Shameless Race-Baiting on the Right: Conservatives' True Colors

I will not lie: I would like nothing better than to wake up tomorrow and find that the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program has vanished in the night. Gone. Kaput. Poof. It has caused headache after headache after headache. It sucks money, investment, and concern right out of the public schools. It is an unregulated, unaccountable, fully opaque shadow system of schooling that is dividing a city and state in two.

And now we know it is more than just divisive; it is bringing out some very, very ugly sides of people who should know better.

Exhibit A: ACE
I wrote last week about the Alliance for Choices in Education ad that was running in Madison and Milwaukee media markets, noting that their target--Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle--was the wrong one to be aiming for. The text of the ad, with an ACE press release, is here (.pdf). I will not re-hash that argument, but note that those ads featured all African-American students questioning Doyle about why he was not lifting the cap on MPCP enrollment.

By itself, the ad is nothing more than misguided and slightly suggestive of the racial undertones that the battle has taken on in the past week. But the ad prompted responses from people as far away as John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, who compared Doyle to former Alabama Governor George Wallace, who literally stood in a school doorway to block integration. This conceit was applauded by conservative bloggers here in Wisconsin, from Owen to the crotchety anti-gubmint school guy to, most lamentably, Peter DiGaudio, who even goes so far as to photoshop Doyle's head on a picture of Wallace in the school doorway. (Note: Peter "hat-tips" Dennis York for the photoshop, but no such photoshopping appears on Dennis York's site and Dennis, in an email, tells me he did make the imgage.)

Exhibit B: Lies
While we're on that post by Peter, note the way he lies about Governor Doyle:

Doyle demands that choice schools take standardized tests with the results being made public; however, Doyle vetoed a bill that did just that in 2003 because WEAC didn't want an objective study [of] choice.

He's half-right, except in his description of the 2003 bill. (This is something Fund mentioned, though keeping his own comments vague enough they were merely misleading, not an outright lie.) That bill, which was passed by Republicans in both houses of the state legislature, and which is mirrored in a new bill proposed by Alberta Darling and Leah Vukmir, would not have required any testing at all, as the voucher schools could easily opt out. It would not have required that any tests given be state tests, either. In addition, it was only a "long-term" study, meaning the state or the DPI could not act on any publicized results for a solid decade.

Owen's post, as well, is misleading:

One man is preventing a better education for thousands of kids.  One man is choosing to close the door of opportunity on thousands of kids for 30 more pieces of silver in his campaign fund from WEAC.  That man is Jim Doyle.

That's also not true, as I've explained before. For two years now, Doyle has been seeking common ground with Republicans who will not compromise. This is not one man standing in the way of the door; this is one man offering to open the door while those who hold the key--legislative Republicans in the majority in Madison--won't unlock it unless it's done on their terms.

Exhibit C: The Sheehy Letter Backlash
Doyle, upset that ACE attacked him, and clearly irked by the racial overtones the debate has been taking on, wrote a letter (.pdf) to ACE board member and Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce president Tim Sheehy (the governor's emphasis, not mine):

Since early last year, I and representatives from my office and my administration have been discussing changes to the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program with you. You personally know of my desire to reach a compromise on this issue because I and my staff have discussed it with you many times. It is unfortunate for the children of Milwaukee that you have decided that, rather than work with me on a solution and a compromise, you would rather engage in divisive tactics and push extreme positions that you know I cannot accept. [. . .]

[T]his potential crisis was intentionally precipitated by school voucher lobbyists and Republican legislators. Voucher proponents actively opposed and Republicans defeated a sensible rule put forth by DPI in 2004 that would have protected existing students from having to change schools and allowed currently participating schools to maintain their enrollments. [. . .] They chose to politicize this issue rather put the interests of students first. If you and other voucher advocates had put your effort into honest discussions then we might possibly have solved this issue already. [. . .] I do not support the alternative recently proposed by the Department of Public Instruction, unlike what your dishonest ads imply. [. . .]

As your members wrote in their letter, "Our businesses depend on local schools for an educated workforce." I couldn't agree more. That's one of the many reasons that as Governor, I have strongly supported investments in education. That's also why I am asking for additional help for the children of MPS, not just choice schools. I simply cannot allow the choice program to be expanded at the expense of other public school children in Milwaukee, who under your latest proposal will see further cuts to their schools. We must help both private and public school children But that is obviously not the interest of Republican leaders who care more about having a political issue [. . .].

I hope we can work to resolve this issue without resorting to further dishonest attacks and high-pressure tactics that are divisive and unproductive.

The right Cheddarsphere has blown back with both barrels against this letter (what, Sheehy can't defend himself?). Owen called the letter "vile and vindictive." DiGaudio, who now refers to Doyle as "Governor Wallace" in every post, called the kettle black by saying Doyle had "the petulance of an 8-year-old child throwing a temper tantrum." Jessica McBride writes that a "clearly furious Doyle" wrote a "three-page diatribe." Now, I quoted for you the nastiest parts of Doyle's letter, including all of the lines that McBride, in particular, took exception to. Does that sound nasty to you? I mean, if I started writing like that on a regular basis, my regular readers would wonder who replaced the real folkbum with Mr. Rogers.

