"Since I can't grow a beard, I actually have to say, 'Hello, I'm not a female' to everyone I meet."

Since I can't grow a beard, I actually have to say, "Hello, I'm not a female" to everyone I meet. https://t.co/Hf92rHl8Zl

— Jack Craver (@JackCraver) October 11, 2019

ADDED: Craver misses (comically misses?) the fact that wearing a beard as a way to say "Hello, I'm not a female" would only be done by someone who is not secure in his masculinity. But Craver didn't come up with the salutation, which is funny because why introduce yourself by saying what you are not? It's going to raise suspicion, like Nixon saying "I am not a crook." And it raise the un-P.C. inference that the thing you're denying is bad — that being female is bad.

The Cap Times reporter Jack Craver refers to me as a "Walker fan."

He is such a weasel. Craver I mean. Not my darling Scottie.

"Using his veto power, Scott Walker could expand vouchers even more."

The Cap Times reports:

With the stroke of his veto pen, Walker could simply cross out the limits when the budget lands on his desk. Although the broad power of the Wisconsin gubernatorial veto has been curtailed somewhat in the past few decades, it remains an effective way to fundamentally rewrite legislation.... 

The cons are obvious: Reneging on the deal could infuriate Republican moderates in the Senate, including Olsen and Senate President Mike Ellis. Working with the moderate wing of his party in the future might become problematic for Walker. In the run-up to his re-election campaign in 2014, he doesn't need to lose GOP support. 

The pros are simple: It would further endear Walker to the national conservative movement and put another feather in the cap he wears as a likely presidential candidate.

"Thanks for your interest, but I don't feel that I have anything new to say on the subject of myself."

"I actually find it too boring to talk about! I said that to Jack Craver some years back, and what I got for it was an article about how egotistical I am for refusing to do an interview. But... whatever... I genuinely find the topic dull. I answered the same questions over and over again many years ago, and I'm not good at doing things that bore me."

Written just now, in email —without the link — to a journalist who wanted to interview and "profile" me. I read it out loud to Meade.

MEADE: "I'd drop that last sentence."

ME: "Why? Do you think it's asshole-ian?"

MEADE: "I just don't think it's necessary. You've already made the point that you think it's boring."

ME: "So you think it's asshole-ian?"

MEADE: "It's a little asshole-ian."

But of course, that's the thing about me not doing things that bore me. I write things and post/send them quickly. That email was already sent. But that's not to say the conversation with Meade was useless. It was intrinsically good, and then — a plus — bloggable. But I never blog conversations with Meade without submitting it for his approval.

So let's see if this sees the light of day.

"Back in business — Blaska!"

Announces Meade, telling Isthmus readers to bookmark the new blog, but it's Isthmus, so Meade's immediately smacked down by one commenter who assures everyone that Meade "will be dropping [Blaska's] opinions on [the Isthmus forum] like they are science at every opportunity, so I don't feel the need to bookmark his page." And then everyone switches to talking about some other blogger on the same site, and she's apparently a complete idiot.

Blaska was the conservative blogger at Isthmus not too long ago. But Isthmus lost a couple of its liberal bloggers left — Jack Craver (remember when he trashed me?) and Emily Mills (remember when she trashed me?) — and if they'd kept Blaska, there'd only have been one liberal (Citizen Dave) to offset the one conservative, and that wouldn't make sense in a Madison, Wisconsin "alternative" newspaper now, would it?

Missing from the Wisconsin recall election ads: the subject of collective bargaining that started all the protests.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports on the 9 recall elections and the massive ad campaigns:

The ads that have aired in recent weeks have delved into candidates’ personal histories, gaffes and legal problems, into the broader battle over the state budget, and into federal issues like Medicare.

Gov. Walker’s push against collective bargaining for public employees is mostly absent from the broadcast advertising, either because strategists believe most voters have made up their mind about that issue or because they think other messages are more effective....

And here's Jack Craver in the Isthmus:

WTDY, the radio station where I work part-time, can't get in touch with Democratic candidates for Senate. They're apparently not interested in discussing why "big labor" is only a big issue for Republicans now. Democrats make little mention of the issue that brought about this historic opportunity to take back the State Senate....

Democrats get tons of money from unions, but they get even more from corporations. I would argue that the party's current posture on unions is evidence of its attempt to straddle straddle both interests.

Well, the Wisconsin protests were about public employee unions, so it should be easy to avoid that conflict... unless the project of supporting public employee unions depends on confusing people.

Craver continues, with lines that may be the norm in Madison but should raise eyebrows in the rest of the state:

What's incredible, however, is how willingly the American people entertain the notion that the Democratic Party is anti-business or left wing. Let's be clear: There is no American left. There used to be. But the right has taken over the dialogue in the last 30 years, and convinced us that any move towards an economic system championed by Roosevelt, Truman or Eisenhower represents an attack against American capitalist values.

