Today in 1973, the Immigration and Naturalization Service ordered John Lennon to leave the U.S. within 60 days.
More than three years later, Lennon won his appeal and stayed in the U.S. the rest of his life.
The number one single today in 1974:
Today in 1985, Billy Joel married Christie Brinkley on a boat moored at the Statue of Liberty.
Joel and Brinkley divorced in 1993.
The number one album today in 1985:
The number one British album today in 1991 was REM’s “Out of Time”:
Birthdays begin with Ric Ocasek of The Cars:
Who is Yvette Marie Stevens? You know her as Chaka Khan Chaka Khan Chaka Khan Chaka Khan:
Mark McLoughlin of Wet Wet Wet:
One death of note today in 1995: Alan Barton of Black Lace, which recorded either the number two single in Britain in 1984, or the worst song of all time as determined in a Q Magazine music writers poll:
National Review’s Jim Geraghty asked this question Tuesday:
How do you persuade someone who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 to vote for the Republican option in 2012?
It is bigger than the million-dollar question. Republican turnout may or may not be higher than in 2008. Some Obama voters of 2008 will stay home in 2012. But in the end, Obama had 69.4 million votes in 2008 and McCain had 59.9 million. To get to 270 electoral votes, the Republican nominee will need some of those 69.4 million to swing into his column. …
Generally speaking, people hate admitting they made a mistake — particularly over a decision that is culturally regarded as important as one’s presidential choice. That’s why you still see cars with Dole-Kemp, Gore-Lieberman, and Kerry-Edwards stickers in some parts. Very few Obama voters will express their vote for the GOP nomination in 2012 as an explicit act of personal penance for bad judgment. (Although I stand by my position that anyone who voted for John Edwards for president should sit out the next two presidential elections, examining their spectacularly wrong assessment of his character in quiet contemplation.)
No, a lot of Obama voters must be persuaded that they made the wrong choice in 2008, and that it isn’t their fault. …
It ties to a theory I’ve had for a while, that most apolitical voters desperately want to avoid concluding that the first African-American President of the United States is a failure, on par with a second term for Jimmy Carter. As a result, they will give Obama until the very last minute to demonstrate an ability to get the job done, to demonstrate that he can generate tangible improvements in their lives. But, if around October 2012, people don’t see tangible improvements in their lives, well . . . the bottom may fall out of his numbers. He’ll still have his loyal base, but the vast majority of independents will decide he just can’t get the job done.
The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto picked up that theme later Tuesday:
This notion does not actually contradict the idea that Obama is a hard-left radical pursuing terribly destructive policies. It just leaves open the possibility that he is a foolish idealist rather than an evil genius–which seems a more realistic measure of the man in any case. As Peggy Noonan put it in October: “A nation in trouble probably wants a fatherly, or motherly, figure at the top. What America has right now is a bright, lost older brother.”
Monday night Romney was crisscrossing Ohio, when he spoke about the President and opened up a can of . . . friendliness: “This is a failed presidency,” Romney was quoted as saying. “He’s a nice guy, but he’s in over his head.” Though we’ll never know if Romney actually believes any part of that unsult, we do know that “Nice guy” has become the candidate’s favorite setup when taking a dig at his rivals.
And a dig it is, Taranto adds:
“He’s a nice guy, but . . .” is exquisitely condescending. It’s probably not true: Obama strikes us as a petulant narcissist. But calling someone a “nice guy” is rarely a genuine compliment, and it never is when conjoined by “but.” As any man who has ever been rejected by a woman knows, describing someone as “a nice guy, but . . .” is another way of saying he’s ineffectual. That is exactly the point Romney is making about Obama. …
Yet if Geraghty is right, Romney’s approach is better suited to capturing independent swing voters. It will be easier for them to change their minds if they believe they overestimated Obama’s competence rather than that they supported somebody who posed a “foundational” threat to America.
Geraghty returned to the subject Wednesday:
When you prompt non-diehard Obama voters to think of their expectations on Election Day 2008, they’ll probably conclude that some, many, or all, are unmet. They’ll probably talk about the epic economic anxieties that were gripping almost all Americans in the autumn of 2008. They’ll probably express this in very personal terms, about the value of their home, the value of their 401(k) or other retirement savings, their ability to find a job or find a better job than the one they have now. Perhaps they’ll remember the exorbitant gasoline prices from the summer of 2008. They may remember their incredulity at TARP, at watching the richest people they could imagine — Wall Street bankers! — coming to Congress and begging for billions and saying that if they didn’t get it, the economy would collapse. Long-established businesses were declaring bankruptcy left and right: Lehman Brothers. Washington Mutual, IndyMac, Circuit City, Linens n’ Things. The 2008 election occurred amidst an atmosphere of unequaled crisis. You almost can’t blame late-breaking Obama voters for turning to a candidate who was running as a messiah figure. …
My suspicion is that most Obama voters figured that by the spring of 2012, the United States would be in much better shape than it is now. They may not have had specific benchmarks in mind — 8.3 percent unemployment, $3.82 per gallon gasoline, and so on. But they probably doubted that they would see the federal government fining them for not having health insurance. (Remember that Obama ran against the individual mandate in the Democratic primary.) …
So the first task is to contrast the prospect of Obama, the ideal that some of his voters expected, and what he has been and produced. If you can get an Obama voter to express disappointment in the man they voted for in 2008, well, you’re halfway to getting that voter to A) vote Republican or B) not vote, which is almost as good for our purposes.
Taranto’s last point is also in keeping with something I’ve commented on before (it came up in a different context Wednesday) that explains what both happened to the huge congressional majorities of Obama’s first two years in the White House and his current poll numbers.
