March 9, 2016

About those Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates....

1. Rebecca Bradley wrote a column when she was a college student 24 years ago in which she said that Camille Paglia had "legitimately suggested that women play a role in date rape." Paglia had used the words "fools" and "idiots" to refer to women who get drunk at frat parties and said: "Feminists will call this 'blaming the victim.' I call it common sense." Bradley also wrote (all those years ago): "I intend to expose the feminist movement as largely composed of angry, militant, man-hating lesbians who abhor the traditional family."

2. JoAnne Kloppenburg, speaking at a candidate forum last month, said: "Any president that you might name would highlight how internally complex every person is. President Lincoln had slaves and yet he led this country in emancipating black people from slavery." Obviously, Lincoln never owned slaves.

Here's that whole forum, where you can see both candidates speaking at length. The 2 tidbits above are what's viral today, but it's probably a good idea to go beyond that sort of material as you decide how to vote. I know that sounds absurdly pedantic, and what I really believe is that people can tell that there is a liberal and a conservative candidate and they will vote based on their political preference.

70 comments:

Original Mike said...

Anybody know if we have early voting in Wisconsin????????

mccullough said...

Bradley in college knew Lincoln didn't own slaves. The Klopp on the stump says Lincoln had slaves but issued the emancipation proclamation, so she gets half credit.

I agree one is conservative and one is liberal. But the liberal is ignorant about facts and the conservative just has opinions people don't like.

The law is or should be about getting the facts right first and the interpreting the law (opinion) and applying the law as interpreted to the facts.

Good luck Wisconsin

traditionalguy said...

Poor Kloppenburg sounds like she is in early Alsheimers. She needs to stay away from speaking in public at all costs.

Bradley sounds like a sharp mind with targets that she is going after.

Women, who can understand them? And then there is Carlie Fiorino.

TRISTRAM said...

Wonderful choices y'all have. Reminds me of the Republican Primay. And the Democrat Primary.

Doomed. We're all doomed.

Lyssa said...

I recall learning that Lincoln had slaves at some point in school (I don't recall from what source). Looking at it now, I see that that doesn't make much sense, given his life history, but I definitely remember it being a common understanding. Where does that idea come from, I wonder.

Curious George said...

"traditionalguy said...
Poor Kloppenburg sounds like she is in early Alsheimers. She needs to stay away from speaking in public at all costs."

Here she is from five years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VNpKvwQeJM

Frightening.

Paul Snively said...

So Bradley is in command of the observable historical facts and Kloppenburg is a slave to the narrative. What's the conflict, exactly?

mccullough said...

Lincoln was born in Kentucky, which was a slave state. His family never owned slaves, which is true of 75% of households in slave states.

Ignorance is contagious

Chuck said...

I want to say something here, Professor Althouse. As I suspect you are aware, there is a strong (at lest well-funded) movement that includes the left-wing Brennan Center for Justice, and also Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in which (largely) left-wing activists are lobbying and stumping for judicial selection reform.

They have some vague proposals and observations on judicial selection issues, and even some specific ones. In a nutshell, they want to take state appellate judicial selection choices away from voters (and especially partisan elections) and set up various selection panels, nominating committees, etc.

Right now, and especially in Wisconsin, is a good time to look at their work. In the federal system, we have nominations by the executive branch with advise and consent powers resting with the Senate. Justice O'Connor would have said -- before this spring -- that the federal system eliminates all those nasty partisan election issues, with campaign finance problems, etc.

I have always been a vocal opponent of the Brennan Center and this initiative, and I happen to think that current events make for food comparisons. Better to have an open public election? Or a nominating process that is indeterminate, thoroughly political, and imbued with many more back-room deals than an election? I think that on balance, I'd rather have voters decide, rather than a blue-ribbon panel of legal experts, all of whom privately share the same liberal tendencies of their respective law schools, law firms, corporations, etc.

Big Mike said...

Mary Todd Lincoln came from a slaveholding family, and some of her half-brothers served in the Confederate army. There is evidence that Mary's personal slave "Mammy" was active in the Underground Railroad, but I've never seen anything to establish whether this was done with Mary's knowledge or not. This may be the source of Ms. Kloppenburg's misunderstanding.

