In this morning’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Molly Beck reports that Citizen Action Wisconsin depicted Governor Scott Walker (who is running for re-election) and State Senator Leah Vukmir (who is running for the US Senate) behind a target graphic. What the fuck was Citizen Action Wisconsin thinking?
There is absolutely no way to defend this. Just because it’s an arrow instead of a bullet hole doesn’t make it right. Even if it was just a plain target it is just completely stupid and rude. Actually the arrow makes it worse. I am livid over this.
As any reader knows this blog is solidly in favor of limits on gun ownership and the types of guns available in the market. I just can’t believe someone from the left did this…shit!
And I don’t have time to look this up but it seems just an election cycle or two ago, the left was all worked up over a similar ad by a GOP candidate with a target on it…maybe it was Colorado or Arizona. I don’t remember. But the left got pretty indignant at the time and rightly so. So I have to call out the hypocrisy of Citizen Action Wisconsin.
I expect an apology to Governor Walker and Senator Vukmir. I don’t think one will be forthcoming given the defense of the ad by Citizen Action Wisconsin’s director Robert Kraig.
In a graphic promoting Citizen Action Wisconsin’s latest episode of their podcast titled “Open Political Season,” Walker and Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-Brookfield) appear to be standing behind a bull’s-eye target.
Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action Wisconsin, said the group is simply “using humor to make an analogy between the opening of campaign season in Wisconsin and hunting.”
“I am frankly surprised that anyone would think that this cartoonish image of an arrow hitting a target would be interpreted as promoting violence,” Kraig said. “Of course, in any analogy the comparison is not supposed to be literal or exact, that’s the whole point.”
I don’t think comparing campaign season and hunting season is responsible…I don’t see them as having anything in common…this explanation doesn’t make it sound any better. It is, frankly, a piss poor defense of a stupid stupid ad.
If this is what Mr. Kraig really believes is a justifiable explanation and without an apology to the governor and the senator, he should resign. Implying violence is as bad as advocating it in the current environment.
And Mr. Kraig isn’t the only one who owes the governor and the senator an apology. The podcast being advertised features State Senator Chris Larson (currently running for re-election). I really think he should get in front of this and denounce it and issue his own apology.
[full disclosure: Sen. Larson is my state senator]
Ok, I am done for the moment picking on the left and the Democrats. Here’s a solid stick it up your ass to Walker spokesman Brian Reisinger and Alec Zimmerman, spokesman for the Republican Party of Wisconsin. Why? Well here:
“Liberal groups are always ready to blame violence on conservatives, and it’s outrageous that this far-left group would turn around and do this when Governor Walker and Wisconsin Republicans have repeatedly faced death threats for standing on principle,” he (Alec Zimmerman) said.
“We would have thought that extreme liberal organizations would have learned from the overreach and death threats Republicans faced in the past,” Walker campaign spokesman Brian Reisinger said about the graphic.
Republicans aren’t the exclusive subjects of death threats. To pretend otherwise is totally deceptive and unjustifiable and what incredible arrogance. Just as members of both parties have been victims of direct violence in the very recent past, members of both parties receive death threats. Examples of real violence are Steve Scalise and Gabby Giffords. Mr. Zimmerman and Mr. Reisinger…victim-hood is NOT your exclusive domain! So stick it!
Suggested article for Molly Beck: it might be interesting to document who receives death threats and how many such activities occur each year in Wisconsin. And how they are delivered.
Stupid? Yes, because the RW whine machine would use this as a way to distract from their failures in actual policy.
But apologize? No, not until ALEC Queen Vukmir apologizes for saying Tammy Baldwin was on “Team Terrorist” and Scott Walker apologizes for saying taking on teachers was like taking on ISIS. And both should be made to apologize for every slur made against “liberals” by their spokespeople on AM 620 and 1130.
I agree Citizen Action was in the wrong, but for tactical reasons. “Going high” does not get rewarded by the voters anymore, so why let the GOP take advantage of liberal’s inherent decency and empathy?
That past instance that Democrats were upset about that you couldn’t exactly remember? It was March of 2010 when Sarah Palin released crosshairs targets on a map showing several Democratic districts, one of which was Gabrielle Giffords’.
I was too pissed when I was writing this blog to bother to look it up. But I did on the reply on the Blogging Blue Facebook page.
http://gawker.com/5728545/shot-congresswoman-was-in-sarah-palins-crosshairs
Absolutely disgusting and I’m glad to see a left-wing blogger denounce it. Those of us on the right will NEVER forget the attempted murder of Republicans on the baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia and what overheated, irresponsible images can do to unstable minds.
And I feel exactly the same about the attempted murder of Gabby Giffords.