Obama either misinterpreted or willfully ignored the implications of the 2008 election results as being a mandate for change. They were not. Voters wanted Obama to make things better, and they certainly are not. (And Democrats took the fall for Obama’s failures in November 2010, didn’t they?) Other than the Dow Jones Industrial Average, every single significant American economic measure is worse off than when Obama took office in 2009. And every measure of federal finances is significantly worse off than when Obama took office. The last three years have certainly hammered home the fact that change is inevitable, but positive change is not.
Since at least 1976, every presidential election has been decided by how the deciding plurality of voters thought the economy was doing. The majority party in the White House owns the economy, period. Unless the economy improves to a magnitude unlikely to happen in less than eight months, the question Ronald Reagan famously asked in 1980 — are you better off now than you were four years ago — is set to get Obama fired in 2012.
Today in 1956, a car in which Carl Perkins was a passenger on the way to New York for appearances on the Ed Sullivan and Perry Como shows was involved in a crash. Perkins was in a hospital for several months, and his brother, Jay, was killed.
Today in 1971, members of the Allman Brothers Band were arrested on charges of possessing marijuana and heroin.
The number one single today in 1975:
The number one album today in 1975 was Led Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti”:
The number one British album today in 1975 was Tom Jones’ “20 Greatest Hits”:
The number one single today in 1980:
Birthdays begin with Roger Whittaker, whose possibly best known U.S. single might be familiar to 1970s viewers of WGN-TV in Chicago:
George Benson:
Keith Reif sang for the Yardbirds:
Harry Vanda of the Easybeats:
Patrick Olive of Hot Chocolate:
Randy Hobbs of the Johnny Winter Group and the McCoys:
On Monday, I walked to Ripon College for the announcement of its new president. (You can do that when you live in a college town and the weather is amazing for this time of year.)
The Ripon College community met their 13th president-to-be, Dr. Zach P. Messitte, today during a public welcome event in the Great Hall of Harwood Union. He will assume his new duties starting July 1. …
Dr. Messitte (pronounced muh-SET-ee) is currently the dean of the College of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma, where he also serves as vice provost for international programs and holds the William J. Crowe Chair in geopolitics as a faculty member. He is the author of numerous articles and the co-editor of the forthcoming book, Understanding the Global Community, that will be published by the University of Oklahoma Press later this year. He hosts an award winning radio show, World Views, on National Public Radio (NPR) and has been in the classroom every semester teaching classes on American foreign policy. Prior to his tenure in Oklahoma, Dr. Messitte served as the first director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and held a tenure-track position in the political science department at the St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
A new college president’s résumé often tells you what the people doing the hiring see as priorities. Messitte’s predecessor came from a development background — fundraising, to use a less lofty term. He replaced a president whose background was in admissions. That was the first time a Ripon College president came from a non-academic background.
At a private college, the arrival of a new president mixes anticipation and apprehension among the staff. Unlike the faculty, college staff, including non-academic administrators below the president, have no tenure to protect them from running afoul of the new administration. Some holdover staff end up on the outs under the Not Invented Here school of human resource management.
Of course, that anticipation/anxiety teeter-totter goes the other way. Anyone hired for a new job never knows everything about that job, including things those doing the hiring prefer that candidates not know, until that person starts there. The CEO is supposed to be at least an authority on all aspects of his or her job, which at a college include, mostly in alphabetical order, academics, admissions, development and finance, and operations of an institution that feeds and houses 1,000 young adults nine months out of the year for four years. The average presidential term at a private college is around five years.
It is interesting to observe from outside the differences in how private colleges are run. Ripon College’s faculty appears to have the biggest share of influence on college decisions, even though the college’s biggest issues over the past decade or so (financial and enrollment) appear to have little to do with academics. (One could also ask what teaching has to do with management of the aforementioned operational responsibilities for a college president.) Most of Ripon’s trustees are alumni; that can either mean a lot of affinity for their alma mater, or resistance to doing things differently from when they were students. Given the average length of a presidential term, recalcitrant tenured faculty could just decide to wait out the new guy until his or her replacement comes along. And yet without naming names, I can personally attest that the wrong presidential pick can do a lot of damage in less time than the average presidential term.
One of the more interesting lines from Messitte’s biography is that he was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to two Peace Corps volunteers. Ripon College has a lot of Peace Corps volunteers (including my wife) among its graduates, so that’s probably appropriate. And this is the first news release announcing a college president’s hiring that I’ve ever seen with quotes from a news anchor (Judy Woodruff of PBS, with whom Messitte worked at CNN), an actress (Famke Janssen) and a former CIA director.
One of the more interesting lines from the news release is a statement I would not have chosen to make as a college PR professional:
Bob Kirkland ’81, chair of the Ripon College Board of Trustees, said Dr. Messitte reflects the highest ideals of the College while possessing the vision and leadership to help realize its vast potential.
That’s an odd statement attached to a 161-year-old college. “Vast potential”? For what? By whose definition? Nothing like putting heat on the new guy when he doesn’t even know, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, the known unknowns, let alone the unknown unknowns.
As president, Messitte will get a lot of unsolicited advice. I used to work with a Ripon College graduate who went into the college admissions field who suggested that Ripon’s best future was as a school for smart jocks. If Messitte reads this blog he’ll be the first to read this, but as Ripon’s football and basketball announcer, I think it’s a tremendous idea. Messitte’s introductory speech quoted Ripon’s retiring men’s basketball and baseball coach, Bob Gillespie, so maybe there’s some hope in that idea. (Since Messitte works at Oklahoma now, I assume he knows what a Sooner is, particularly those Sooners who can be found at Owen Field. If Ripon College uniforms turn a darker shade of red and college games include a new song called “Rally Red Hawk” that sounds suspiciously like “Boomer Sooner,” I guess we’ll have our answer.)
