The late great (how I find myself using this term more and more!) John Patrick Hunter was the eminence grise of the old Capital Times when your Humble Blogguer was pecking at its keyboards.

The afternoon daily (as it was then) hired Hunter, a native of West Virginia, in 1950 after firing a young investigative reporter who had set out to prove that Old Man Evjue really could afford to pay him more. (Fellow by name of Bill Proxmire, who obtained other employment.)

John Patrick Hunter was a liberal in the classic sense: reverence for the First Amendment and respect for dissent, even that of conservatives. Like so many Madison liberals even today, he worshiped at Frank Lloyd Wright’s temple, aka the First Unitarian Society church in Shorewood. (“When we pray, it is To Whom It May Concern,” he would joke.)

John Patrick championed racial equality in ways large and small. One personal act of defiance: under “Race” on his driver’s license he listed “Black” even though he lacked appreciable melanin. The man’s point, of course, is that we need to get past race. Would that he were writing today.

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Columbia professor calls for end to identity liberalism

American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender, and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing. One of the many lessons of the recent presidential election campaign and its repugnant outcome is that the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end. — Mark Lilla in the New York Times.

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Obsessed with race

Madison and Dane County Wisconsin are, like liberal-progressive-socialist enclaves elsewhere, obsessed with race as the first ingredient in their toxic stew of identity politics. Smitten by race. Fixated on race. Racially crazed.

Furiously checking boxes, tabulating scores, working the math. Even after — or especially after — the first black president, who is half white and all Leftist.

Dane County government is determined not to be outdone by the City of Madison in its race-based fixation. Dane County is poised to evaluate who is bidding for its many service and procurement contracts and to whom those bids are rewarded — not by quality of product or service but “through a racial and social equity lens.”

Resolution #390 and will be considered (and likely recommended) tonight (12-15-16) by the County Board’s Executive Committee (the agenda here) for passage by the County Board at its next meeting January 12.

But wait, there’s more. Our liberal county board wants to know who is black or asian or hispanic; male, female, other-gendered or indeterminate; Polish or Muslim or Fundamentalist Protestant; disabled or not — on its plethora of committees, commissions, advisory boards, panels and what not. (There are over 100!) (But not age! Because that would be ageism, n’est-ce pas?)

Furthermore, they want this minutia compiled annually by the Office of Equity and Inclusion. (Yes, there is such a bureaucracy.) They want to compare that data to the demographics of Dane County as a whole. (Multi-slide PowerPoint Alert!) Woe be it if LBGTs are under-represented on the Zoo Commission.

Leave it blank at your risk

Want to serve your local government on the Dane County Pollinator Protection Task Force? Fill out the form, a form of many boxes. Already serving on, say, the Aging & Disability Resource Center Governing Board? Check the boxes.

One saving grace — the forms are not mandatory. But if you leave it blank, good luck being appointed or re-appointed to the Criminal Justice Council’s Racial Disparities Subcommittee! What have you got to hide?

The lead sponsor for Resolution #406 is Jenni Dye, supervisor from Fitchburg. In her day job she works with One Scot Ross at his partisan attack-dog operation. (“Jenni is passionate about progressive politics.”)  E-mail all 37 supervisors with your opinion.

The supreme irony: Dane County and Madison are big on “Ban the box” — the code for eliminating the requirement on job application forms of divulging previous criminal convictions.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Surely there is more to Al Sharpton and Herman Cain and Condi Rice than their pigmentation. Ann Coulter and Rachel Maddow check the same gender box. Is Tiger Woods black, white, or Asian? The answers are yes and who the hell cares!

There is something very racist about assuming that African-Americans (for one instance) think in lockstep. But that is the very foundation of identity politics, which feeds the politics of victim grievance that has been the bread and butter of Democrats since LBJ.