What's actually kind of funny, though, is when those conservative bloggers start trying to pick apart Doyle's letter to say that, somehow, he is wrong. I have already tried to set Owen right, at the link above and at this one. But since McBride and DiGaudio do not allow comments, I have to set them straight here. McBride takes umbrage that Doyle would call Sheehy and the ads he helped fund dishonest. She says that's "fighting words, and they are hardly conducive to 'working together to resolve this issue' " (her bold). She doesn't explain if or how Doyle is wrong to say Sheehy and the ACE ad are dishonest, just that it's "a poor political stratagem." In fact, Doyle is not lying to say that the ad is dishonest. The ad says, "Governor Doyle would force up to 4,000 inner-city children to leave their schools." Doyle would do no such thing, and has been actively trying to avoid it. Republicans' rejection of a DPI plan to prevent it is much more the culprit here. And if Sheehy knows--as he should--that Doyle has been talking with him for a long time about how to avoid the crisis, Sheehy shouldn't put his name or his dollars behind an ad that says Doyle is the cause of that crisis.

DiGaudio's critique is even funnier, since he contradicts himself right there on the page: "A solution and a compromise to Doyle is to give WEAC whatever it wants, and we all know WEAC would like the Choice program to go away." Right. So offering to raise the cap and send more students into the choice program is what WEAC wants--the program's disappearance. I don't think you can make that add up, Peter. Keep those posts in mind--McBride's and DiGuadio's--for I will return to them in a moment.

Exhibit D: Sykes
Much of the furor of the last week has been prompted by an ad produced by WTMJ talker Charlie Sykes, with the help of another WTMJ employee (and some community members) using WTMJ facilities and aired repeatedly during Sykes's drive-time show this week. I have not heard the ad; I do not listen to his station and, frankly, don't have any desire to start now while he's smearing Governor Doyle.

The ad, whose text you can read here (linking to Sykes against my better judgment), is, in fact, titled, "GOVERNOR DOYLE, GET OUT OF THE SCHOOLHOUSE DOOR," making explicit the connection between Doyle and anti-integrationists like Wallace. Sykes uses (and I do not choose that word lightly) African-American students from choice participant Messmer High School, conveniently located less than a mile down the road from WTMJ studios. Beginning with an invocation of Brown vs. Board of Education, the spot goes on to include charged language like, "Let our people go."

The kerfuffle, summed up well by grumps, stems mostly from the supposition, voiced first by Xoff, the the production and airing of this kind of issue ad by WTMJ's parent company might be illegal, and the denizens of the right Cheddarsphere's inability to recognize that the FEC/ FCC rules for broadcast entities like WTMJ are different than for, say, WisPolitics.com. The antics continued this morning on Sykes's "Milwaukee Insight" program on WTMJ television, with essentially the same cast of characters named here making the the same baseless accusations and lies about Governor Doyle (as chronicled by Seth.)

Rather than apologize, as some demanded, for standing up to Sykes and standing up for Doyle, Xoff instead noted that Sykes owes Doyle the apology. I think he's right.

Exhibit E: The Race Card
I haven't jumped in on this up until now, though I've wanted to, because I am so utterly furious at the way the right has portrayed Doyle. It isn't just the outright comparisons between Doyle and anti-integrationists like Wallace, it's also the more explicit language of race-baiting, or of playing the race card. As I pointed out in comments to this Eye on Wisconsin post, Charlie Sykes has been uniformly negative over the years against the race card, and for him to use it so blatantly is a joke and ought to offend everyone of color involved in making his ad. The funders of the school choice movement, as another commenter to that very same post points out, have a long history of also funding some pretty egregious racist activities and organizations. (The evidence is there for anyone with Google to see.)

McBride's post about the Sheehy letter, for example, accuses Doyle of picking a "street fight" with a whole list of sympathetic African American community leaders, including Milwaukee Board of School Directors President Ken Johnson--a man elected to represent the public schools who advocates for the MPS-weakening voucher program whenever he gets the chance. DiGaudio, who just this week complained about Hillary Clinton's use of the word plantation, writes, "Like Simon Legree, the WEAC plantation owners want the poor black children to remain uneducated slaves, prisoner to its curriculum of low expectations and inferior education." These righty bloggers do everything but come right out and say, "Jim Doyle hates black people."

This is why I've wanted to jump in. It's because I know Gus Doyle, one of Governor Doyle's two sons.

I went to college with Gus, and, because he was a couple of years ahead of me, I did not know him well. But on a campus as small as ours, you pretty much at least knew of everybody, particularly prominent upperclassmen. This was in 1992, so Jim Doyle was already Wisconsin's attorney general, so everyone also knew that Gus was the AG's son. But because I knew Gus Doyle before I knew Jim Doyle, I was very surprised the first time I saw a picture of Jim Doyle. Surprised that Jim Doyle was white. Because Gus Doyle was black.

I can't imagine what it feels like to be Gus Doyle, one of two African-American boys adopted by the Doyles, to hear and read and see pundits and wannabes all around calling your father a racist. Comparing your father to George Wallace and Simon Legree.

Jim Doyle has done a much better job than I would have in that situation. As much as McBride and her posse may think that Doyle has somehow lost it, I believe he has been remarkably restrained. He is sticking to his guns, by proposing a reasonable compromise plan to avert the coming crisis in the choice plan.

It is the right--the bloggers and newspaper columnists and radio personalities--who have taken this to the level of outrage. I mean, even in saying that Sykes's radio ad may have been illegal, Xoff didn't call Sykes a criminal or use any other adjective to describe him except "proud"--proud that he could run a commercial comparing Doyle to racist southern governors. It is the right who are showing their true colors.