As someone who has a lot of media experience, Messitte hopefully will seek a larger national and public profile for his new employer. Viewed from a few blocks away, Ripon College has seemed to me to have an oddly passive approach to public and media relations and marketing itself, particularly in this electronic media era of ours. Given Messitte’s résumé and the interesting (as in the Chinese curse) state of foreign relations today, Messitte needs to be the short list of TV and radio talk show producers’ expert lists, particularly given this election year.
Messitte’s first speech mentioned his need to listen and ask questions first. The most important initial thing for a new college president to do is to get an accurate picture of the state of the college, which means listening to the right people and not listening to the wrong people. (The corollary to that is: Don’t believe your own press, including your lofty rankings.) The “wrong people” includes those who see the college’s purpose as advancing their own careers or inflating their own power. (Any piece about higher education is required to include the Henry Kissinger quote, “Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small.”) My philosophy of personal egalitarianism, that we are all children of God, compels me to add that one should be wary of those with advanced degrees who demand to be referred to as “Doctor” when their doctorate is a Ph.D. or Ed.D., not a medical or related degree. (I got that from Yale University President A. Bartlett Giamatti.)
Ripon College occupies a place in American higher education that doesn’t at first blush appear to be a growth area. Ripon College is a traditional (students are generally 18 to 23 or so, with few older students) residential (as in most students live on campus instead of being commuters) undergraduate-only (no graduate programs) liberal arts college. Like most private colleges, it is dependent on tuition revenue for the majority of its revenue; it does not have a large enough endowment (similar to most private colleges) to be able to weather more than a couple bad enrollment years.
The other four-year-college in Fond du Lac County, Marian University (for which I was its college relations director), is less prestigious and less selective in choosing its students than Ripon. On the other hand, Marian has two areas of student growth — adult undergraduates (those who never finished, or never started, college who determine after a few years that having a degree would be useful) and graduate students (master’s and Ph.D. s) — although those areas are threatened by the growth of for-profit colleges, such as the University of Phoenix.
Ripon has never been publicly seriously interested in either adult undergraduate or graduate programs. It may be too late to get into either market by now, which puts Ripon in a challenging place given the state of higher education today, and not just at Ripon.
One of the numerous dubious complaints of the Occupy ______ movement is complaints about the cost of higher education, and the six-figure levels of student debt handed to a graduate. The complaints seem to be loudest from those with degrees in fields that would not appear to have a lot of jobs attached to those degrees, such as gender studies.
Those are not, however, complaints limited to the Occupiers, or to Gender Studies graduates. The mantra in nearly every American family above lower class since the end of World War II has been to go to college. While our K–12 education system appears to be treading water at best compared with the rest of the developed world despite our billions of dollars in annual “investment,” the American college and university system has no equal in the world. Most of the world’s world-class universities, including my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin, are within the U.S.’ borders.
Some would argue that there is a direct relationship between the amount of federal and state financial aid given to students and increases in the cost of college, private and public. And an argument can be made that the purpose of going to college shouldn’t be vocational at all given that we’re supposed to have several different careers over our 50 years or so in the workplace. That, however, causes others to ask why one should go to college at all.
That last point prompted two commentaries in The Atlantic from Marty Nemko, Ph.D., author of How to Do Life: What They Didn’t Teach You in School. First:
Rigorous studies have revealed that college students learn shockingly little. For example, in Academically Adrift, it was reported that 36% of graduating seniors nationwide grew not at all in problem solving, critical thinking, and analytical reasoning since entering college as freshmen!
And our sending the highest percentage of students to college in history (now 70%) has created an oversupply of college graduates. That helps explains why, according to a Pew fiscal analysis, 35 percent of the unemployed with college or graduate degrees have been unemployed for more than a year, the same rate as unemployed high school dropouts!
The government would never allow a drug to be sold, let alone subsidize it, without the drug’s manufacturer demonstrating its efficacy. Colleges receive enormous sums of taxpayer dollars. They should be required to demonstrate freshman-to-senior growth in learning and employability that even minimally justifies the four to eight years, enormous cost, and risk of not graduating. Nationwide, fewer than 40% of first-time freshmen graduate within four years. Fewer than two-thirds graduate even if given six years!
Putting a little flesh on that skeleton, I believe that, to receive taxpayer-funded financial-aid dollars, all colleges be required to demonstrate:
1) At least modest average-student growth in critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and problem solving as measured by a standardized exam selected by a national blue-ribbon panel of psychometricians, higher educators, and employers. Well-validated such instruments exist, for example, the Collegiate Learning Assessment. …
2) At least modestly improved employability of the institution’s graduates. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has long categorized jobs in terms of how much education is typically required. Colleges should show that they are capable of delivering a certain standard of outcomes for students with a certain level of achievement.
So, let’s see: Bring in students and graduate them so they can get good-paying jobs, bring in money, keep the alumni happy (see previous comment about students), represent the college well in public and in private, and leave the place in better condition than how you found it. Piece of cake — or, if you will, a box of Rippin’ Good cookies.
There is a lesson from, of all places, the 3½-year presidency of former constitutional law professor Barack Obama. The theme of “change” was hammered upon the brains of voters throughout Obama’s first presidential campaign. Obama misinterpreted his 2008 victory as an endorsement of “change,” when it was not. Voters wanted things to be better, not merely different. Change and progress are not necessarily the same thing, and while change is inevitable, positive change is not.