Hmmm. Let me guess why the Democratic candidates don't want to be on Craver's radio show!

"The excuse that you're not breaking new gossip you're just helping to spread gossip seems like a pretty lame excuse."

Jack Craver — the Isthmus writer who did that hit piece on me — takes some heat for writing "Oh, and Herb Kohl is long-rumored to be gay." That came in the context of talking about whether Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin — who is openly gay — could run successfully for Herb Kohl's Senate seat.

If the question is what counts as outing? then it's not outing to report the existence of well-known rumors. How well-known are the rumors about Herb Kohl?

But the question isn't really how to define the term "outing." It's whether it's whether a journalist should bring up the subject of rumors in a particular context. Here, the context is whether an openly gay candidate will be successful running for an political position now held by a rumored-to-be-gay person. Another context where it might seem justified is reporting the rumored-to-be-gay person's vote on the repeal of Defense of Marriage Act or Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

I think the mainstream norm is to avoid mentioning the rumor and to wait until the person identifies himself as gay — even in those special contexts. Perhaps it depends on how obvious the rumors have been balanced against how gay-related the context is. And the thumb on the scales is: How edgy/mainstream do you want to be?

Isthmus is our "alternative newspaper." We could talk about what that term means. And Craver's on-line writing self-identifies as a "blog," whatever the hell that is.

"The Daily Show" brings a live camel to icy downtown Madison to do a comedy skit, and it gets entangled in a metal fence and falls down horribly.

This is difficult to watch...



Background and more video here. The show's comic actor John Oliver was on the scene. Obviously, the idea was to play on the comparison between Egypt and Wisconsin, which has been pushed by the local protesters.

Truly nauseating. The linked piece in the Isthmus says it "ends happily" because the animal is eventually able to stand up again. Ithmus is a newspaper of sorts. Let's see if — instead of smiling on camera and calling it a happy ending — the reporter finds out where the TV crew got the camel, who thought it was acceptable to bring a camel out in the ice and snow, who decided to put a collapsible metal fence around the animal, what training the handlers had, why the owners of the camel entrusted its welfare to these people, and what ultimately happened to the animal?

I kind of hate driving traffic to the Isthmus (and to the same reporter who wrote an article trashing me as an egotist because I declined to give him an interview), because it seems to be treating this as a kooky, quirky YouTube moment. It's not. It's animal cruelty.

I'd like an investigation. Should someone be prosecuted?

ADDED: The reporter, Jack Craver, apparently obliges John Oliver who tells him to shut off the camera. The animal struggles for 10 minutes, we hear in the final video, but there's no video of most of that — it seems because Craver bowed to the authority of a comedian. Craver refers to Oliver as a "correspondent." Hello? He's an actor.

In that final video, Craver turns the camera on himself right after the animal finally struggles to its legs. I realize he's happy that the animal has managed to stand up, but I find it hard to believe that is a face of a human being that just watched an animal suffer for 10 minutes.

You know, the world is real. And "The Daily Show" is fake.

IN THE COMMENTS: Jack Craver stops in and I respond:

Craver writes: "I did not oblige John Oliver's request to turn the camera off. As the video shows, I kept the camera on and shot two more videos."

You say, in the final video, that there were 10 minutes of the camel on the ground, but you do not show 10 minutes. The video with Oliver ends a few seconds after he asks you to stop, and the next video begins at some later point.

And I don't assert what I don't know. I say "apparently" and "it seems." If you have the full 10 minutes of the suffering camel on the ground. Please post it. Or send it to me and I will post it. And please tell me why your face looked so fresh after looking at that 10 minutes of torture. And why you wrote a cutesy post about it as if you were pleased that you got to see a celebrity and scoop some video.

"It's news to me that my article that you gave a generally positive review last year, and that your husband gave 'a solid A-" was meant to trash you.'"

Well, you need to think a lot harder about a lot of things. You are quite unsophisticated, and I don't particularly enjoy embarrassing you because you are or were a UW student and I am a teacher. See if you can figure out why we addressed your article like that. See? I'm a teacher. I'm trying to teach you to think better. I'm sure you know you were trying to trash me and I am sure your colleagues at the Isthmus knew that and I'm sure the folks around the law school saw it that way. Now, be a man and admit that, and then go back and think through why Meade and I patronized you the way we did.

"Figures like Rush Limbaugh and to a much lesser extent, bloggers like Kos and Glenn Reynolds, are powerful because they represent a movement and ideology."

"They are the leaders of a team. Ann Althouse doesn't represent anything but herself."

True! There is no Team Althouse.

The Daily Cardinal came up with a list of the top 10 most influential figures in Madison....

Number 10 was absurd. Ann Althouse? There's a difference between being big and being influential. She might have been noticeable enough for Isthmus to run a cover story about her, but...

