "Chronicles" -- I wrote:

Dylan's favorite politician: Barry Goldwater. P. 283.

Why: "[he] reminded me of Tom Mix."

Bob Dylan song that mentions Goldwater: "I Shall Be Free, No. 10."

I provided the relevant lyric:

Now, I'm liberal, but to a degree
I want ev'rybody to be free
But if you think that I'll let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I'm crazy!
I wouldn't let him do it for all the farms in Cuba.

And that's what I said immediately this morning when Meade brought up Dylan and Goldwater: "But if you think that I'll let Barry Goldwater/Move in next door and marry my daughter/You must think I'm crazy!" Back in 2008, what I did was to go on to write another post, about Bob Dylan and Barack Obama, "What did Bob Dylan say about Barack Obama — and what did he mean?"

In the then-present, which was before dawn, I was reading the new post out loud to Meade, because I want his okay for the use of quotes from him, and the material you see above in this post seemed like it needed to go at the bottom of that post I was trying to finish. I was struggling to get to the end of the whole long string of Stringband-and-Dylan-and-Hillary-and-Althouse-and-Meade and "Fishes stop and ask me where I am bound"-sense-and-nonsense.

And Meade was piling on, saying things like:

The first President Barry was almost President Goldwater... Dreams from My Goldwater... Fishes swimming in the gold water....

By then, the sun was up, and the post was up, without the update, because the update itself would need another out-loud read, what with the additional Meade quotes. It was a new morning, and this is a new post.

Can’t you feel that sun a-shinin’?
Groundhog runnin’ by the country stream
This must be the day that all of my dreams come true

Are there fishes in the stream, wondering where you're bound? What does the groundhog say? And will the Dreams from My Goldwater ever come true?

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/All hail to our old gold and black!"

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/Our friendship may she never lack/Ever grateful, ever true...."

On a beautiful fall Saturday morning, here in Madison, Wisconsin, the UW marching band can be heard practicing, which includes practicing the opposing team's fight song, and Meade — who grew up in West Lafayette — provides the lyrics, about gold and black and friendship and gratefulness.

I ask Meade if it's okay for me to blog that and he says, "I think you've already done it," which makes me think I'm being accused of posting first and asking permission later, but he really means I've already blogged — in some past year — about his singing along with the UW marching band playing the Purdue song. I go looking into the archives, and find, first, a post from April 2008, which can't be right, because I didn't meet Meade until January 2009, and the post in question shows New York City, where I was living at the time. The post, called "Morning fog update," shows what was my view of Manhattan. Meade arrives in the comments:

Simon said: "How much are you going to miss this view when your year's up?"

Meade said: "Yes, and how much we will miss these morning fog... updates!"

Ann Althouse said: "Great trees in NYC right now, and I'm about to get a new lens, so look out. Also remember that dead rat on the sidewalk in NY?"

There's a gap in the conversation where a commenter expunged her own comments, but apparently she said something that referred (possibly disparagingly) to things that could be photographed in Madison. And Meade says:

Yes! A marching band playing "Hail Purdue!"

And a dead rodent.

With fantasy fog...

...Where the Wabash spreads its valley,
Filled with joy our voices raise...

I find the old dead rat post — "Things that exploded in Brooklyn Heights recently" — where there's a discussion of how to buy a light bulb in NYC and a couple of commenters who never comment here anymore are advising me about shops in town, and there's Meade:

I hate to risk spoiling a New York hardware store bonding moment for you good folks but back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning -- where women (and a few unnecessary men) go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts -- and with no more brains than you have.... But! They have one thing you might not have! A Google!

I resist my future husband:

Thanks, Meade, but I actually have this other really odd halogen bulb to replace. I don't want to mail order it. I want to show it to some hardware store guy who will give me the right bulb.

Meanwhile, Meade responds to a commenter who said "Yes but do you have swarthy olive skinned counterm[e]n to flirt with attractive visiting professors. Telling her how she would light up when the proper bulb is inserted in her socket. So to speak." With the metaphor in play now, Meade writes:

"Yes but do you have..."

