Here's how they describe themselves:
We are a nonpartisan political watchdog group working for clean government and real democracy. To carry out this mission, WDC tracks the money in Wisconsin politics and works for campaign finance reform, media reform and other pro-democracy reforms. The Democracy Campaign pursues these objectives through research, citizen education, community outreach, coalition building and direct advocacy.
WDC was founded in 1995 as a not for profit, independent coalition of individuals and groups responding to the growing dominance of special interest money in the campaigns of state lawmakers.
Nonpartisan.
Clean government.
Real democracy.
What's not to love about the WDC?
Plenty.
That mission statement is a crock.
The guy behind WDC is anything but nonpartisan.
Mike McCabe revealed his true colors in all their splendor when he targeted Charlie Sykes with a very partisan, very politically-charged Internet attack.
In a blog post, McCabe squawks about a quote that the WDC attributed to Abraham Lincoln.
The authenticity of the quote is in question.
Whether or not the quote is bogus, as Charlie and snopes.com assert, isn't an issue for me.
McCabe's reaction to the matter is what I find worth noting.
The man behind the supposedly nonpartisan, apolitical WDC, fair and balanced McCabe, went ballistic in his post. He not only attacks Charlie, but slams his radio audience and conservative bloggers in the process.
McCabe writes:
Sykes has something in common with much of his audience. Those who hang on his every word want to be lied to. They don't want to believe in evolution. They want to believe the earth is really 6,000 years old, despite the preponderance of scientific evidence showing they are a few billion years off. They want to believe global warming is not happening or, if the earth's climate is indeed changing, human behavior has nothing to do with it. They need someone like Charlie Sykes to assure them they're right.
They support U.S. policy in Iraq even though it's easily one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in American history and they think the Geneva Conventions are an intolerable nuisance. They need a Bill O'Reilly to confirm that warped belief, even if twisting history and slandering dead American World War II soldiers is the only way he can think to do it. O'Reilly and Sykes and their ilk cater to an audience that wants reality to disappear when that reality offends them or makes them uncomfortable or just doesn't fit their world view. They need to be told that fantasy is reality.
Charlie Sykes and Bill O'Reilly and dozens of others just like them happily oblige because they make a handsome living indulging their audience's delusions.
McCabe has just tossed his nonpartisan credentials out the window.
He went for the jugular with his rant but ended up exposing himself as utterly clueless and classless.
His hissy fit is an embarrassment. What a complete lack of control!
For the record, I've listened to Charlie for years and I, for one, don't believe that the earth is 6,000 years old.
McCabe is a talk radio bigot, a self-destructive bigot.
He'd be wise to take it down a notch.
To quote Thumper, "If you can't say something nice... don't say nothing at all."
(Note: That quote is NOT bogus.)
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