It was about an hour and a half into our recent Fact Check 101 interactive workshop at the River Falls Public Library when the recall election for me officially jumped the shark.
If you’re a child of the 1970′s as I am, you’ll understand the reference. At the start of its 5th season, Happy Days had its most popular character, Arthur Fonzarelli (a.k.a. “The Fonz” or “Fonzie”) adorned in swim trunks and his typical black leather jacket jumped over a confined shark on water skis.
The idiom has come to mean, as the online Urban Dictionary describes it as “The precise moment when you know a program, band, actor, politician, or other public figure has taken a turn for the worse, gone downhill, become irreversibly bad, is unredeemable, etc.; the moment you realize decay has set in.”
In my case, we were having a terrific workshop complete with insightful questions from an active and engaged crowd of nearly 70 people. We were looking up campaign funding, exploring the veracity of jobs numbers and then, it happened.
Fact Check 101 Workshop at the River Falls Library: Photo by Bruce A. Johnson
I called on a gentleman in the audience who proceeded to compare what’s going in Wisconsin now to what happened in Nazi Germany. When he stopped talking, it took me a second to gather my thoughts before I said something along the lines of, “Regardless of where you are in the political debate, the comparison of the coordinated mass extermination of people and what’s happening today in our home state is as poor an analogy as any I’ve heard. There is no parallel and on that, I understand we’ll agree to disagree.”
I quickly called on someone else and the conversation moved on for another half an hour to 45 minutes. However, it’s hard to get past a moment like that as the emotions on display in this state these days are so raw, so real.
Frankly, besides concerns about the economy, the topic we heard about most around the state as we asked residents what was on their minds, was this concern about a lack of civility, how folks simply can’t seem to get along any more.
We heard from people like Pat Stuehler in Oconomowoc who told us, “I don’t talk to my family about politics because it leads into family rife. Family discussions that can get very involved. So we hardly ever talk about politics when we as a family get together. I keep my thoughts to myself. I don’t even talk about it with my husband.”
Kurt Mueller in Appleton told us when it comes to his sister-in-law and brother-in-law, “we don’t even discuss it any more. I just…If they start talking about it, I walk out of the room because I don’t want to say something that’s just going to make it worse from a family situation. But that’s what’s happening in all the families across the state. You’re having to pick sides.”
Speaking of Appleton, Lawrence University Assistant Professor Arnold Shober in the Department of Government says some bars in that city have banned all conversations about the recall, sending people who want to talk politics outside with the smokers. He says it’s similar to a time after the Civil War.
Prof. Arnold Shober/Lawrence University
“We’ve seen though over the last 2, 3 national election cycles really an old 19th century style of the other party is the party of Satan feeling,” Shober said. “In fact, that may not even be an exaggeration, that the other guys are just so wrong that I couldn’t stand to talk to someone who even mentions their name. We saw this all the time in the 1880′s, 1890′s, where if you were a Republican or a Democrat and you voted the wrong way, you were thrown out of the house.”
Empirically, the numbers back up the anecdotes we’ve heard. A recent Marquette University Law School poll showed 34% of Wisconsin residents have stopped talking to someone because of the recall election.
I can’t imagine anyone of the opposing side wanting to have a conversation with a man who associated their politics with Nazi Germany. And that’s why that moment jumped the shark for me. Despite my insistence over the last year to friends and family who have lamented the division in this state that the increased civic engagement made it worth it and that eventually it would subside, I’m afraid my view now seems naive and simplistic.
Engagement is one thing, overblown, hurtful rhetoric is entirely another. We’ve seen it on both sides. It’s hard to move on in a relationship with someone who thinks of your beliefs in such brutal imagery.
Come June 6th, there will be a winner and loser in Wisconsin politics. That’s how it works.
But I’m sad to say the reality is for a lot of people we’ve met, the shark has already been jumped. Count me now among them.
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