That's quite a Democrat party you have there in Wisconsin, chock-a-block full of made up "facts" and disproven economic theories.

Sammy Finkelman said...

Lincln did not want to immediately abolish slavery, but he did not own slaves. He was for creating a conviction among people that slavery was on its way toward ultimate extinction, and not the opposite.

He didn't have too many plans - one idea was gradual emancipation, culminating in the year 1900, with some stab at resettlement in Liberia or other places.

He said of gradual emanicipation, if they did things that way, the effect would be barely noticeable, nobody's life would be disturbed, or words to that effect. (so there would be little reason to oppose it)

Sammy Finkelman said...

Wisconsin does have both early voting AND no-excuse absentee voting:

http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/absentee-and-early-voting.aspx

dreams said...

I think a lot of educated people are extremely ignorant, especially liberals.

Big Mike said...

@dreams, you broke the code!!!

Original Mike said...

Thanks, Sammy. I have to figure out how to do it in Madison.

Chuck said...

...
"I have always been a vocal opponent of the Brennan Center and this initiative, and I happen to think that current events make for good comparisons.
...

eric said...

You can almost tell which woman is conservative and which is liberal simply by looking at them.

Fernandinande said...

Bradley also wrote (all those years ago): "I intend to expose the feminist movement as largely composed of angry, militant, man-hating lesbians who abhor the traditional family."

There is some truth to that, but there's more truth to "feminists are goofy":

Glaciers, gender, and science
A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research
University of Oregon, USA

Abstract
Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.

Rocketeer said...

Not the first time some Yankee has asserted this about Lincoln. The assumption is obviously that Lincoln, who was born in and considered himself a Kentuckian his whole life, Must have owned slaves, becuase Kentucky was a slave state, right? This lazy assumption is often coupled with other "deficiencies" in historical knowledge. Several times in my student life I had to correct ignorant teachers and professors who taught that Kentucky had seceded. The state may have had a star on the confederate flag, but that (along with the CSA's sad attempt to bring Kentucky fully "into the fold" at Perryville) is just further evidence of the deep delusion that the secessionists suffered under.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

I usually vote for female candidates for judicial positions based on who has better hair.
Who should I vote for in this race?!

n.n said...

Feminism took a left turn to female chauvinism that is at war with heterosexual males, normal females, and our Posterity (i.e. babies).

Curious George said...

I mean c'mon, if he had owned slaves no way he's be splittin' rails.

Curious George said...

And the sumbitch could split rail.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Curious George wrote:
"I mean c'mon, if he had owned slaves no way he's be splittin' rails."

Southerners would say "I make a living from cotton", not "I make a living from the back-breaking labor of the people who are my slaves."

Heartless Aztec said...

By any measurement from today's Left Abraham Lincoln was a serious racist. Even to the most casual reader his "racism" circa 2016 leaps off the page.

holdfast said...

So one candidate engaged in some over-heated (but essentially true) rhetoric a quarter century ago, and the other one is a flaming idiot now. Tough choice.

traditionalguy said...

Lincoln was totally abolitionist to the extreme. But like Trump and torture of terrorists, he was bound by the Law until given a chance to expand/change the law. The 13th Amendment was later re-elected Lincoln. Before that he Proclaimed Abolition by fiat in Rebel territory and sent a lawless General named Sherman with The Army of the Tennessee south to make it reality.

To see Lincoln as even partly slave connected is Common Core Curriculum re-indoctrination.

traditionalguy said...

Seriously, Lincoln was a feisty trial lawyer who refused to quit until he won his case. And his client was to abolish slavey.

Gahrie said...

By any measurement from today's Left Abraham Lincoln was a serious racist. Even to the most casual reader his "racism" circa 2016 leaps off the page.

Every year we read parts of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in my U.S. History class. The students are stunned and dismayed to read Lincoln's speeches.

Gahrie said...

And his client was to abolish slavey.

Nope. And not slavery either. His client was to preserve the Union.

Gahrie said...

Lincoln was totally abolitionist to the extreme

You couldn't be further from the truth.

tim maguire said...

Ideas expressed many years ago that are out of step with today's thinking vs. rank ignorance? Well, one is stupid now and one might not be. Based just on this, I'd go with the candidate who might not be.