Ha. This is written by Jack Craver, who wrote that cover story in the Isthmus. He insulted me in the article, portraying me as an egotist, and he's doing it again here as he says I "don't represent anything but [my]self." His problem is that, as a lefty, he doesn't get individualism. It's not egoistic to write, representing myself. Who am I to represent if not myself? I am myself! The writing isn't egotistical. It's honest and expressive. People read what I write because I'm a specific person, and you can tell. It's influential to the extent that other people, as individuals, identify with what I've written or have their own thoughts inspired by it or feel like coming in here to talk with other people because a post set up an interesting conversation. If that's influential, maybe it's because there are a lot of individuals like me who enjoy free speaking and don't want to be led.

"As it turns out, no, you cannot draw depictions of Muhammad in Madison."

"At least, not without having them immediately changed to pictures of Muhammad Ali, and not without having them censored the next day. Let's imagine an alternate universe. Let's say the drawings were never tampered with, but instead were met with nothing more than shrugged shoulders and public admonishment for our childish behavior. In this scenario the egg would be on our faces. Instead, suffice it to say that our point has been proven. The right to criticize religion and perform blasphemous acts needs to be defended more than ever."

Say the UW-Madison Atheists, Humanists & Agnostics. Via Jack Craver)

(Here's my position on the Mohammad-drawing protest.)

Isthmus finally came out with that article about me by UW student Jack Craver — to whom I refused to give an interview.

Here's the article, in which — among other things — Craver quotes  my blog post from last January, where I talked about why I didn't want to do the interview. I don't know if he realizes it or not, but Craver's article is better because he needed to do what I told him to do and he did it: read the blog and try to get it instead of asking me to explain myself.

I'm not saying he got everything. He most assuredly didn't. For example, after (correctly) noting my peeve about men in shorts, he tells the story of Meade asking me out like this:

In fact, Meade's first date proposal came after Althouse posted a response to Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, from which she drew this piece of advice for men: "A young man should perceive when a girl likes him and he needs to ask her out to dinner and a movie before somebody else does."

Meade saw his opportunity and seized it. "OK. Want to have dinner with me and see it again? I'll wear my pants [a reference to Althouse's distaste for shorts]," wrote the loyal commenter, eyes averted.

That wasn't about shorts at all. It was a reference to my delight — "LOL! The green pants..." — when Meade changed his comments avatar to a close-up of a male model in green trousers immediately after — I can't find exactly where — I'd professed love for said model.

Mistakes aside, picking around through my various posts, looking for clues and quotes, resulted in a better material than Craver is likely to have produced if I'd talked to him for an hour. But he does make me look a little pissy in the email I sent him declining the interview:

Basically, the answers to all these questions are already on the blog. If that sounds enigmatic, I mean to be enigmatic. I'm bored by whether something is right wing or not and how can anyone be right wing and so forth. The point of the blog is not to be bored.

He doesn't include the questions he's proposed. In trying to decide if I wanted to overcome my instinctive disinclination to do an interview with a UW student writing for the Isthmus, I asked, "Could you give me an idea of what kinds of things you are looking at and how much of the blog you have read?" He offered these questions:

Why is your blog so successful?...

What is the goal behind your blog?...

What is the blog's politics?...

How have your experiences shaped the world view/political view expressed on the blog?

I didn't think I'd be very interesting blabbing in person about such things, and I didn't want to see what quotes would be cherry-picked out of my babblings for the readers of the local "alternative" paper. Isthmus, as you'd expect in Madison, has a lefty slant, and I had every reason to expect a hit piece. (Including past experience.) And since the writer was a UW student, if I'd spoken with him, I would have treated him in that friendly, accommodating, supportive way that suits my professorial role. Consequently, I would have found it hard to protect myself from a hit piece and to respond to it after the fact. I'm not going to get into any kind of a public fight with a UW student.

I wasn't going to read the article because I didn't want to get annoyed, but then reader Larry K emailed me the link to it and — even though he alerted me that it was "scurrilous" — I couldn't resist. Then I was surprised that it wasn't as bad as Larry K seemed to think:

[Criticize Democratic politicians and policies long enough] and you'll get a scrawny University student trawling through your personal life and making repeated references to your UW salary (which is healthy, but a fraction of what I'm sure she could earn in private practice)....

If this dude thinks her blog is right-wing, he ought to move out of the basement - and work on his critical thinking skills. The apparently big insight of this article - "People who call Ann Althouse a right-wing political blogger miss the point. She's a right-wing pop-culture blogger" - is simply asserted, and then goes nowhere. Having "attitude" is right-wing? Did this guy miss the 20th century?

Ah, but wait! Maybe having attitude is right wing! In the Isthmus article, Craver wonders about my (oft-derided) line "to be a great artist is inherently right wing." I stand by that, for the reasons I gave at the time. Now, I realize I could expand that into: Having attitude is right wing. That might ring true, and, in any case, it will rile the lefties, which is how I have my fun a motivating force behind my blogging, which you know I consider to be art work (and therefore... right wing!).