How Messitte does as Ripon College’s president is important because how Ripon College does is important to Ripon. The line of the night at last week’s City Council candidate forum was from a Ripon College graduate, who said that Ripon without Ripon College is Berlin. (He also is a Ripon High School graduate, so he knows of heated rivalries.) Ripon College’s town–gown relations are not perfect and need to be better. (For instance, Ripon the community would be better if more Ripon College graduates decided to live and work in Ripon instead of returning after graduation only for their class reunions.) But if you want to see what Ripon would be like without Ripon College, take a drive to Milton, which has buildings similar to Ripon’s on the campus of the late Milton College.
You need not be a fan of the Republican, conservative or Rush Limbaugh positions on the Sandra Fluke kerfuffle, or even an opponent of current U.S. abortion law, to see something disturbing (without even reading this) in the liberal position on women’s reproductive rights.
Steve Chapman, a libertarian and not a conservative, identifies why should you be disturbed:
In recent weeks, advocates for “reproductive freedom” have said that part of the Republican “war on women” is the proposal to let religious employers refuse to buy contraceptive coverage in their health insurance plans.
But who is the enemy? Most women, a New York Times/CBS News poll finds, agree that religious hospitals and universities should be free to opt out. Nearly half think any employer should have that prerogative.
If the effort to limit the contraceptive mandate were truly a frontal assault on women, a majority of them would not be endorsing the offensive. But the ideology of groups like Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women (NOW) sometimes ignores inconvenient gender realities.
Those advocates have been distracted from a different and far less figurative war on women — which, as it happens, is helped rather than hindered by one of the “reproductive rights” they champion. Legal abortion may empower women, but it has also become a powerful method for the mass elimination of females.
Modern technology allows prospective parents to learn the sex of a fetus, and many of them use that knowledge to exercise a preference for sons. Absent such intervention, about 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. But as Mara Hvistendahl reports in her 2011 book Unnatural Selection, the number for boys per 100 girls has risen to 112 in India and 121 in China. …
Nor is the phenomenon limited to the eastern hemisphere. Rajendra Kale, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, writes that “female feticide” is so common in Canada that he believes “doctors should be allowed to disclose this information only after about 30 weeks of pregnancy — in other words, when an unquestioned abortion is all but impossible.”
French demographer Christophe Guilmoto, reports Hvistendahl, regards gender imbalance as “an epidemic. In the number of lives it has touched, he says, sex selection merits comparison with AIDS.” Worldwide, experts say, the number of “missing girls” amounts to a stunning 163 million — more than the entire female population of the United States. …
Selective abortion, however, does not target only girls. Recent screening advances now make it easier and safer to detect Down syndrome in the womb. Universal screening will have a predictable impact, because 92 percent of fetuses diagnosed with the abnormality are aborted.
Paul Root Wolpe, director of Emory University’s Center for Ethics, told the New York Post, “What you end up having is a world without people with Down syndrome.”
No one would object if that were achieved by curing the condition. But eradicating it through abortion doesn’t sound so benign. A survey reported in the American Journal of Medical Genetics found that only 4 percent of parents with Down syndrome children regret having them — and nearly 99 percent of the people with the disorder said they are happy with their lives. …
The practice of eliminating people who are regarded as unacceptable because of their sex or significant defects was probably an inevitable result of the proliferation of abortion. There may be others even more ominous.
A recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics argues that abortion should not be limited to fetuses that have not yet been born. The authors propose instead to allow “after-birth abortion,” which is “ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be” — which means, really, for any reason at all.
That policy may not be so improbable. Ann Furedi, head of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, has said, “There is nothing magical about passing through the birth canal that transforms it from a fetus into a person.” …
Abortion-rights advocates think the right to choose has conferred great benefits. Maybe so, but not on everyone.
Wis U.P. North’s Paul Socha certainly gets your attention by his headline:
Getting Fair Trials In Wisconsin May Become A Thing Of The Past
Seems some judges in Wisconsin having a predetermined opinion and showing their bias means little in our judicial courts today.
Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers committed a flagrant act of journalism by reporting that the signers of petitions supporting the recall of Gov. Scott Walker include 29 circuit court judges from 16 counties.
The signers include — surprise! — Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan, who overturned the state’s voter ID law earlier this month. (For now. The chances this will end up in the state Supreme Court are as good as the sun’s rising in the east tomorrow.)
This appears to be a flagrant abuse of this line from the Wisconsin Code of Judicial Conduct. which by the way is in state statutes …
No judge or candidate for judicial office or judge-elect may … participate in the affairs, caucuses, promotions, platforms, endorsements, conventions, or activities of a political party or of a candidate for partisan office.
… as well as, reports Gannett, the code’s “general admonitions to avoid ‘the appearance of impropriety in all of the judge’s activities.’”
Signing a petition against the holder of a partisan office with the intent of having that person removed from office certainly seems to fit within the banned activities listed in that paragraph and unquestionably violates the “appearance of impropriety” standard. That’s not just my opinion, that’s the opinion of Marquette University Law School Prof. Janine Geske:
“I believe the judges had the right to sign the petition, but it creates a problem with the appearance of impartiality if and when they may be called upon to decide any issues involving the governor or the Republican party,” Geske said in an email. “We are in a highly politically charged time when many citizens have lost confidence in our governmental bodies. It is critical that judges do everything they can to demonstrate that the judiciary remains independent of the other two branches and will remain free of political influence.” …
Professor Richard Painter of the University of Minnesota Law School questioned why judges would expose themselves to criticism and a potential perception of bias by signing the recall petition, though he acknowledged there might be wiggle room within the judicial code allowing judges to sign.
“State judges often have to decide cases where the governor is a party to a case, less often where state legislators are a party to a case. Sometimes judges have to rule on close elections,” said Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer in President George W. Bush’s administration and has written a book on ethics reform in American government. “For judges to be getting involved in the question of whether the governor ought to be recalled I think is highly inappropriate. Whether it violates an ethics rule or not in Wisconsin, I think it’s very inappropriate.”
