Isthmus Journo Plays the Race Card in WI Concealed Carry Debate

The Isthmus is Madison, Wisconsin’s weekly “alternative” newspaper. That’s code for “so far to the left they’re not even close to right.” Every town of any size has one of these left-leaning do-rags, from Providence, RI to Atlanta, GA. [FYI: RF was once Managing Editor of Hotlanta’s Creative Loafing.] But this is Madison, Wisconsin we’re talking about. The capital of the Eat Cheese or Die state. The Isthmus is on the left edge of even Madison’s liberal politics. Guess where they come down on the concealed carry legislation working its way through the Wisconsin legislature? Let’s check in with Stu . . .

Stu Levitan [above left] is the self-described (no doubt) “mainstay and leader of Madison’s media and politics since 1975.” In addition to his radio work, Stu posts on a forum at the Isthmus. To describe him as an aging hippy would not be unkind or inaccurate. Here’s Stu’s post from Friday:

I think it would be fun to have 2 or 3 dangerous-looking black guys testify next week in support of concealed carry. The more gang-banger the better. Let the committee know EXACTLY who they’ll be letting carry guns.

See, Stu thinks that putting a bunch of scary looking black guys up in front of those nasty Republican legislators pushing for legalization of concealed carry in Wisconsin will do the trick. They’re Republicans. Therefore they’re racists. If you show racists that black guys will be carrying guns, then of course they won’t pass the law. Q.E.D.

What Stu doesn’t see: all he’s done is expose his own ignorance and bigotry. That he’s the one who’s worried by those scary black guys.

Had this comment been posted by someone at Madison’s right-leaning alternative paper (as if there were such a thing) it would be the cause of student demonstrations, sit-ins, folk songs, patchouli-scented incense burning and chanting—until the perpetrator was purged from right-thinking society. Only in liberal-land can that sort of racist remark not get your ass shit-canned.

Of course, Stu he didn’t really mean anything by it. You can’t be a racist if you’re a liberal. So nothing really happened here. Move along.