FREE WHITEWATER

Culture

Speaker Vos’s Distorted Idea of Respect

One reads that Assembly Speaker Vos believes it is disrespectful to allow a physically disabled legislator to telephone into legislative meetings: A state lawmaker who is paralyzed isn’t allowed to participate in committee meetings by phone under a legislative rule that he says keeps him from performing his job as well as he should. Democratic…

The Biggest Story of Our Time

In life – at least life in a well-ordered, free society – the highest matters are not political. They are familial, cultural, social – involving greater pursuits than contending over the role of the state. Under this view, one contends over politics (as libertarians do) not because it is too important but because it must…

School Board, 7.22.19: One Worthy Question

Whitewater’s school board met in regular session on Monday night, with an agenda of 16 items, of varying importance. In a two-hour, open-session discussion of over a dozen items, with topics great and small (and at least one board member as interested in wheedling or badgering himself into future meetings as any deeper question), there…

Into the Void

Across Wisconsin, newspapers have not distinguished themselves since the Great Recession. Most have descended into a cautious, center-right boosterism. They acted on their publishers’ own politics, and on the politics their elderly (but dwindling) readership. Doing so has only exacerbated their problems. The time to break from this was before – or even during –…

Fact-Checking is an Active, Ongoing Effort

Laura Hazard Cohen explains that “First-generation fact-checking” is no longer good enough. Here’s what comes next: “Fact checkers need to move from ‘publish and pray’ to ‘publish and act.’” “The idea that fact checking can work by correcting the public’s inaccurate beliefs on a mass scale alone doesn’t stack up,” write representatives from Full Fact…

Trump’s Base Delights in Tales of Others’ Deprivation

In this conflict between defenders of America’s liberal democratic order and Trumpism, those of opposition and resistance have wisely steeled themselves for stories of cruelty as state policy. Trumpism’s aim is a herrenvolk, where his demographically homogeneous base receives permanent preference over others, and in which that same base delights in deprivations and depravities inflicted…

What Can Be Done About Rural Newspapers (Even Though It Probably Won’t Be)?

Yesterday I wrote that Another Local Paper Changes Hands. With the failure of legacy publishing, what are rural communities to do? (Obvious point: FREE WHITEWATER is not an online newspaper – never aspired to be, never will be. This is a website of independent commentary: aligned with no faction, beholden to no faction.) A few…

Another Local Paper Changes Hands

Local newspapers are changing ownership quickly now.  Knox gave up publishing the Jefferson County Daily Union in December, and now Bliss will sell the Janesville Gazette (and radio stations) this June. These changes of ownership are not coming because the papers are strong: these sales are halfway to fire sales. The new, common ownership (APG)…

Beyond the Third Investigation

Some weeks ago, I promised readers a copy of the third investigation report into sexual harassment on the UW-Whitewater campus. That report is linked at the bottom of this post. Read merely alone, the report describes gross intentional misconduct, gross negligence and moral indifference about harassment and assault, as well as separate matters of managerial…

Coming & Going Depend on Doing

Originally posted 5.3.19, updated 5.17.19. Although another candidate has withdrawn from the final pool of applicants for a new UW-Whitewater chancellor, conditions that led to the present (stretching over the last two chancellors’ tenure) matter more than the immediate and futile hope that a single appointment will overcome years of the wrong direction.  Genuine change…

‘Why Don’t White Athletes Understand What’s Wrong With Trump?’

Jemele Hill, formerly of ESPN and now of The Atlantic, asks Why Don’t White Athletes Understand What’s Wrong With Trump? (“The Red Sox players who visit the White House owe their black and brown teammates an explanation”): So far, the conversation about the upcoming Boston Red Sox visit to Donald Trump’s White House has centered around…

Third Investigation: ‘Up to 10 students, faculty report being harassed by former UW-Whitewater chancellor’s husband’

Originally posted 4.19.19. One reads today, in a Good Friday records release from the UW System, that Up to 10 students, faculty report being harassed by former UW-Whitewater chancellor’s husband: An investigation into the husband of former University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor Beverly Kopper found that at least seven and up to 10 students or staff…