Does Bradley stand by what she said while in college many years ago? Or has her position evolved with time and experience?

Bob Ellison said...

These two women are not good public speakers. They should back off from public debates, especially when it's a crowd of eleventeen high-school students. Bradley was particularly bad.

They might be great judges. You don't gotta be a great public speaker to be a great judge. But man, that was embarrassing.

MadisonMan said...

I have to figure out how to do it in Madison.

I believe it involves a trip to the Square. I think it's the first floor of the City/County Building -- not the Post Office. I've seen people early voting there before when I was up doing something. Paying taxes? I don't recall exactly what, I just remember seeing people getting ballots.

mikee said...

Tim, the idea that getting drunk at frat parties is an unsafe activity, if you wish to avoid attempted drunken debauchery of the rapey sort, is both time-tested and verifiably, certifiably rational, logical and practical. Why should one's opinion of self-protective behavior change in the face of others' idiotic parroting of "blame the victim" complaints?

I'd vote for the one that knows getting drunk around horny drunks is not the smartest thing to do, if avoiding unwanted advances is a goal, rather than the one who thinks Lincoln owned slaves.

Tom said...

This all seems like Scott Walker's fault, somehow.

traditionalguy said...

Did Lincoln get himself elected as an abolitionist in an abolitionist Party but secretly wanted nothing to do with any abolition of chattel slavery. Now that's a story worthy of southern story telling talent. And the slaves were also healthy and happy until Lincoln was misunderstood which ruined things in paradise. We know this because Margaret Mitchell's family told us so.

The Confederate guys believed Lincoln was a real Abolitionist. That was why they left the Union before he was inaugurated. Only bad communication, I suppose.

Birkel said...

Abraham Lincoln moved to Indiana when he was SEVEN (7) years old.
Indiana was not a slave state.

QED: Lincoln could NOT have owned a slave.

Alex said...

The feminist obsession with "victim blaming" helps create more victims. Congrats feminists!

Curious George said...

All you need to know about Lincoln https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM-eJyKhSgQ

Alex said...

It's like telling the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto not to conduct an uprising because that would be "blaming the victims". You can call out the evil and still tell the potential victims of how they can defend themselves. Do you think telling the German Nazis that they shouldn't kill Jews would have helped?

Original Mike said...

Thanks, MM.

It looks like (maybe?) they are not available until 2 weeks before Election Day. That won't do it for me.

Gahrie said...

The Confederate guys believed Lincoln was a real Abolitionist.

He was an abolitionist...he just wasn't fanatical about it. Preserving the union was much more important to him.

Lincoln was also a racist by today's standards. Many abolitionists were. That's why Liberia was created. It is possible to believe that slavery is evil without believing that Blacks and Whites are equal.

Amadeus 48 said...

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.
A. Lincoln, 1858

mtrobertslaw said...

Here's the problem with Kloppenburg as a Supreme Court Justice. She has a serious problem with facts: what is historically false, she believes is true.

In an appellate case, facts are important; they shape the ultimate ruling in the case because the law is applied to those facts. Given Kloppenburg's disability, more often than not, she will believe what has been shown to be clearly false is true. This will create absolute judicial chaos. It will be Alice in Wonderland time in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Titus said...

These 2 women, representing both parties in Wisconsin, proves Wisconsin peeps are just not the brightest bulbs in the box.

They may decent judges, but their speaking skills are atrocious.

Bradley should do fine though-obsessed with fags and lesbians-typical pube.

Very nice though!

walter said...

At what point in the video does she say this? Was she called on it?

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"You can almost tell which woman is conservative and which is liberal simply by looking at them"

I had the same initial reaction. While deeply ashamed of being a shallow and reactionary pig, I still have to wonder why liberal women are such a shrewish and unhappy lot. Liberal men?

Darrell said...

They're teaching that Scott Walker had slaves.

Andrew said...

Because of Abe Lincoln's white privilege he owned slaves by extension. Kloppenburg is what we call here in Kansas city a shit for brains bitch, think Claire.

The Elder said...