Even better. We have links. Lots of links. Links pointing to pages and pages of swarthy olive-skinned counter[people], if that's what you're into.

Disease-free links. Unambiguously gendered links.

("Unambiguously gendered links" refers to another commenter's wisecrack that some NY hardware store employee is "AC/DC.")

Organic free-range links. Links that would never even THINK of stalking fair-haired Professoras and trying to put their bulbs into sockets in which they don't belong. And links that, frankly, just don't have the nerve to ask, "'ey, YOU! Are you clickin' on me?"

Shy unassuming links just busy doing their jobs and quiet[l]y living their linky lives.

The other commenter says: "Yeah, but [can] you get a link drunk and walk her home and talk your way into her main frame?" And Meade says:

No, but if you give a link a nice slow neck rub, draw the link a sudsy warm bath, and serve up some browned baby-back ribs with a glass of Merlot, she just might let you take a look at what's on her laptop.

So to speak.

And here's a post from August 2009, the month we got married, noticing Meade's comments in a July 2008 thread:

Gee, I'm single now, happily single, and thought I'd just remain that way.

But considering all the benefits, I guess I'd really be a fool not to take a close look if Althouse were to, just out of niceness, propose to pity-marry me.

What could I offer in return? Let's see - I could prune those redbuds, take out the garbage, trap squirrels....

I could fetch her newspaper, scrape snow and ice off her car, shovel the front walk. Draw her bath. Pick her up at the airport. Rinse and dry her wine glasses. Form a circle-of-safety to protect her from Hillary Clinton-type madwomen who randomly come up to innocent people on urban sidewalks and punch them in the back. I make excellent salads, grill superb steaks and vegetables. Play a piano sonata. Pick up dry cleaning. Wait patiently while she shops for shoes....

Fry up some bacon... provide the vocal track when the UW marching band plays the Purdue fight song....

ADDED: Meade reads this post and admires his selection — back in April 2008 — of the Purdue song lyric "Where the Wabash spreads its valley/Filled with joy our voices raise." Subtly erotic, he observes now. Less than a year later, I would meet him in that Wabash valley....

Candyass blogger move of all time: Lawyers, Guns & Money bans Meade!

The little professor Robert Farley couldn't face the challenge Meade made to his (truly lame) post "On Libya" (which I blogged about yesterday).

Imagine not wanting the brilliant, good-humored Meade as a commenter! Here's Farley's last ouch:

Bye, Meade. When the idiocy gets so thick I feel almost compelled to respond, it’s time for you to leave.

Ha. Meade wrote something that demanded a response, and Farley wasn't up to it. The professor had one last oomph of potency: He could oust Meade and delete all his old comments. Incredibly lame. Embarrassing. But apparently not as embarrassing as the inability to deal with a challenge to the scribblings you'd like to believe are so smart and so righteous.

UPDATE: Farley wrote a new post to say thanks for the link. I'm not going to link to it though, because I'm not going to link to them again. I hope they note all the traffic they are getting from here, because they're not getting any more. Of course, they will continue with their dumb attacks on me. But they've cut off the man who defends me from them, so I've got to cut them off too.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said:

The little professor can delete all he wants, but Google remembers.... Just click the word "cached" under each result to read the Meadey goodness.

There's lots of good stuff in there. You can see what La Petite Farlette and his partner Scott "Kitty" Le Mew were afraid of.

ADDED: I don't link to them anymore, but I'll note that they are getting challenged about deleting all of Meade's old comments. They are trying to argue that all those comments were spam that needed to be removed. But the bloggers and commenters over there had interacted with Meade. You don't interact with spam. A step up from spam is "troll." But everyone knows not to feed the troll. Why did they go back and forth with Meade if he was a troll? Their interaction is the evidence that he was not a troll. Robert Farley simply became exasperated and embarrassed when Meade outwrote him, and he destroyed the material that made him look bad. He's like a scientist who destroys his data after his conclusions are questioned.  The obvious presumption in the case of destruction of evidence is that it hurt your case.  Of course, the evidence of their interaction with Meade is still there, and that evidence also, as I've just explained, is evidence against them. What colossal losers!