Two Brown County judges engage in reasoning that one would think they would boot out of their own courtrooms if they heard these arguments from lawyers:
The judges who signed the petition made two basic arguments — that signing the petition was merely supporting the electorate’s right to vote, and that the recall petition supports neither a specific candidate nor a political party and is allowable.
‘”I concluded that by signing a recall petition I wasn’t advocating for a particular party, I was advocating for the recall process, which I thought was completely separate and apart,” said Brown County Judge Mark Warpinski. “I didn’t do it lightly. I certainly considered this a very important issue, but in the final analysis I felt that my right to sign a petition didn’t implicate any of the ethical considerations that I knew of.”
Brown County Judge Don Zuidmulder called criticism of judges signing the petition “the beating of the partisan drum.”
“I viewed this simply as a question of whether we should have an election,” Zuidmulder said. “I’m in favor of elections any time, any place.”
Warpinski’s argument is specious in that the electorate’s right to vote comes in regularly scheduled elections, the next of which, in the case of the governor, is in 2014. Zuidmulder’s accusation is just off-the-charts arrogant, and makes one wonder how he’d feel about a recall attempt of himself.
Warpinski’s and Zuidmulder’s judicial colleague got it right:
“When you sign up for this job, to some extent you compromise your ability to express your own political beliefs one way or the other,” said Brown County Judge Marc Hammer. “Some judges don’t think it’s a political statement to sign a recall petition. I just really wasn’t comfortable in doing so. I think if you’re asked to judge the conduct of others, you need to be mindful of what your conduct is.”
The story adds that “The state Supreme Court issued an advisory opinion in 2001 saying judges are allowed to sign nominating petitions so long as the petition language only supports putting the candidate on the ballot and does not imply an endorsement.”
I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t play one on TV, but I would argue that the Supremes got it wrong in 2001. Signing a nominating petition means you believe that person should be on the ballot, which is in fact an endorsement, even though it doesn’t mean you’re voting for that person. Avoiding the “appearance of impropriety” would seem to allow judges to vote, and nothing else.
The revelations about the Not Impartial 29 also demonstrate the changing nature of democracy in today’s Internet age. I assume some of the signers signed without realizing the chance that their signatures would become public information. In a state with a long tradition of open government — including in the judges’ courtrooms — that turns out to have been an incorrect assumption on the signers’ part. (For instance, UW System spokesman David Giroux, who better hope he doesn’t run into a particularly vindictive Republican state legislator, lest his position disappear in the 2013–15 state budget.)
Those who disagree with this analysis should ask themselves this question: Would it be improper for judges to sign petitions for the recall of Democratic Secretary of State Douglas La Follette? (Assuming anyone figures out what La Follette does other than run for other office, that is.) The answer is: Of course it would be improper.
Socha asks:
If the day ever comes and you would stand before one of these 29 judges, would it be a fair trial? Would you be found guilty even before the court case even begins? These judges are just following their liberal beliefs, they can do anything they want at anytime they want! So much for judicial ethics.
That’s a good question to ask if one of those 29 judges is deciding a case (more likely civil than criminal, because the court system has more civil cases than criminal cases) in which the plaintiff or defendant is a known Republican or conservative. At minimum his or her lawyer should have a recusal request form handy. And for those who equate judges with arch arrogance (a UW journalism instructor once told us that judges have a “God complex” when on the bench), those beliefs have gotten 29 examples of validation.
At 7:35 p.m., La Follette tipped off against Stevens Point for the WIAA Class A boys basketball championship, before a packed UW Fieldhouse and a statewide television audience.
This was during a period in my life when it seemed as though all was right with the world, even though I probably didn’t appreciate that at the time. I was doing well (though not well enough according to my parents) in school, specifically enjoying three classes, Wind Ensemble, Journalism and Political Science. I was making the grand sum of $3.35 per hour busing tables at Bridgeman’s Ice Cream Parlour and Restaurant for 15 or so hours each week. That earned me enough money to put gas in the 1975 Chevrolet Caprice my mother and I shared, and go out on dates with my first girlfriend.
La Follette in the early 1980s was known as a basketball school. The Lancers won their first state championship in 1977, when they proved the adage that how you finish the season is much more important than how you start. La Follette had finished the regular season 10–8, with more than their share of close losses among those eight losses. But thanks to seemingly never missing shots from the field, the Lancers defeated Milwaukee Tech 55–48, Neenah 46–43 and Eau Claire Memorial 65–48 to win their first state title, setting state tournament records for shooting in the process.
Three years later, La Follette went back to state, led by Craig Anderson, who ended up playing basketball at Iowa. La Follette beat Oak Creek 59–54 but lost to Big Eight archrival Janesville Craig 60–52 in the semifinals. (La Follette and Craig split their two regular-season games, with the Lancers winning at La Follette on two free throws with five seconds left.)
Two years later, La Follette was part of a three-way tie for first place in the Big Eight Conference. (Which now has 10 schools but the same name, but never mind that.) The 1981–82 Lancers featured players I knew, some former boys volleyball teammates of mine. (I played basketball at La Follette for a few weeks as a freshman until I figured out that basketball wasn’t my sport. I played volleyball for two years until I figured out that wasn’t my sport either.)
Upon seeing this photo of Coach Pete Olson, one of my sons asked why he was mad. I had to tell him that this was pretty much the way he always looked.
The team was coached by La Follette’s original boys basketball coach, Pete Olson, who is held in such high regard today that he has his own Facebook page, though he probably doesn’t know he has his own Facebook page. (For Olson to know about Facebook would require that he first be dragged off whatever lake he’s fishing.)