Rebecca Bradley was right 24 years ago. I remember speaking at a sorority house chapter meeting in that era and telling the members much the same thing. I have repeated the same warning every semester to my students. Bad things can happen to you when you drink until you pass out, whether it be in a bar, an alley, or a frat house. It is only common sense not to place ourselves in jeopardy by eliminating our ability to think and communicate. Saying that doesn't excuse the rapist nor does it blame the victim. It simply reminds young women how not to become one.

Her comments about the composition of the feminist movement . . . well, I don't have experience with them.

It looks to me like Kloppenburg will clean up on election day in the Peoples Republic of Madison. After all, too many voters there probably believe Lincoln actually DID own slaves. But Bradley should do well statewide. She should do particularly well among people who might hope their daughters go to college someday . . . ESPECIALLY in Madison.

Jon Burack said...

I agree with both of Bradley's 24-year-old comments, I will admit. But let me be quite clear. I am fully on board with lesbian rights and with feminists who are not puritanical misfits. I co-taught a minicourse on John Updike's "Rabbit Run" with one of the most dynamic lesbian activists of the late 1960s and early 1970s. However she and I had many good laughs at the foibles of the sour, man-hating feminists she had to endure in fighting her fights. I won't name her out of respect for her privacy, but you can take it from me. I am reasonably sure she'd be ROFL at the hoopla about Bradley's remarks where she here today. There was plenty of truth to Bradley's statements 24 years ago and longer back than that, and still is now.

As to thinking Lincoln had slaves, it is tragically not surprising a Democrat thinks such absurd things given the race related nonsense the party dishes up all the time. This doesn't mean she should be let off the hook for it. Ignorance beyond imagining.

walter said...

at least they covered it..but look at the JS artcle headline:
"Supreme Court candidate Kloppenburg wrongly says Lincoln owned slaves"

Saving some from confusion on the matter?

David said...

Titus: "Bradley should do fine though-obsessed with fags"

Words from the expert on the subject.

Fen said...

"Winston is a misogynist alcoholic. I'm going with that Chamberlain chap instead. He's got class"

Jon Burack said...

I also have to come back in here and comment on a few of the above comments on Lincoln

This from traditionalguy
"To see Lincoln as even partly slave connected is Common Core Curriculum re-indoctrination."

This is about as dumb an attack on Common Core as I've seen, and I've seen a lot. Common Core standards focus on various literacy skills, and are not content oriented, except in the recommended readings, which are of the highest quality. These include: Freedman, Russell. Lincoln: A Photobiography; the Gettysburg address and the Second Inugurall; Hofstadter, Richard. “Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth.” Not all that I might wish, but no one in their right mind could get Lincoln as wrong from these materials as Kloppenberg does.

Then this from surfed and Gahrie

"By any measurement from today's Left Abraham Lincoln was a serious racist. Even to the most casual reader his "racism" circa 2016 leaps off the page."

"Every year we read parts of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in my U.S. History class. The students are stunned and dismayed to read Lincoln's speeches."

These are vast and purely presentistic failures of historical thinking. Lincoln did have doubts about blacks' equality with whites. In the context of the profoundly racist America whose votes he had to appeal for, his views were ALWAYS full of hesitation and qualification by comparison. And by 1863 and after, his doubts were resolved. He came to understand quite well that the races were essentially equal. To understand him in context should be (if we taught history correctly) to gain respect for him not lord ourselves over him, or be "stunned and dismayed" that he did not think as we oh-so enlightened beings do. Gahrie, you need to make your students read Frederick Douglass' speech about Lincoln at the dedication of a statue to him some time in the 1880s. Douglass had a far better sense of what it means to understand a man in context than your students appear to.

JaimeRoberto said...

At least she didn't say that MLK freed the slaves, so she's ahead of most kids being educated today.

David said...

"I recall learning that Lincoln had slaves at some point in school (I don't recall from what source). Looking at it now, I see that that doesn't make much sense, given his life history, but I definitely remember it being a common understanding. Where does that idea come from, I wonder."