MEADE: "I just watched a movie called 'Valerie.' Starring Anita Ekberg. What rock star was she married to?"

ME: No. No. No. You're thinking of Britt Ekland.

MEADE: It had everything: betrayal, justice, frontier justice...

ME: The telephone rang, it would not stop, it was President Kennedy calling me up. He said, "My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?" I said, "My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren."

(I was quoting Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Free," and Meade knew it.)

ME: Britt Ekland was married to Rod Stewart.

MEADE: Yeah, so the movie is called "Valerie."

ME: Did you watch the whole thing? You never watch movies.

MEADE: It's only an hour long. The theme is: War on Women.

ME: Why did you start watching that?

MEADE: Because Valerie Jarrett.

(We'd both seen the Politico article "Fire Valerie Jarrett" and had talked about it, so I didn't need more info about how the search got started.)

MEADE: And on YouTube, I saw this movie "Valerie," and I just got drawn in. It's very cheesy, but it's also very good for its time. And then the other thing that got me is: It has Italian subtitles, and some of the Italian words were great. Like a guy says "yeah," and it's "sim," not "si." It also had a theme of xenophobia. It's a Hollywood movie made after World War II and a lot of people were still dealing with their fear of foreigners.

ME: Yeah, but what was War on Women about it?

MEADE: The husband was an evil man. He hits her, he tries to drug her, he rapes her on the wedding night, and when he finds out she's pregnant, he basically tries to cause an abortion by whipping the horses, and that doesn't work. He's a hard drinker. And he tortures her. He has this whole evil plan.... And there's a scene where he literally gives her the back of his hand. Remember when Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz said that about... who did she say that about?

ME: Scott Walker!

MEADE: So, anyway, there's a trial, and you get 3 testimonies.

ME: Like "Rashomon"!

MEADE: And the final testimony is Valerie's, so that's the true testimony. The truth is revealed. It ends very abruptly. 

One year ago today at the Wisconsin protests: Meade is attacked by a mob.

This is one of the more disturbing of the videos we recorded last year. Meade was protectively standing by a woman, a Walker supporter, who went into the big anti-Walker crowd at the Capitol to stand with a sign that read "Public workers don't need collective bargaining." At first the woman is confronted, and eventually Meade asks some questions and people turn to him.

I'll start you off a couple minutes in, but feel free to scroll back to an earlier point so you can see how this ugliness develops. Stay for the very end, where an old woman gets up in Meade's face and says "You are a person against all of us. The whole nation is looking at you."

Wisconsin protesters branch out into picketing M&I Bank... and some of them seem suspicious of Meade.

Yesterday, while I was in class, around 4 p.m., Meade went down to the Capitol Square to see what was going on. The main thing was this picket circle in front of M&I Bank. The protesters have some theory justifying dragging the bank into the protests, but I don't think you can figure it out from the signs. They're using the same chants they used against the government, notably "This is what democracy looks like." Democracy against a bank? But they are so passionate. Especially that one guy.



But what's really interesting here is the attention some of them give Meade. Watch for the lawyer with the Walker-as-Marie-Antoinette sign. Remember him from the graffiti-on-the-Civil-War-monument video? Watch for him to step out of the line and talk to some other guy, who then takes a picture of Meade. And then there are those 2 other guys who are suddenly up in Meade's face, who follow Meade as he leaves to go into the Capitol. Are they going to intimidate Meade?

This is edited video, and I've left out what happens when they get into the rotunda. Standing in the center of the rotunda, the 3 men converse/argue about freedom of speech. I've uploaded the 14-minute video separately and unedited. If you have the patience to watch that, it's funny to some extent, particularly because the young men are so fervent about their cause that they can't hear how bad some of the things they say are. They persist for a while, but they can't shake Meade and they can't answer the questions he asks. In the end, they walk away. And there's Meade standing alone in the center of the rotunda.

"Wisconsin weird: Cops probe balloon popping."

