Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts

Sunday, December 02, 2012

Cheap grace: The football edition


You ever notice how football coaches are quick to say, after a big loss, "It's all on me. I'm responsible." 

You ever notice, likewise, how snippy and defensive football coaches get when a sportswriter has the temerity to suggest that what happened just might be due to some shortcoming of theirs?

In other words, "It's all my fault; how DARE you suggest this is my fault?! Now where's my raise."

You ever notice how Nebraska's Bo Pelini pulls this cheap grace act over and over again after his Huskers lay egg after egg in a Really Big Game? Here's Pelini doing it yet again, getting snippy with a favored target for his wrath, Omaha World-Herald sportswriter Dirk Chatelain. 


70-31.
 
The Huskers fell to a five-loss Wisconsin team 70-31 in the Big Ten championship game. You know what a team that loses to a five-loss Wisconsin team in the Big Ten championship would be called if it played in the Southeastern Conference, as opposed to one of the weaker major conferences? 

Kentucky.

This year, the Wildcats went 0-8 in the SEC, and head coach Joker Phillips was forced to take real responsibility for his team's poor performance. He got fired.

LISTEN, I don't know whether Pelini ought to be canned. or even how you could explain getting rid of a coach who won 10 games, even in a notoriously weak conference. But I do know a pattern when I see one -- this particular one being meltdowns in big games against beatable opponents.


I also suspect that another pattern's emerging -- that this is as good as it gets for Nebraska football now, that this is the new normal. Tom Osborne's gone, and he's not coming back. 

Go Big Red! But make a trip to the liquor store before the next big game -- we're all going to need a drink.

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Dear a-hole: You've just been owned


Here's one guy in La Crosse, Wis., who's going to think twice about writing a local TV morning-show anchor to tell her how fat she is.

Unfortunately, the jerk probably still won't hesitate to belittle others who don't have a television station at their disposal. Still, Jennifer Livingston of WKBT rocks.

And so does her outraged husband, Channel 8 evening news anchor Mike Thompson.


HAT TIP: Romenesko.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

What if. . . ?


What if a local TV station locked out its real meteorologist and brought in a "replacement weatherguy" to tell us what it's going to be like out there?

And what if the word out there is that the weatherscab producing your "Pinpoint VIPIR AccuNow forecast" was let go by the Lingerie Weather Channel because he, well, sucked?

 As NBC26 in heartsick Green Bay, Wis., showed us Tuesday, it'd go something like this:
The Green Bay Packers became the latest NFL team to lose on a highly questionable call by the league’s replacement referees last night. WGBA, Green Bay’s NBC affiliate, poked fun at the situation this morning, bringing in a “replacement weather guy” to handle the forecast.
“It’s pretty bad out there people,” the replacement weather guy said (video above). “200 degrees below we’re looking at, and it’s really going to heat up. It’s going to be like 346 degrees by noon.”
WOW! If it's going to get up to 346, the station probably ought to let all the female anchors and reporters go on the air in just their lingerie. It would be just too darn hot to wear anything else.

Yeah, that's the (replacement) ticket!

And it would make the adjustment from the replacement weatherguy's previous gig a bit less daunting.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Lullaby for the working class


Dear Democrats:

No matter what asshats Republican politicians might be (and they are), ordinary Americans still hate you worse. This is Tuesday's lesson from the Wisconsin recalls . . . and from numerous other elections across America the past four decades.

I have opinions on why this is.

One, you hate Joe Six-Pack just as much as the GOP pols, basically. You'll go to the wall for the eugenicist swells of Planned Parenthood in ways you'd never consider going to the wall on behalf of -- for lack of a better word -- the proletariat.


In a world of political priorities, you know and I know that you think it's more important to abort babies (many of them poor and brown) than it is to fight like hell for jobs, education, social services and basic f***ing human dignity for the poor, working and middle classes. Many of these people can't articulate it that way, but they know it just the same.

And this is why so many of them either stay home on Election Day or go out and vote against their own economic and class interests by filling in the oval or pulling the lever for tea-party nutwagons, bomb-throwers and (oftentimes) your average, modern-day "conservative" protofascist.

This is the lesson from Recall Tuesday in Wisconsin. No matter how outrageous the GOP's sins against the poor and working class, regular folk think their chances are better going with their enemies than with their "friends."

Good luck with that paradigm in 2012, Democrats. And God help us all.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Two all-beef patties, special snark, lettuce, cheese


If you're a "sweet, sweet man" who's an average-Joe version of Adrian Monk -- albeit one who just happens to have consumed his 25,000th Big Mac -- you know what that makes you today?

"America's saddest man."

No, it must be so. It was on Gawker.

Because, obviously, there's nothing more pathetic than eating two Big Macs a day, just about, for the last 39 years. And nothing stranger than saving the receipts. Or packing a couple for road trips . . . just in case.

There's nothing in the world more worthy of ridicule than that. Not even being Arnold Schwarzenegger.