It comes from the gigantic vat of misinformation and lies that slop over daily into American public life. That vat has always been there and it's always nearly full. But respect for facts has diminished greatly. Opinion is sought from children on issues they have minimal knowledge about. (My favorite is the 7th Grade in a fancy Chicago private school that was induced by the school to have a mock trial of Harry Truman for "war crimes" in dropping the atom bomb.) TV shows and college classrooms focus on competing opinion and belief rather than detailed understanding of the facts of various matters. Indeed they are taught that determination of factual truth is impossible. (It is often difficult but not impossible but they never learn that and never learn to approach matters with a passion for seeing all sides.) The result is the epidemic of moral tyranny that is infecting government, education and daily ordinary life.

It's the triumph of the know-nothing know it alls.

s'opihjerdt said...

A man who had not seen Mr. K. for a long time greeted him with the words: “You haven’t changed a bit.” “Oh!” said Mr. K. and turned pale.
Bertold Brecht

Gahrie said...

And by 1863 and after, his doubts were resolved. He came to understand quite well that the races were essentially equal.

Quite a bit of wiggle room in that term "essentially".

Did Lincoln believe in interracial marriage?

Would he have favored segregation or integration?

Gahrie said...

Gahrie, you need to make your students read Frederick Douglass' speech about Lincoln at the dedication of a statue to him some time in the 1880s.

You mean a speech by someone with a vested interest more than 15 years after the fact?

It is precisely the deification of Lincoln that has produced the disconnect from Lincoln the man, and Lincoln the myth. The same thing happened, for very similar reasons, to Kennedy after he was assassinated. In reality, Kennedy was a poor president, and would certainly be uncomfortable, if not unwelcome, in today's Democratic Party.

MacMacConnell said...

Gahrie,
Kennedy was a great man, he was practicing the Playboy Philosophy before Hefner even thought it up. Hell Kennedy had a sex slave WH intern before the sexual revolution.

Crimso said...

As noted, the Todds were slaveowners. That might account for the belief that Lincoln owned slaves, at least among people who are not aware that Lincoln's opposition to slavery was due in part to his feeling that his own father treated him as a slave.

Some of Mary's brothers were Confederate soldiers, and IIRC, some were killed in the war.

Mary had a half-sister (top half, I think) who was married to Ben Hardin Helm. Helm was a Confederate brigadier general killed at Chickamauga. Hardly anyone knows that Lincoln's brother-in-law was a Confederate general. At least a couple of accounts I've read of Helm's death claimed that Lincoln was grief-stricken. How close they actually were I can't say, but one author claimed that of Lincoln's brothers-in-law, Helm was the one Lincoln loved the most.

Jon Burack said...

Gahrie. Frederick Douglass, a man with a "vested interest"? Are you serious? Absolutely incredible. Douglass through most of Lincoln's life was his most eloquent CRITIC. That's why the address I refer to is so powerful. Just go read it.

RonF said...

"Bradley also wrote (all those years ago): 'I intend to expose the feminist movement as largely composed of angry, militant, man-hating lesbians who abhor the traditional family.'"

Help me out here. Is this supposed to reflect on Bradley badly?

Mark said...

The dirt keeps coming on Bradley. Today we find out she represented her partner in an affair in child and family court.

You know, the affair she had while married.

Walkers vetting proves is remarkably poor.

Meade said...

Mark smeared...
"You know, the affair she had while married."

You're sure about that.

Ann Althouse said...

@Mark

I looked at the article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -- http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/bradley-extra-marital-affair-role-in-child-placement-surface-b99684605z1-371700831.html -- and it doesn't seem that Bradley was married at the time or that there was an ethical problem with representing a man (who was also not married) when their personal relationship had begun before the the attorney client one.

What am I missing?

Are you not libeling her? I would read the article very carefully and then come back and be specific about why you believe your statements are true.

You seem to care about dirt. Don't be the source of it.

Ann Althouse said...

"Bradley and her husband, Gordon Bradley, jointly filed for divorce in April 2004, and it was finalized in October 2004. Kelly and Gordon Bradley both said Thursday the couple was living in separate residences at the time of her relationship with Bednall. Bradley said in her affidavit that she saw no conflict of interest in taking the case. Still, Bradley said, she raised that possibility with Bednall, who waived any potential conflict. She said she saw Bednall's son at school events, at social occasions and on Christmas Eve in 2004, but never discussed placement issues with the boy."

Ann Althouse said...

Should Bradley supporters look for similar irrelevant material about Kloppenburg?

Where are your values?