The balloon story — which we talked about yesterday — hits Politico.

Pro-union activists have taken to releasing red heart-shaped balloons into the rotunda as a silent protest against Gov. Scott Walker, and [Leslie] Petersen told the paper she was posing for a photograph with her balloon when a state worker approached her with a knife and began “stabbing the balloon.”

Petersen said she went to retrieve the “balloon carcass” and was then shoved into a door by the state employee, who during the incident cut himself, leaving a trail of blood on the rotunda floor....

About 50 balloons were released into the rotunda after the skirmish Monday.

Sounds like a photo op for Althouse + Meade. And speaking of Althouse + Meade photo ops, that state worker is identified by Peterson (the balloon owner) as Ron Blair, an assistant facilities director at the Capitol, and — as I noted in yesterday's post — Meade got shoved by Blair last March, caught on video here:

At 0:58, the supervisor pushes Meade. At 2:20, the supervisor expresses the theory that Meade "want[s] a confrontation" then admits that he put his hands on Meade, which might have been "a sin." Meade says, "I'm not talking about a sin. I'm talking about a tort." The supervisor tells Meade to "go away."...

9:34: Meade asks, "When did [the protesters] catch on to the idea that they should use blue painter's tape?" Worker: "I'm not sure." Supervisor: "Just don't give him any comments... probably not the press, because he's no credentials, but just another one of the bloggers."

I'm just one of the bloggers, pointing out that we saw Blair get pushy last March.

And let me add that I think protesters releasing helium-filled balloons inside the Capitol is a serious problem that the building managers need to control. Now that you don't have to go through a security check to get into the building, it can be a terrible problem. A thousand protesters holding balloons could march into the rotunda at any moment and release a thousand balloons that float up into the space under the dome, which is 280 feet in the air. I'm sure they'd think that was amusing/heart-lifting/justified, but it cannot be tolerated. It damages the building, and it will cost a lot of money and effort to undo. If it is not undone, it creates a free-speech forum, and the state will need to tolerate future balloons representing the full spectrum of messages, and the dome will become the world's most ridiculous gigantic, inverted pile of litter.

"Will de Blasio's promise to let developers build larger and taller in exchange for creating affordable housing overwhelm neighborhoods with hulking buildings that hurt the quality of life?"

That's what "some advocates and preservationists" are asking.

I think if you click through and look at the design, you'll scream yes.

If the developers want people to accept huge buildings, why do they make them so ugly?

Here's Madison's little big-building controversy, as presented by our former mayor Dave Cieslewicz. Don't miss the comments section, with much participation by Stu Levitan, who leads the Landmark Commission that rejected the proposal. ("This column is a disgrace, and shows a shocking disregard for both facts and the laws....")

Here's some background on Levitan, an article that ends, "'Yes, I still have Nixon’s balls,' Stu Levitan said. 'Thanks for asking.'"

I've mentioned Levitan before on this blog, for example in the post "'So Meade, in your marriage, which one of you is the whore?' A question asked in the webpages of Isthmus by Madison politico Stu Levitan." That was back before Meade got blocked from participating in the Isthmus forum for speaking inappropriately. (Isthmus is the Madison alt newspaper, i.e., the main newspaper in Madison. And here's an old post of mine that records ex-Mayor Dave's interaction with Meade at the Isthmus.)

ADDED: Clicking around writing this post, I got to this old piece of Dave's that has Meade in the comments, and I see that Stu Levitan is also in the comments there. Dave's topic is college football, and Meade, commenting with his full name, Laurence Meade, writes:

It's a free market, Dave. Plenty of schools don't have sports. Go to one of those schools.

As far as brain injuries, what else are you going to ban - riding in cars? bicycling? taking showers? drinking alcohol?

"The way records were sold was ridiculous... The covers were brown, tan or green paper."

"They were not attractive, and lacked sales appeal."