The Lancers won their first regional game easily, then had to endure a nailbiting 64–62 win over Stoughton in a game I couldn’t go to because I had to work. Since high school games weren’t on the radio in Madison, I didn’t find out the result until fans from the game started coming in and remarked what a great game it was.
That nailbiting experience didn’t compare to what happened six days later, with La Follette hosting West in a sectional semifinal. Looking up the Wisconsin State Journal story on the game revealed my incomplete memory of the game. I had thought all these years that La Follette had trailed by nine points with 2:30 remaining and scored the last 10 points to win. The truth was more harrowing — La Follette trailed 59–51 with 90 seconds left. In the era before the three-point shot, that’s a four-possession lead unless you can compel your opponent to foul you while you hit a basket.
Helpfully, a three-point play by fellow Class of ’83 member Brad Thering cut the lead to 59–54. Rick Olson, over whom college basketball coaches were salivating because of his shooting range that started in the parking lot outside the gym, stole a pass and scored to cut the lead to 59–56. Right in front of the La Follette band, then, a West basket was disallowed for a foul on the rebound. Two more free throws by former La Follette White freshman teammate Steve Amundson cut the lead to 59–58.
By this time, the noise in the gym, which started incredibly loud, was in danger of knocking all the stuff on the walls, including the 1977 state championship megaplaque, off the walls. People were actually crying in the gym from the intensity of the moment, seconds from having your season end or getting a chance to go to state. The La Follette’s band’s contribution to the scene was frantically playing the school fight song (an original creation of La Follette’s first band director) and “You’ve Said It All,” the unofficial ban on which magically disappeared for the postseason. Our band director, who never got excited for games and saved his yelling for his band (as with all band directors), was barking at an official he apparently knew.
Mike Todd, who led West with 22 points, and La Follette’s Tom Luksich traded jumpers to set the score at 61–60. Derrien Jones hit two free throws to push West’s lead to 63–60, before Amundson rebounded his own miss to cut the lead to 63–62 with 17 seconds left. Then Scott Hogan (who had the same piano teacher with me) stole the ball and was fouled with 11 seconds left.
The people who seemed least bothered by all this were the La Follette players. Olson had specific rules for his team — short (by ’80s standards) hair, wear hats outside, and be in bed early. He also wanted his players to play on an even keel. There were none of the histrionics you see in high school games today upon big plays or fouls being called on incredulous players.
So as the walls in the gym were bowing outward from the pressure inside, Hogan stepped up to the free throw line, his career 11 seconds away from ending. Just when you thought the gym couldn’t get any louder, Hogan hit his first free throw to tie the game. Just when you thought the gym couldn’t get any louder, Hogan hit the second free throw to give La Follette the 64–63 lead. Five seconds later, a West player was called for traveling.
The fact that Luksich missed a free throw a few seconds later was academic because West had no time to do more than heave the ball in the general direction of the other basket. I doubt anyone heard the buzzer, because the floor instantly filled with screaming, celebrating La Follette fans (including one trumpet player who jumped onto the floor and then had to fight to get back into the band to, you know, play), dancing around dejected West players, whose season and in several cases high school careers ended abruptly.
The scene was wild enough for Don Lindstrom, a Wisconsin State Journal sportswriter who had previously covered approximately 11 million basketball games, to comment thereupon:
“I thought we had lost it,” yelled La Follette Coach Pete Olson amid postgame bedlam. “We worked so hard but I never thought we could do it. These kids are amazing.”
I saw Olson (who was my gym teacher that semester and my freshman year — the first teacher to ever give me an A for gym because he rewarded effort, so I decided to give effort) not long after the game. It was the first time I had ever seen him smile.
The sectional final game against Big Eight rival Sun Prairie the next night wasn’t as exciting or as well played. (And again not witnessed by me — damn work.) But La Follette beat Sun Prairie to get its third state berth in six seasons, and the second in my time at La Follette.
I remember looking at the state tournament bracket and thinking that things were working perfectly, and in more ways than one. In those days, the Class A quarterfinals were Thursday afternoon and evening, with the winners playing in the semifinals the next afternoon or evening. So the La Follette band headed to the Fieldhouse for the second afternoon quarterfinal against Milwaukee North, after the first quarterfinal between Brown Deer and Lake Geneva Badger. That meant no school Thursday afternoon, which meant my difficult algebra-trigonometry assignment due Thursday afternoon would be due Friday instead. (In 1980, because La Follette played in the evening session, we didn’t miss any school to go to the games, though Thursday and Friday ended with pep rallies instead of classes.)
La Follette beat Milwaukee North 65–61, which postponed the algebra-trig assignment to Monday. I thought that La Follette had lucked out as well because Brown Deer, which seemed like the better team in their quarterfinal, lost to Badger 50–48. Whether my assessment was right or not, that’s how it worked out, because the Lancers beat the Badger Badgers (really) 62–57 to go to the state championship.
On the other side of the bracket was undefeated and number-one-ranked Stevens Point, which beat South Milwaukee 51–43 Thursday night and then, while an ice storm raged outside, beat Shawano 39–38 Friday night. I watched that game on TV, which was interrupted in the middle of the frantic fourth quarter by the dramatic announcement that roads were so bad that fans should not try to head back to Stevens Point that night.
The next morning, members of the La Follette baseball teams, who were having preseason practice, were running through the hallways of La Follette when to their surprise they reached the Commons and found it full of basketball fans … from Stevens Point.
The Fieldhouse wasn’t usually full for the Class A championship game because it was just one game, not two (which means only two teams’ fans, not four, were at the game), and because Milwaukee teams had won the previous three Class A titles, and even then Milwaukee teams did not draw well. On this night, the Fieldhouse was filled to capacity.
