When Wisconsin's tourism bureau launched a war on its neighbor by suggesting Wisconsin is actually the "mitten state," Michigan saw an unlikely ally come to its defense: a 30-something video pro named John Kerfoot.
Since 2006, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation has run a branding campaign titled "Pure Michigan." A few years into the campaign, Kerfoot took his camera to nearby Lake St. Clair to shoot a Pure Michigan spoof about the lake's scourge of fish flies, which appear every year in swarms so great that, as the voiceover goes, "visitors are left wondering, 'Why the hell do I live in Michigan?'" (Insert blanket headphones-at-work [...]
When I moved from Wisconsin to the Lower East Side in January, I quickly discovered my deep Midwest roots were very uncool. After a few smirks and condescending remarks about how I must be feeling “culture shock” in the big city, I learned not to broadcast the fact that I was raised and educated in, as our license plates proudly proclaim, America’s Dairyland.
It wasn’t always easy. When my date at Max Fish ordered a can of PBR, I didn’t tell him that my grandpa and his VFW friends considered it treason to drink anything that hadn’t been bottled in Milwaukee. When my neighbor wore a Green Bay Packer jersey [...]
In the long-awaited matter of the Wisconsin recall elections, two Republican state senators were indeed recalled. That puts the state at 17 Republicans and 16 Democrats, and, even with forthcoming recall elections, at the very least the legislature will remain with a Republican majority.
Along the way, how Wisconsin politics works has been laid bare. Last week, a supporter of Republican Senator Robert Cowles came out to say that Cowles had told him that the only reason he voted for Scott Walker's anti-union budget bill was that "the governor's office told us if we didn't give them our support, they would run a tea party candidate against [...]
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Not only is Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson getting so robotic about his debt ceiling protest talking points that he's now apparently praising Obama for creating high employment—his echo chamber is going along for [...]
James Smith said that, at first, he was worried about a backlash. "No one protested my house yet," he said. "I thought that was coming for sure this weekend."
A 25-year-old behemoth redhead, Smith works as a technician at Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center. His Facebook page says he's a fan of Rachel Maddow. His real Facebook page describes him very differently. He's a Republican who is running for office in Wisconsin. He's a would-be spoiler.
What Smith doesn't know is that he is being sacrificed, like so much else, by a rogue Wisconsin Republican Party determined to monetize as much of the state as possible before everyone gets [...]
Today, Wisconsin votes for a supreme court justice, in an election that proves that sometimes what happens in a democracy is not all that dissimilar from what happens in a diaper.
The state's residents have been robocalled so often in the last 24 hours that many are just not bothering to answer the phone anymore. Each side accuses the other of being the candidate propped up by outside money—even as both have had millions spent on their behalf by outside money. Sarah Palin, a resident of Alaska, has made an endorsement in another state's supreme court election. Wisconsin's election has become maybe the greatest single argument for not electing [...]