Alex Steinweiss, the man who invented the album cover in 1939, has died at the age of 94. And here it is, the first album cover:



Lots more images, here. I especially like this one:



ADDED: I decided to post that "Boogie Woogie" cover before I saw that the first name on it is Meade — Meade Lux Lewis. Meade notices and, after some Googling, informs me that Meade Lux Lewis is mentioned in Chapter 81 of Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle." Indeed, it is:

Newt now put a long-playing record on the large phonograph in the room off the terrace. He came back with the record's slipcase, which he handed to me.

The record was called Cat House Piano. It was of unaccompanied piano by Meade Lux Lewis.

Here, you can buy "Cat House Piano," which looks like it might have a cover designed by Steinweiss. I like the song title "Meade's Mambo." And here's Meade Lux Lewis playing "Low Down Dog":



Over at YouTube, the top-rate comment is: "There will never, ever be a cooler name than "Meade Lux Lewis." Now, have I wandered off topic? "If you find  your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reasons... that person may be a member of your karass."

"Are you supposed to be Suzie Doozie, the fearsome litigator during work, then put on an apron and magically transform into Suzie Homemaker at nights and weekends?"

"What's the point of that schzoid existence? Will your kids be better adjusted because you share daddy's name? Shouldn't they respect you for your independence?"

Vivia Chen on the trend of women keeping their maiden name professionally but adopting their husbands' names for social/personal matters.

I've gotten married twice, and both times I kept my original name. The first time, it was 1973, and my reasons were: 1. I strongly identify with my name, 2. I imagined myself becoming a significant artist with that signature, 3. "Althouse" was more distinctive and more balanced with "Ann" than my then-husband's last name,  4. Feminism, and 5. I thought keeping your name was the wave of the future, and I didn't want to be stuck on the end of the old wave. My ex-husband's name was also highly expressive of a tradition that was not mine, but I would have been offended if anyone had accused me of rejecting the name for that reason. In the years of that marriage, which continued until 1988, I rankled at being called Mrs./Ms. + [presumed married name], and I did not always completely hide my disdain for the (to me) backward individuals who assumed a mother's last name is the same as her children's.

The second time I got married, in 2009, I seriously considered adopting my new husband's last name, but once again, I did not. I saw good reasons on both sides. For keeping Althouse: 1. I'd been Althouse for so long, it would be weird to be anyone but Althouse, 2. It would be a lot of work changing my name on everything (when you can still call me Mrs. Meade whenever you want), 3. I have done a lot of writing with the name Althouse on it, and 4. Having failed to align my name with my sons' name, it seemed wrong to take my husband's name the second time around. But I came close, because I'm not starchily ideological about names. It's more about feelings and aesthetics right now. "Meade" is an aesthetically pleasing name, but "Ann Meade" is too plain, and Meade is Meade, not me. But I did feel that it would be a unique and thrilling expression of love to take the name! And I'm perfectly happy to be called Mrs. Meade — or Ms. Meade or Professor Meade — by anyone, at any time. It wouldn't make me feel "schzoid" (or schizoid!) or make me worry about overly housewifely or whatever it is Ms. Chen is concerned about.

One year ago today at the Wisconsin protests: Meade gets a legislator to admit he lets a protester store her signs in his office.

It's Brett Hulsey, the assemblyman for our district:

Meade [to Hulsey]: "So, you're not only approving, but you're facilitating?"

The woman: "He's not facilitating. I only just asked him if I can, I said, I come here with signs. I just asked him if I could store the signs in his office overnight and he told me I could."

There's overtalking as Hulsey says "We believe in the First Amendment, freedom of speech" and Meade is asking her if she's in Hulsey's district and the woman says "I'm in Madison, but not his district. I have friends in his district."

Now, we are in Hulsey's district, and Hulsey knows it, because Meade has talked to him on several occasions. Meade goes after Hulsey, who is turning again to walk away, and asks him, "Do you have 5 minutes?"

Hulsey lets out a long "uuuuhhhhhh" then says: "Actually I... t-t-t-to discuss what?" Why should the subject matter affect whether our assemblyman has 5 minutes to talk to Meade? Especially if he's big on free speech, the subject shouldn't matter.

Thereafter Hulsey puts a comical amount of effort into evading Meade, though eventually Meade does get to talk with him.

