hello friends

Last night people were covering the doors leading into the Capitol with Post-Its describing their feelings on being locked out of the building in blatant violation of the law.


What? I think it's a valid question.

[For those who can't read my handwriting: "If I have state-approved business, may I be admitted to the palace?"]


[Edit: waitasec, why did I use a blurry picture when there's a perfectly clear one available? Updated second image above (earlier I was using this one), and removed comment about the handwriting being out of focus.]

We went down to the Capitol again on Saturday (note, this picture is from Sunday, I just really like it). All the mainstream news reports seem to be sticking with "more than 70,000" for the crowd numbers, because, after all, a week ago Saturday it was estimated at right under 70,000, and then two days ago it was definitely more than that, so "more than 70,000" is a fair number, right? Crafty. 100,000 is more than 70,000. One million is more than 70,000. But as long as you stick with "more than 70,000", the number that people are going to take away is... 70,000.

I'm not saying we had a million. But apparently the Madison police say we did, indeed, reach the goal of 100k. This video starts off with a great pan of the crowd -- keep in mind, these people showed up when it was 20 degrees out and snowing.

Also still on the official list of AP newspeak: "normally immaculate" as a description for the Capitol building, replacing the former phrase "full of dirty, dirty hippies". Stay classy, AP! I'm sure the people who have been working hard and keeping the building quite clean for the last two weeks appreciate you ignoring their efforts so you can make a cheap shot.

[Edit 2/28 7:15 PM: oh for the love of CHEESE AP would you please stop changing your articles without indicating on the page that it's been changed? Some of us leave pages up in our browsers all day while we're at work and thus have a pretty easy way to see what you're doing!

For the record, the sentence I was referencing, which was apparently tossed into the memory hole sometime today, is this:

"Police decided not to forcibly remove protesters after thousands ignored a 4 p.m. Sunday deadline to leave so the normally immaculate building could get a thorough cleaning."

Freakin' Minitrue.]

So I checked back on the article I linked to the other day, and found, to my surprise, that it had undergone a... metamorphosis.

There are a few little tweaks to wording near the end...



...and somewhat more substantial rewrites, not handled entirely gracefully by kdiff, everywhere else.



Most interesting to me: all of the bits complaining about stinky, stinky protesters have been expurgated.

I am a paranoid sort, and so I saved off a copy of the article on the 19th. Here is that original version. I can only imagine whether the online version will undergo further silent revisions, leading to, in time, something that bears no resemblance to the original -- but which is the only truth we are given to believe.

Why is the AP giving me 1984 flashbacks?

So of late I've been reading The People Of The Abyss, published in 1903, which is basically "Jack London goes to the slums of, er, London, and writes about what it's like to live there". And I keep reading these descriptions of people who are homeless because they dared to get sick, or be injured on the job, or whatever, and it keeps reminding me of the Wisconsin Doings... because without unions, and without Wisconsin unions, we in the United States would have no workman's comp, and no unemployment insurance, and might very well have hundreds of thousands of people in basically the same hopeless situation that London describes. The link I followed to this book came from a source that has nothing to do with Wisconsin politics, so it's just one of those really weird coincidences. (Cleolinda is amazing, though. The Secret Life Of Dolls is the best-written story about a grown woman talking to her dolls that you will ever read. Eagerly awaiting the next installment!)

But anyway. In chapter 13 of The People Of The Abyss there is this description, of a man who worked hard, helped his fellows, and died in squalor:

It is a brief little story, the story of Dan Cullen, but there is much to read between the lines. He was born lowly in a city and land where the lines of caste are tightly drawn. All his days he toiled hard with his body; and because he had opened the books, and been caught up by the fires of the spirit, and could 'write a letter like a lawyer,' he had been selected by his fellows to toil hard for them with his brain. He became a leader of the fruit-porters, represented the dockers on the London Trades Council, and wrote trenchant articles for the labor journals.

He did not cringe to other men, even though they were his economic masters and controlled the means whereby he lived, and he spoke his mind freely, and fought the good fight. In the 'Great Dock Strike' he was guilty of taking a leading part. And that was the end of Dan Cullen. From that day he was a marked man, and every day, for ten years and more, he was 'paid off' for what he had done.

A nice little reminder of a world which unions -- strong unions, unions with the power to protect their members against abuses by those in charge -- help to prevent.

My favorite bit...

He did not cringe to other men, even though they were his economic masters and controlled the means whereby he lived[...]

Last I heard, folks were gearing up for tomorrow all over the country, with rallies of varying sizes being planned in dozens of states.

All refusing to cringe to other men.

Let's hope none of them wind up like Dan Cullen.

Mecha has made a nice little post about how the Associated Press is lying to you about recent events here in Madison. I would add to his commentary on this laughable article [Edit 2/20/2011: how did I copy-paste a link with 2/20 in the URL when it was still 2/19? the real article is here] [Edit 2/22/2011: the AP has, without any indication on the page, rewritten the article and removed many of the parts I talk about below! Read more on this, and download the original version of the article, here.] and yet only by summing up said article via the magic of bullet points:

*Pro-union protesters are smelly.
*Maybe three thousand people tops out of a crowd of 60,000+ constitutes "throngs".
*Ditto for "[coming] out in force". (technically true I guess if that really is their full force?)
*No, seriously, the protesters are really, really smelly.
*They have failed to convince any Republican lawmakers to change their minds, which, obviously, is their only goal, since no other goals are mentioned.
*"The normally an immaculate building" is a sentence construction that a professional journalist should actually get paid for.

Plus, a "he-said-she-said" kind of tally...

Pro-bill protesters heard from in this article
1. Sign slogan from AP picture included with article: "We protest on Saturdays; too busy working M-F for union greed"
2. "Chants of 'Pass the bill! Pass the bill!'"
3. Scott Lemke's sign: "'If you don't like it, quit' on one side, and 'If you don't like that, try you're fired' on the other"
4. Sign slogan: "Your Gravy Train Is Over ... Welcome to the Recession"
5. Sign slogan: "Sorry, we're late Scott. We work for a living."
6. Speech by Herman Cain: "We pay the bills! [...] This is why you elected Scott Walker, and he's doing his job. ... Wisconsin is broke. My question for the other side is, 'What part of broke don't you understand?'"
7. Steve Boss's sign: "The Protesters Are All `Sick' -- Wash your Hands"; and Boss's quote in the article: "It's time to address the issue. They (public workers) got to take the same cuts as everyone else. [...] It's a fairness thing."


Anti-bill protesters heard from in this article
1. "[C]hants of 'Kill the bill! Kill the bill!'"
2. "'Go home!' union supporters yelled at Scott Lemke[...]"


Yep, looks like balanced reporting to me.


Oh man, I think I'll go over to Fox News's website and see how many videos and pictures they took of the one walkway outside the capitol that was filled with tea partiers... oh. Oh, okay, they don't actually have any articles about this at all listed on their US News page!¹ But they've linked to one about how two 130-year-old trees in Auburn, Alabama are dying, which, you have to admit, is pretty important to the nation.


1. Okay, so they link out near the bottom to a very short article on fox21online.com. There, it jockeys for position with such weighty articles as the one about some Fox 21 personalities doing the Polar Plunge.