Don Huebscher's Annual Vacation (and other media matters)

Today marks that one special Sunday that comes along every summer... when the Leader Telegram editorial page shows some actual balance and we know that Don Huebscher is on vacation.  We wonder where Republican curmudgeons spend their summer vacations... maybe it's a special camp where they trade recipes for Freedom Fries, catch up on Fox News shows they've been missing and yell at camp counselors in an exercise titled "Get Off My Lawn!"  (Of course this is pure fantasy - none of today's newspaper editors misses a single show on Fox News.)

Anyway, the annual Huebscher-Free editorial page features not one but two letters from people freely criticizing past editorial pages.  One correctly notes that a recession is the worst time for governments to engage in austerity measures that would make an economic recovery tougher, not easier; and that there is a difference in the types of debts that governments (and consumers) can amass.  There's debt that adds long-term value like investing in a house or a college education as opposed to the wasteful debt that buys a new 3D television or sends out rebate checks instead of replacing crumbling infrastructure. 

The other letter is a spot-on criticism of the Huebscher-supported right wing war on regular people who work in the public sector.  You know, the people who plow the roads at 3am or teach our children or test the beaches so we don't catch some bacterial infection, and so on.  Public employees have become the special enemy to the Far Right, and the letter writer perfectly calls out the less-than-balanced broken record that the GOP and its media wing are spinning.

The frosting on the cake is then found in the editorial itself written by Tom Giffey, the "editorial page editor" in-name-only.  With the boss away, Giffey goes off on the conservative wing of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for letting Pretender Justice Michael Gableman skate on the blatant lie in the illegal campaign ad that got him elected and put the right wing in the majority.

Lest we have a Sunday without clear Republican bias, however, we need only to look at the front page article.  Reliably slanted Jason Stein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is given prominent placement with a story about how state budgets won't have federal help in 2011.  Says who?  Well, says Tommy Thompson's former top staffer, Mark Bugher, so it must be true, right?  After all, he's only been out of power for... a decade.  Remember this is the guy who told his brother-in-law Dick Leinenkugel he'd be a shoo-in to beat Russ Feingold.  Bugher may have been a Power Player in the '90s, but his insight today seems to be as valuable as getting music advice from Vanilla Ice.

But that won't keep him off the L-T front page... even while Huebscher is at camp working on his macrame tribute to Glenn Beck.

IN OTHER MEDIA NEWS: Has anyone else noticed that WAYY appears to have thrown in the towel on having an all-local morning news-talk program?  They've been playing segments from overnight guy Doug Stephans (usually on 4-6am) into the 6-9am hours with only a little John Murphy sprinkled in.  On the one hand, it's sad that there isn't enough local talent or local topics to keep the show going without the manufactured rants of Bruce Butler to keep the cadre of Angry White Men engaged (including regular caller Brian Westrate, Eau Claire Republican Party Poobah).  On the other hand, maybe it's good to have more national subjects if WAYY can't get past the same 3 local topics over and over again ("Hey, let's tar and feather Bill Klaus!" "Gosh, those streetlights sure are expensive." "Obama sucks! No, Bush sucks!").

My suggestion - we get fomer local politicans Dave Zien and Dave Plombon to debate the issues of the day while Murph plays Master of Ceremonies.  Perfect lead in to Glenn Beck!