A big mix of stuff from the protests today.

Meade shot, I edited:



0:00 — Meade acquires a flag
0:20 — "No snakes?... So service snakes are allowed?"
2:00 — The "Union/Power" chant ends and Meade starts the National Anthem
3:00 — Flash forward to a second Meade-led National Anthem that took place later in the day (with Meade appearing on screen)
3:15 — Back to the morning National Anthem
3:53 — A speaker wants to "Stop Scott Walker and his minions"
4:45 — A man in shorts holds a "yucky face" sign
5:04 — "They used duct tape"... "That was us."
5:38 — "Go Packers"
5:58 — Dog wearing a sign "I'm smarter than Scott Walker... and once I ran straight into a post"
6:17 — Meade encounters the one guy who might be with the Tea Party doing cleanup
6:48 — "I'll go see if I can shake things up"
6:50 — "Working people of the world revolt"
7:37 — "I just got drafted into the Army of Davids"
7:57 — The thing that Meade resents more than anything
9:21 — Meade disses MSM to a citizen of Wisconsin
10:43 — A child does what many children are doing when brought in by adults see the demonstration: gazes up into the dome
10:48 — George, the St. Bernard
11:13 — A protest song praising the fleebaggers for "sneaking 'cross the border." (Can you believe this guy is wearing a red sweatshirt with white letters that don't say "WISCONSIN" but "NEBRASKA"? Nebraska!)
12:36 — Criticizing Walker because "he's not really one of us"
13:19 — Palm tree!
13:31 — "Stop the Imperial Walker"
13:14 — Drummer boy

"Oh, I liked Dukakis. I like Buttigieg. I've finally lived long enough to realize I don't want a President I like."

Said Meade, just now. We'd been talking about the impeachment.

I'd read out an NPR headline, "Trump Impeachment Process Was 'Absolutely Worth It,' Schiff Says" — because I thought it was funny — so the subject was how the Democratic Party reacts after it focuses hate on a Republican President.

Meade and I lived through the Nixon hate fest in the 1970s. What did the Democratic Party give us after the hated Nixon withdrew from the scene? We got Jimmy Carter as a President, a notorious failure, and then 2 candidates who failed to win the presidency — Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

I said "I liked Dukakis," and I really did at the time. I offered that Buttigieg reminds me of Dukakis. Something about his manner and his voice and style of speech. All of that was made to order for my taste.

Meade said: "Oh, I liked Dukakis. I like Buttigieg. I've finally lived long enough to realize I don't want a President I like."

If you're thinking of trying to top Meade's line by saying "I want a President who likes me," Meade already said that too, but I think "I don't want a President I like" is the more important concept here.

ADDED: From a PBS webpage:



The "other guy" was President Ronald Reagan. Neither Meade nor I liked Ronald Reagan. [CORRECTION: The other guy was George H.W. Bush. Meade and I did not like him either. Meade still doesn't like him: "He wasn't good enough."]

Michael Dukakis was Governor of Massachusetts. He was succeeded in office by William Weld, who's running for President right now, in the Republican primaries, challenging Donald Trump. The next elected Governor of Massachusetts was none other than Mitt Romney. After Mitt Romney came Deval Patrick, and he's running in the Democratic Party primaries right now.

Somehow, Governors of Massachusetts keep thinking they should be our President. There's a funny old NYT column about that. Hang on a second.

AND: How many newspaper columns stick in your mind for 30+ years? Here it is, "Well, if It Isn't the Governor of Massachusetts" by Veronica Geng (Sept. 22, 1988).

My boyfriend, Ed, has authorized me to tell this personal story about us, because it bears on the Presidential campaign. A few years ago I developed an infatuation with someone else, and then it fizzled out - mainly because of the shrewd way Ed handled the situation. He just began referring to this other guy, whose name he knew perfectly well, as ''the Governor of Massachusetts'' (which he wasn't). I'd come home on cloud nine, and Ed would say, ''So, did you have fun with the Governor of Massachusetts?'' This would deflate me....