Thursday, March 21, 2013

Trying to Pull a "Gableman" on Fallone

Remember the well documented lies and sleazy tactics that Michael Gableman used against incumbent Justice Louis Butler in 2008?  Apparently some right wingers are trying once again to pull a "Gableman" but this time they are doing it to Supreme Court candidate Ed Fallone.

They tried to make Justice Butler, the state's first African American on the high court, own all of the horrible crimes of a former African American client. Apparently they are now trying to use the misdeeds of the former leader of the Latino Community Center against Fallone. Incidentally Fallone would be the state's first Latino justice on the high court if he is elected next month.

So it is a different race, with different circumstances but it appears that some of the same sleazy tactics are being employed now that were used back then.

The story in short: A former gang leader emerged from prison and by all early accounts tried to reform both himself and his community on Milwaukee's near south side.  In 1999 he created an LLC which eventually became the Latino Community Center.  It was initially so effective at reaching out to the youth of the area that he gained a very impressive amount of community support.  He also gained a very prominent list of board members including Ed Fallone.  Unfortunately the founder of that community center eventually lost his way and acted recklessly in many ways and with tragic consequences.

Apparently the right wing special interests in Wisconsin have been running a sleazy radio ad trying to make Ed Fallone own the tragic decisions of this former community center founder.  If you were to believe their opportunistic attacks you would think that Fallone himself was a criminal gang leader and perhaps that is the real point of the ad in the first place. However, at the time everyone knew about the background of the center's founder but they also believed in and thought that they were witnessing an amazing story in redemption. Who could possibly blame them or be against that?

So I'm assuming that the sleazy attacks stem from the misinformed idea that Fallone should have somehow earlier divined the founder's horrible personal decisions that came about in 2001.  But to think that you have to totally ignore the actual timeline of events along with a bit of reality.

From all accounts it wasn't until 2001 that the founder started going back in the wrong direction in his personal life.  One of those bad decisions included him developing an inappropriate personal relationship with a worker at the center. That worker ended up pregnant with twins and things went very quickly and tragically downhill from there.  On October 29, 2001 the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a story detailing all of these horrible things and two days later the Latino Community Center board accepted the founders resignation.

So apparently critics are suggesting that 2 days was too long to fire the founder or they are upset that Fallone and the other board members failed to properly employ ESP or some other unconventional method to learn about his personal life and private activities. Even if they believe the latter it should be noted that most of the downhill slide of this situation happened very quickly over the course of months.  However I find both of the above options ridiculous and that is why I am convinced that the motivation isn't really so complicated.

The right wing is simply trying to misuse another horrible tragedy to pull a "Gableman" but this time they are trying to pull it on Ed Fallone.

1 comment:

John said...

Too late. My wife and I missed all the sleazery, and have have already early-voted for Ed fallone!