A WORKING SHMOE who loves him some Big Macs (and is very, very thorough about it) is way sadder than fathering a bastard child -- or is it two? -- during your marriage, then watching your wife and your four legitimate kids squirm in the TV lights after your sins come to haunt them.

Nah, Don Gorske of Fond du Lac, Wis., is the freak here. And it's just like a bunch of rube cheeseheads in flyover country to celebrate a sad, pathetic specimen such as that.

Ergo, let's laugh at the freaks. The laughable freaks, that is, not the heavy-hitter, "serious news" freaks. In a world ruled tag-team style by snark and unseriousness, it's important to keep these things straight.

Except when they're gay.

And you have to admit Mr. Gorske of Fond du Lac, Wis., and all that saturated fat is sooooooo "gay," though not gay. OK?

Don't think about it. Laugh at the freak. This one, not that one.

I admit it; I was about to do the same damned thing -- right in this space. But then I thought about it.

Guess that makes me one up on American media culture, but probably not on Don Gorske of Fond du Lac, Wis., and "sweet, sweet man" status. If ever I ate my 25,000th Big Mac (and there's no chance of that at this late date), I doubt the whole town would come out to celebrate me and my digestive feat.

A few, though, might drop by to wonder "How come that sorry son of a bitch ain't had a heart attack yet?"

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Just between you and me, 'Mr. Koch' . . . .


Punking a governor like Wisconsin's Scott Walker -- not to mention exposing his real agenda -- is about as good as it gets.

Maybe not as good as punking Fidel Castro (definitely not "one of us" in the Walkerian continuum of "us" and "not us."), but pretty dang good.

From the Chicago Tribune:

On a prank call that quickly spread across the Internet, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was duped into discussing his strategy to cripple public employee unions, promising never to give in and joking that he would use a baseball bat in his office to go after political opponents.

Walker believed the caller was a conservative billionaire named David Koch, but it was actually a liberal blogger.

The two talked for at least 20 minutes a conversation in which the governor described several potential ways to pressure Democrats to return to the Statehouse and revealed that his supporters had considered secretly planting people in pro-union protest crowds to stir up trouble.

The call also revealed Walker's cozy relationship with two billionaire brothers who have poured millions of dollars into conservative political causes, including Walker's campaign last year.

Walker compared his stand to that taken by President Ronald Reagan when he fired the nation's air-traffic controllers during a labor dispute in 1981.

"That was the first crack in the Berlin Wall and led to the fall of the Soviets," Walker said on the recording.

The audio was posted on the Buffalo Beast, a Web site in New York, and quickly went viral.

Editor Ian Murphy told The Associated Press he carried out the prank to show how candidly Walker would speak with Koch even though, according to Democrats, he refuses to return their calls.


AT ONE POINT during his conversation with Not Koch, the cheesehead-in-chief was sounding quite the revolutionary, in an aristocratic, send-in-the-Pinkerton-agents-to-bust-some-union-heads Andrew Carnegie kind of way:

On the call, Walker said he expected the anti-union movement to spread across the country and he had spoken with the governors of Ohio and Nevada. The man pretending to be Koch seemed to agree, telling Walker, "You're the first domino."

"Yep, this is our moment," Walker responded.

YEP, it's your moment, all right, governor. A great big "OOPS!" moment.

Enjoy.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

TV Blow-Up, or . . . shootin' like the King


This might be the sanest thing anyone in America has done in the last year, and look what it gets the guy.

Besieged by the SWAT team.

Busted.

Written up in all the newspapers.


ALL BECAUSE of a completely sane, rational response to the politician who not only won't go away, but tells all her no-account kinfolk to come over, too. Here's what The Associated Press put out on the wires, but you be the judge:
A rural Wisconsin man blasted his television set with a shotgun after watching Bristol Palin's "Dancing with the Stars" routine Monday night, saying he was fed up with politics and Palin wasn't a very good dancer, according to court documents.

Steven Cowan, 67, of the town of Vermont, about 15 miles west of Madison, then pointed the gun at his wife, 66-year-old Janice Cowan, who escaped and called police, authorities said. A SWAT team surrounded the couple's farmhouse, and officers were able to talk Cowan out Tuesday morning after an all-night standoff.

Cowan had been drinking before he sat down to watch "Dancing with the Stars" and suffers from bipolar disorder, his wife told officers. He was charged Tuesday with second-degree reckless endangerment, and could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Cowan was expected to make his initial court appearance Wednesday in Madison. Online court records show that the state public defender's office was appointed to represent him, however the office said it had no record of him as of Wednesday morning.

Dane County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Elise Schaffer said Cowan works as a landlord, but that she didn't know where he owned property. He has a clean criminal record, she said.

"It's kind of sad, actually," Schaffer said.

YEAH, IT'S SAD that y'all put the poor man in jail after his spontaneous fit of rationality. That's what's sad.

But that's just my opinion. Let me know if anybody's interested in starting up a defense fund for a true American patriot.


AFTER ALL, if the King can shoot a TV set -- and get away with it -- for less provocation than a Palin, there just ain't no justice for the common man.