This was one of those rare occasions for which no media hype was necessary — the season-long number-one-ranked team against a team that featured the state’s best player, Rick Olson, who was unrelated to his coach. Olson was one of three Lancers who would play Division I sports; he went to Wisconsin, as did Tim Jordan to play basketball, while Amundson played at Western Michigan. Stevens Point’s Jay Laszewski joined Olson at Wisconsin.
Not only was it a media-hype-unneeded game, it was an exceedingly well played game. Without a three-point shot, both teams ran their offense but didn’t merely sit on the basketball. Defense wasn’t as physical as it is now, which makes the game more watchable.
The other thing that stands out is the game’s remarkable free throw shooting. La Follette was 12 of 12 from the foul line. Stevens Point was 15 of 16. (And the TV color commentator said “And we should break the thumbs of the player who missed it, right?”, to which his partner, Marsh Shapiro, also owner of the Nitty Gritty bar, replied dubiously, “if you say so.”)
La Follette led at the half and after three quarters, and then Stevens Point took the lead early in the fourth quarter. I don’t know why we should have been surprised given the game eight days earlier, but the fourth quarter was like one long heart attack as Stevens Point’s lead shifted between one and three points. The band alternated among playing, cheering intensely, and riding the roller coaster of good things and bad things happening on the floor.
After an Olson steal, La Follette tried to call time out while Olson was draining a wing jumper to give the Lancers a 54–53 lead with 2:26 left. (I’m guessing coach Olson was OK with not having the time out called when he wanted it.) Laszewski hit two free throws with 1:55 left to put SPASH up 55–54. Olson hit another to put La Follette up 56–55 with 90 seconds left. Two more Laszewski free throws put Point back up 57–56. Olson drained another long jumper, the last of his 24 points, to put the Lancers back up 58–57 just before the one-minute mark. Bill Gifford hit a jumper to put SPASH up 59–58 with 45 seconds left.
Remember Scott Hogan, who hit the two free throws to win the sectional final? Olson drove the lane but instead of shooting fed Hogan underneath, and the last two points of his career put La Follette back up 60–59 with 30 seconds left. And then with 18 seconds left, Stevens Point’s Todd Barnes threw a pass over Laszewski, giving La Follette the ball and the lead.
Olson dribbled the ball and then passed to Amundson, who was fouled with 4 seconds left.
Amundson hit his two free throws, the last of his 24 points. The final basket at the buzzer left La Follette up 62–61 and lit up the opposite end of the Fieldhouse.
The win obviously belonged to the players, since they had practiced for four months and played to get there. Their photos are on the west wall of the La Follette gym. And yet the rest of us felt like we’d contributed too, including the cheerleaders …
Sir Lawrence Lancer, nickname not Fighting Bob.
… and of course the band:
Band sweater? Check. Paint hat (a La Follette tradition since the ’77 state team)? Check. Sunglasses at night? Check. Thirty years later, you’re reading the writing of this La Follette Band trumpet player.
After the game, Olson (interviewed by Ken Syke) allowed as to how winning state was “darn close” to the thrill of catching a 24-pound muskie. “We aren’t that good, but we certainly made a lot of believers here anyway this week … because we’re so competitive and because our kids work so hard. It’s really something when you can reward kids for this kind of hard work.”
Olson also tweaked Shapiro in a question about La Follette’s staying in the man-to-man defense by replying that the Lancers did play some zone — “Shapiro must have told you that because I don’t think he can recognize a zone from a man-to-man.” To that, Shapiro replied “He’ll never get a 40-pound muskie on that lake of his in Boulder” Junction.
The game was followed by a wild impromptu celebration in the La Follette Commons, where the stranded Stevens Point fans had stayed one night earlier. That was followed by a party at my girlfriend’s house. That was followed by a more formal celebration the following Monday afternoon, pushing back the dreaded algebra-trig assignment to Tuesday, one week after it was due.
The La Follette band moved from playing at state to our Wind Ensemble tour to Chicago. (About Wind Ensemble tours, all I’ll say: What happens on tour stays on tour.) Those of us La Follette juniors who went to St. Dennis Catholic Church got confirmed shortly thereafter, followed by the happy teenage ritual that is the Junior Prom. La Follette seniors, including most of the team and my girlfriend, graduated. It was a full semester, to say the least.
I wonder if Pete Olson and his players and assistant coaches realized the impact they had on the rest of their school. Coming from a high school of 2,000, I can say that I knew most of the players, but I wasn’t friends with any of them. A school the size of La Follette has room for plenty of groups; mine was the band, followed by those who worked on the student newspaper, the Lance. (Which, as you can imagine, covered state very well, thank you. It was a good semester to be the sports editor.) But with all our separate interests, for one week, most La Follette students had one thing in mind, and you’re reading the culmination of it 30 years later.
In the years since this, I’ve announced the games of two state champion football teams here in Ripon, covered three other state champion teams, and covered other teams that got to state. Being in the media, you’re an outsider, of course, although if you’re the local media you’re an invited outsider.
Stevens Point players and fans have different memories of this game, of course. And yet they discovered, and I later discovered, that as painful as losing at state is, it’s not the worst postseason game to lose. The worst postseason game to lose is the game before the state tournament (and I’ve covered those too), because everything you’ve done and accomplished fell tantalizingly short of getting to every player’s goal, the state tournament, whether in Madison or anywhere else. Losing at state beats not getting to state.
I’ve witnessed how a school that gets to state — particularly a small high school — goes all out at state, and not just the players. And it always gives me fond memories of the days when it seemed as my entire life depended on the outcome of a game I was playing in. Playing trumpet, that is.
The number one single today in 1961 was based on the Italian song “Return to Sorrento”:
Today in 1964, the Beatles appeared on the BBC’s “Ready Steady Go!”
