Baldwin Opponent Resorts to Silly Stunt

One of the candidates for the hopeless Republican slot to run against Rep. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin's Second Congressional District, Peter Theron, managed to get his futile candidacy some front page coverage in the Wisconsin State Journal yesterday. How? By a ridiculous stunt, whereby he applied for a city street use permit to stop traffic 26 times during the afternoon rush. Why?  To demonstrate "What impact will passenger rail from Milwaukee and local commuter rail someday have on traffic at the already congested intersection of John Nolen Drive, South Blair Street, East Wilson Street and Williamson Street."

...The application is scheduled for its first hearing Wednesday morning before a panel of city and state staff.

But city officials are skeptical about whether the experiment will do anything more than inconvenience drivers.

“It would be irresponsible to do what he’s proposing with the project lacking details of future service levels and intersection design,” said city transit planner David Trowbridge.

This is a stunt made for local right-wing talk radio, which already seems to have made trains a prime political target. Keep it up, Mr. Theron. This strategy worked so well for Nancy Mistele.

- Barry Orton

Comments

[antpoppa]

When developing Reality Control, one must construct problems that “impact” but not be so enormous that the problem will not pass through the untrained filter of popular reason.
This particular twisting of reality is pretty hard to swallow, but, with the ownership of print and radio media this process may succeed... Or not.
What unintended consequences may occur is that the popular reason may adopt the Pravda mentality ‘Everyone knows the news is all lies anyway.”

[Anonymous]

It's a shame this has to be tied to the Theron/Baldwin campaign. I personally think it's an experiment worth trying. Of course if there's no MAJOR backup this could boomerang on train opponents.

[Ex Alderman Steve]

I find this whole "commuter-rail-disrupts-the-orderly-flow-of-automobile-traffic" meme kind of loopy. I mean, how many "automobile crossings" (aka "stoplights" or "traffic intersections") does one encounter in the course of driving from Middleton to Capital Square?

Bill Richardson once asked me what a driver might think of a commuter train whizzing by unimpeded while he was stuck in traffic. I replied he very well might think "perhaps I should take the train next time." I don't think that was the answer he was fishing for...