Only in Madison!
It’s why we love this town, whatever you wanna call it. As one of the citadels of Cancel Culture, the name of one of our public high schools is objectionable and must be changed. That would be James Madison Memorial High school, located on the west side of Madison WI.
Old Madison, who only wrote this country’s Constitution, was a Virginia slave owner. (A descendant boasted it had been many years since they flogged a slave.) He was also white, male, and (eventually) old. There is also evidence that he was Christian and heterosexual. The box score would say the guy was oh for six. Never mind about that Constitution thing or that he was President #4 and never impeached.
The Emerald City (our suggestion for renaming this town) has already renamed two elementary schools, removed a 42-ton rock from the university campus, erased any mention of award-winning actor Fredric March, and torn down a statue of a Civil War veteran and abolitionist. The statue guy was white (and Norwegian, to boot)! One suspects the work of the cultural vandals is just getting started.
Puts the history buff in mind of the bloody French Revolution and its reign of terror. It even renamed the months and days of the week.
“At the height of the Terror, the slightest hint of counter-revolutionary thought could place one under suspicion, and even its supporters were not immune.” — Wikipedia.
Or San Francisco, where the school board wants to rename 44 schools because the figures they were named after were deemed guilty of racism or oppression — including Abraham Lincoln High and Dianne Feinstein Elementary. Three of its members are being recalled. In San Francisco!
Myanmar was a much better place …
when it was Burma. The safe bet is that our Woke school board will name the school after the late Vel Phillips, one of the four finalists. While female and black, she was fairly undistinguished and more relevant to Milwaukee. A teacher quoted by the Wisconsin State Journal may have hit upon the kernel of the problem.
“I think our issue stems from the fact that we continue to name buildings after human beings.”
Is this another teachable moment? That human beings are fallible?! Dig deep enough you’ll find enough dirt to topple Mother Teresa off her pedestal. (That’s no joke.) The Church itself decommissioned Christopher as a saint. Lindbergh elementary? After the Nazi apologist? Muir elementary? The naturalist is currently being accused of racism. New York City solves this problem by numbering its elementary schools. But who wants to be Number #2? (“We’re number two! We’re number two!”) Or #13?
We remember when Madison Memorial was built. Always thought the name was lame. (And the architecture uninspired.) One of the four finalists for the rename is just plain “Memorial,” which is what people call it anyway. What is being remembered will, apparently, be forgotten. If we are rewriting history, could we pretend the school was actually named after Oscar Madison of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple? (Not the Walter Matthau Oscar Madison but Jack Klugman’s Oscar Madison.)
“Woke high school” did not make the cut. Tell the school board what you think. (Keep it clean.)
Blaska’s Bottom Line: The indentured servants at Stately Blaska Manor are still in a funk that the stadium in which the Brewers play is no longer Miller Park.
Naming rights for this blog are up for auction.
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
I nominate: Althea Bernstein High School
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We have a winner! The sports teams’ nickname? “The Lighters.”
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Or The Althea Bernstein H.S. Typical Wisconsin Frat Boys
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All sports uniforms will be Hawaiian floral patterned.
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In your lengthy list of victims of Madison’s cancel culture you neglected to name Porter Butts, who devoted 40 years of his life in service to Memorial Union and UW-Madison, none of which counted a whit because when he was 20, he joined the KKK (not that one), an undergraduate drinking club. Of course none of the cancelers ever did anything at 20 that they later regretted.
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Gary: I also praised Porter Butts in one of my posts on the platform titled “University Chancellors Are Craven Cowards”. He was briefly a member of that “KKK” campus organization along with Fredric March. The name was later changed to “Tumas”, if I’m not mistaken.
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Just keep in Memorial. I would avoid giving the school a name, but if I had to guess, Vel Phillips will probably be the new name.
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It’s in The Book , you could look it up. There’s a Biblical principle that everything produces after its own kind. Cats produce cats. Dogs produce dogs. Apple trees produce apples. Orange trees produce oranges. Love produces love. Hate produces hate.
What does identity politics produce?
It produces bigotry.
It produces division.
It produces a victim mentality.
“Dig deep enough you’ll find enough dirt to topple Mother Teresa off her pedestal.” No kidding, Dave, and this IS a teachable moment, … with the exception of my good friend, Jesus, … no one is perfect.
Here’s what the Kancel Kulture Klub doesn’t understand: There is nothing wrong in finding fault with the people you honor, so long as it’s clear you are not honoring them for their faults.
The SJWs in the Democrat Party ought to be careful what they wish for. Lefties will eat their own. They could get culturally-cleansed and cancelled for their past sins.
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Amen brother, Amen.
I’ve got nothing else to say because you said it all.
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“cleansed and cancelled” is not just a left-wing idea. Ask Liz, Mitch and the rest of trump’s hit list. If you think Biden won your gop membership card may have been pulled. Better check.
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Sounds like a typical educator.
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You know it!
“The SJWs in the Democrat Party ought to be careful what they wish for. Lefties will eat their own. They could get culturally-cleansed and cancelled for their past sins.”
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Mandela Barnes School of Zero Accomplishment. Based on the state of education, all the graduates will be equally as accomplished as the individual after which the school is named.
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Well, we have The Washington Football Team, so how about the Madistan High School.
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The SJW’s were never going to be mistaken for being smart. The high school will have “Memorial” in its name. It will still be located in the City of Madison.
Ergo in many cases it will continue to be referred to as “Madison Memorial H.S.” like the other high schools are referred to as Madison LaFollette, Madison West, Madison East, and Madison Edgewood.
In other words, a colossal waste of time and money, and Jamal still can’t read at grade level.