During the show, Billboard magazine presented an award for the Beatles’ having the top three singles of that week.
Today in 1968, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Richie Furay and Jim Messina were all arrested by Los Angeles police not for possession of …
… but for being at a place where marijuana use was suspected.
Clapton was acquitted; the others paid fines.
Two wedding anniversaries today: John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969 …
… and David and Angela Bowie in 1970:
Today in 1971, the Rolling Stones paid for this ad in British music publications:
The number one single today in 1971, sung by a singer who had died five months earlier:
The number one British single today in 1973:
Today in 1977, Lou Reed was banned from appearing at the Palladium in London because of his punk image.
Today in 1978, a 28-year-old man held up the office of Asylum Records in New York, demanding to see either Jackson Browne or the Eagles so he could ask them to fund his trucking company.
The man was told none were in the office, so he surrendered.
The number one single today in 1982:
Birthdays begin with Jerry Reed:
Jimmie Vaughan of the Fabulous Thunderbirds:
Carl Palmer played drums for Emerson Lake & Palmer and Asia:
Richard Drummie of Go West:
Slim Jim Phantom played drums for the Stray Cats:
Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand:
One death of note today in 1991: Conor Clapton, Eric’s 4-year-old son:
The irony for fans of basketball in Wisconsin of this summer-like weekend is that many didn’t get to enjoy much of the summer-like weather.
Unless, that is, they had a portable TV or were able to watch the cornucopia of basketball on a laptop or mobile device. (Of course, the weather was still nice enough Sunday night after all the hoop-la ended to write a blog on his laptop sitting outside … until his meowing cat kept interrupting him and his laptop ran out of battery.)
Saturday was the technically-still-winter version of the weekendsthis past fall when the Badgers were marching toward the Big Ten football title and the Packers were headed toward the best record in the NFL. (Which prompted a UW Marching Band alumnus to describe things appropriately: “Fear the beer!”) To wit:
The Badgers beat Vanderbilt 60–57 to clinch their second consecutive Sweet 16 slot, which has never happened before in program history.
UW–Green Bay, having been royally screwed by the NCAA women’s basketball tournament selection committee, had the last laugh by beating Iowa State 71–57 in Ames in the first round of the women’s tournament.
UW–Whitewater beat Cabrini 63–60 won the NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament.
And on a non-basketball note, St. Norbert beat Oswego State 4–1 to win the NCAA Division III men’s hockey tournament.
Even no-longer-Wisconsinites did well. Indiana, coached by former Marquette coach Tom Crean, defeated Virginia Commonwealth, coached by Oregon native Shaka Smart. Milwaukee native Rick Majerus’ Saint Louis won one game before losing Sunday.
Proving that the weekend wasn’t perfect, Wisconsin lost the NCAA Division I women’s hockey tournament to Minnesota 4–2 Sunday afternoon, the second time UW lost the national championship after having one of its players, defenseman Brianna Decker, win the Patty Kazmeier Award as the nation’s best college women’s hockey playe.. On the other hand, the Milwaukee Wave, the best Wisconsin professional team no one’s heard of, beat Baltimore 12–10 in overtime to win the Major Indoor Soccer League title.
Almost lost in the college March Madness was the high school March Madness, the WIAA boys’ basketball tournament. The highlight of Championship Saturday was the finish of the Division 5 championship between Sheboygan Lutheran and Racine Lutheran:
After the awarding of the gold trophy, Dekker was named the state’s Mr. Basketball, an award determined before state. It’s a good think Dekker appears to like playing at the Kohl Center, since he’ll playing for the at-least-sweet-16 Badgers next season.
In the UW alumni band bracket, I have all four East Region teams (#1 Syracuse, #2 Ohio State, #4 Wisconsin and #6 Cincinnati), two of the South Region teams (#1 Syracuse and #3 Baylor), two of the Midwest Regiona teams (#1 North Carolina and #2 Kansas), and one West Region team (#1 Ohio State) left. All four Final Four teams remain, which is good.
In the Efficiency bracket, I have all four East teams, three Midwest teams (North Carolina, Kansas and #13 Ohio), and one each from the South (Kentucky) and West (Michigan State). I picked one 15-over-2 upset right (Lehigh over Duke), but not the other (Norfolk State over Missouri), which is why I’m missing one Final Four team.
The thrill of still having all four Final Four teams in one pool and three in the other, part of getting nine of the Sweet 16 correct (which means you picked at least 18 games correctly) is moderated by the fact that nine of 16 is a slightly better ratio than could be expected from flipping a coin 16 times. Which is why I wait until after the games to check my brackets, because the fire of a thrilling game is drowned by having the team you picked lose, if you take the brackets too seriously. (I’m tied for 22nd out of 40 with the Efficiency bracket, and I have 38 out of a possible 64 points in 1590624.)
The reality of won-or-done tournaments, of course, is that ecstasy can be replaced by agony one game later. UWGB plays Kentucky Monday at 8:45 p.m. on ESPN2. Wisconsin plays number-one-seed Syracuse in Boston Thursday at 6:15 p.m., with the great Verne Lundquist and Bill “Onions!” Raftery calling the game for CBS. Marquette plays seventh-seed Florida Thursday at 9:17 p.m., with Wisconsin native Kevin Harlan, Reggie Miller and Len Elmore on the call for TBS.
Yes, Wisconsin has made the NCAAs every year since 1997 and every year in coach Bo Ryan’s UW career. But this is an anomaly in UW basketball history; the 1947–94 desert of tournament appearances is more normal, and many of those tournament seasons featured a stay so brief one wondered why one bothered. That’s why, as with football this past fall, Badger fans need to appreciate what’s happening right now.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 