While normal people were asleep, the Madison City Council Wednesday voted against what should be its official motto, “77 square miles surrounded by reality.”

Actually, a vote on making “77” the official motto never took place. A resolution to make “77” the city’s official “punchline” failed 10–9.

The Wisconsin State Journal opines with a misleading headline (but don’t bother clicking on the link, since you won’t be able to read it unless you’re a subscriber):

We all loved the 1,000 pink flamingos that campus pranksters placed on Bascom Hill decades ago. And the iconic image of the Statue of Liberty’s torch rising above an icy Lake Mendota still sells plenty of post cards at the shops on State Street.

We love UW–Madison, with its brainy and zany students who keep us young. Their madcap marching band added a fifth quarter to college football.

Our great city boasts beautiful lakes, colorful neighborhoods and an irrepressible quirkiness. There’s nothing wrong with creating some distance from reality at times for fun (though Madison sometimes drinks too much and takes its progressive politics too seriously). …

Indeed, Madison is second to none for fun.

But “surrounded by reality” hardly expresses the city’s goals or ideals. Worse, it ignores the city’s bad habit of resting on past success and ignoring how the outside world views us. The reviews aren’t always positive.

Madison needs to build a reputation for getting things done, for encouraging innovation, for thinking big and for always looking ahead.

Last line first: Madison has never had a “reputation for getting things done, for encouraging innovation [that wasn’t generated by UW] and for always looking ahead.” Madison’s reputation is quite the opposite of “getting things done,” in fact. The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Monona Terrace Convention Center opened only 40 years after it was first proposed, which suggests (1) it takes too long to get things done in Madison, or (2) it shouldn’t have been built in the first place. (Only can Madison get a $200 million gift for a civic center and lose money on it.)

On the other hand, the State Journal is correct that Madison ignores “how the outside world views us.” Official Madison (and many of its residents) views the rest of the state as uneducated and uncouth hicks who worry about such trivialities as having more income than expenses. As for “second to none for fun,” parts of the country that have nice weather all year instead of a small part of the year would beg to differ. Madison is also a nest of hypocrisy. The same mayor who as a UW student helped create the Mifflin Street Block Party is now working to kill it. All the environmentalists in Madison can’t be bothered to notice how Madison’s urban sprawl is eating up former Dane County farmland like Pac Man. And that “irrepressible quirkiness” is in fact the reason that the “77” phrase should be Madison’s official motto.

The thing the State Journal editorial willfully ignores is that Madison’s quality of life is going in the wrong direction. “Irrepressible quirkiness” doesn’t get children educated, and Madison’s minority children are not getting educated. The city’s “goals and ideals” appear to not include reducing the city’s crime rate, and particularly its violent crime rate, both of which have grown faster than the city’s population. (I’d blame Madison police for spending too much time being social workers and not enough time arresting the bad guys, but lenient judges and an apathetic City Council share the blame).

Last weekend was La Follette High School’s Fifty Fest, celebrating its 50th anniversary. As you know, I didn’t go. One person who went to La Follette called it as “formerly great school.” In, I would add, a no-longer-great place to grow up in or live. That is reality.