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First high school I think was named Madison high school, then became central hs by the square.
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Channeling my inner Dr. Thomas Sowell,
“It’s not that Jamal can’t read.
It’s that Jamal can’t think.”
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Following the twisted logic of the cancellers, if ‘Madison’ is an unfit name for a school, it should be an unfit name for a city. How long before we hear a great groundswell (i.e., squeals from a miniscule number of the perpetually aggrieved) for renaming Madison, the city?
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Ho Chi Minh is already taken, so we got that going for us.
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My money is on Stalingrad. It’s currently available and perfectly reflects the anachronistic worldview of Madison progressives, who are Stalinists in all but name.
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The SJWs are indeed on a roll. Why should they stop at one highschool? The city of Madison is a juicy target for renaming. Hell, the streets of downtown Madison are named for signers of the U.S. Constitution, many of them slaveholders born into a plantation society. Would the “culture vandals” (good one, Squire!) care to rename the streets? How about expunging their names from the U.S. Constitution? They wouldn’t dare attempt to edit history…would they? Good Dog is right when he makes the profound observation about not honoring historical figures for their faults. James Madison was a brilliant man, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, which is about the forming of a constitutional republic. He was well-read in law, and conflicted about slave-holding. He was a Framer.
I’m painting a radical picture. Hopefully the SJWs will not be tempted to rename Madison and its central streets.
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Voice,
You’re anti-wokeness, but from what I can gather from some of your other posts, you also vote Democrat. With the exception of a few like Manchin & Sinema, the DNC has become the party of wokeness & insanity and the trajectory doesn’t seem to be changing. I say this as a former moderate.
Genuine question: Are you seeing something that the rest of us aren’t?
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Liberty: You have urged readers of this blog to not assume that all Republicans support the party of Trump.
So please do not assume that all Democrats support the party of the “Woke”. I am not an extreme “leftie”.
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“So please do not assume that all Democrats support the party of the “Woke”. I am not an extreme “leftie”.”
That wasn’t my question. My point is that Democrats are the ones promoting identity politics, which appears to be in conflict with your beliefs on this issue.
I was a Democrat until I realized what they’d become and how far left they had veered, and found that I could no longer support them. Just curious why moderates are still holding on. Is there something we’re not seeing?
“You have urged readers of this blog to not assume that all Republicans support the party of Trump.”
You took my words out of context. What I meant (and thought I was clear about) is that we can proudly support Trump and his policies without approving of some of his behavior. Big difference.
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When Trump was Prez he lent a touch of irrationality to his party. There are still some Republicans who find it difficult to part company with The Donald, maybe because he’s still a draw and good at raising money.
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Liberty: You can support Trump’s policies without condoning his behavior. Understood. I recall that you reminded me once that most Republicans condemned Jan 06. Of course. Also understood.
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Among their many blind spots, progressives refuse to recognize the fallibility inherent in human nature (what used to called Original Sin). Of course this isn’t a problem since all progressives see themselves as infallible. Every person who’s had a statue erected to honor them was flawed, sometimes deeply, but those flaws were eclipsed by their virtues (the kind that don’t need constant signaling) and their accomplishments. Apparently this concept is too subtle for progressives to grasp, so it’s no wonder that they take such glee in toppling statues of those who actually accomplished something as opposed to themselves who have done or said nothing worth memorializing; those statues are constant reminders of their own limitations and shallowness, so they’ve got to go.
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Hoodr@t High
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Sh*thole High School or the equivalent~~~> Kamala Harris High School.
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trump high. They are broke anyway. Fit right in.
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Their insanity is waning, chunky todd even cutting down this goofy administration.
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Madison Academy of Grievance Studies. All diplomas will be printed on toilet paper or recycled copies of The Nation (but I repeat myself).
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George Floyd Memorial, if it were Minneapolis.
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Wasn’t the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King a Protestant Minister? Didn’t many Protestants think that slavery was okay? So should we now ban the memory of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King?
Just asking.
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It is safe to say that MLK did not approve of slavery.
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David,
I will gladly agree with you on your points. Unfortunately, the minds of the “Woke”, it seems that is now NOT how the game is played. It is only guilt by association that matters.
About 1/2 of my family is from Ireland. Both on my fathers and mothers side. As such, and being Catholic, many of my ancestors were either horribly mistreated by, or outright slaves of the English. In looking through the family records, it is safe to say that many of the English who mistreated my ancestors were Protestant. And yet, because I am white, somehow in the minds of the “woke”, I am guilty of all the crimes of whites who held slaves in the past.
The funny thing is: I currently have both very devout Catholics and very devout Protestants in my family. One of my uncles is a very devout Protestant Minister. (A better man than I’ll ever be.)
The immortal words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King that “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. understood, it was character, not color that made the difference. The organization Black Lives Matter misses that whole point when more black people die at the hands of other black people than black people dying at the hands of white people.
That is why critical race theory is just junk. Junk that is taught instead of an education in math, english, reading, writing, science and history that will educate and inform any young person on HOW to think rather than what to think.
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Bill,
It all makes sense once you understand that much of academia has been overtaken by
enthusiastic angry cultists who are quite serious about comprehensive cultural transformation where everything is relative, nothing is sacred, the USA is a unique kind of evil, socialism is dreamy nice and by-golly it still can work, and all the rest of the destructive garbage that is considered woke.
One example of this illumined new world order is schools where 16 yr. old boys who identify as girls can cohabitate girls showers and dressing rooms while dominating them in sports.
Isn’t that special…
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Surprised no one has suggested Tony Robinson Jr. Memorial High School
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