Wisconsin: Democratic Party staffer Graeme Zielinski dropped as spokesman after Twitter outburst

[Scuba]

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/194920661.html

Democratic Party staffer Graeme Zielinski was removed as the party spokesman following his Twitter outburst in which he compared Republican Gov. Scott Walker to serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, sources said Monday.

Party leaders also docked Zielinski a week's pay - which works out to a little more than $1,000 - for his tweets after Milwaukee prosecutors announced that they were shutting down a secret criminal investigation of Walker's aides.

Late Friday, Zielinski removed the offensive tweets and apologized both to the families of Dahmer's victims and to the first-term Republican governor.

One source close to the party said Zielinski, a former newspaper reporter, will stay on with the state Democratic Party as a "media adviser." He will, however, no longer be permitted to post on Twitter, where he has been prolific in recent years.

OFFS. We need to clean house. Media advisor? He just proved to be incompetent for that job.

[milwaukeelib33]

1. Except he's not really gone

Just pushed away from the cameras and Twitter as the blog notes. He'll still be on the DPW payroll.

And I've got to admit that I don't think that's a bad thing. Graeme is actually a nice guy that let's his emotions get the better of him at times. Listen to things said by many other prominent Dems the past couple of years, either Party leaders or electeds, and you will hear statements barely a step-down from what Graeme Tweeted the other day.

When you're being wrestled into the mud by teahadists you've got to fight at their level sometimes. Sometimes that includes provocative, fiery rhetoric. IMO that type of rhetoric kept Wisconsin workers energized during the struggle- hearing leadership strongly speaking letting them know Party leadership was in it side-by-side.

I don't know how this situation will play out fully; If Graeme's blood in the water will lead to a teahadist feeding frenzy bring down other Party leaders. All I know is if passionate, outspoken heads are replaced by milquetoast, polite talking heads I'll view it as a massive chance of strategy away from everything we've been doing since 2011. Will the new approach be to play nice with the fascists? Good luck with that if that's the plan. Count me out.

[PeaceNikki]

2. He's a very nice guy. Here's another piece.

http://wisinfo.biz/blogs/wausau/views-from-here/graeme-zielinskis-long-road-out-of-wisconsin-politics/

I had coffee with Zielinski once and worked with him by email all the time, and my strong impression is that his twitter feed was a bit of a performance. Behind the scenes, he certainly did not come off as the chest-beating jerk that he sometimes played on twitter. I assume that at some point the decision was made that Wisconsin Democrats would be super-confrontational against guys like Charlie Sykes or whoever, and I further assume Zielinski was carrying out that strategy. I don’t think there’s a plausible case that Zielinski was some kind of rogue twitterer.

There was something a little bit fun about Zielinski’s twitter style, which was a mixture of wild name-calling, Catholic arcana and sports fandom. As a writer, he had a way of dialing everything up to maximum intensity that was annoying and credibility-sapping but also sort of, I don’t know, dramatic? Interesting? I don’t think there’s any good defense for Zielinski’s behavior but I also dread the boring political communiques that are sure to follow in his wake.

Graeme and Tate have a history of sticking their feet into their mouths. While we need to be TOUGH, they have been ridiculous. I have come to really not like Tate after the way he handled the recalls.

The first time I met Graeme, he told me stories that made my jaw drop, so I am not in agreement that it was a 'performance'. I think it was him. BUT I don't think he's a 'chest-beating jerk', just very passionate, very dramatic and, well... very stupid sometimes. He gets caught up in the drama (see his history with Sykes).

[mojowork_n]

3. It's really unfortunate.

I hope this fiasco won't obscure asking legitimate, accurate and entirely appropriate questions, like.... What price Justice? Was this really an absolution for Walker? Did the judge weigh the balance between the evidence against "John Doe," on the one side (probably not as black and white as we would have hoped), and the humungous, obscene amounts of money available to defend him, on the other, and decide that no good would be served by taking on a budget of that scale and magnitude? (Something Dahmer certainly didn't have.)

...I'm guessing that's the conclusion that Graeme was intuitively approaching, but he took a flying leap of deduction that landed him just a bit outside the mark. (As Bob Uecker might phrase it.)

[PeaceNikki]

5. Exactly. I don't doubt Graeme's intentions a bit.

But his methods have proven to be wholly ineffective, dramatic, childish and have a history of becoming the story rather than staying focused on the story.

[sybylla]

4. He's proved to be incompetent long before this.

He should be gone, not shoved into a back office.

The party needs someone who can work on messaging, not high school gotcha games.

[mojowork_n]

6. For the record, Graeme's not the first or even the second Wisconsin.....

Last edited Tue Mar 5, 2013, 07:17 PM - Edit history (1)

http://cognidissidence.blogspot.com/2013/03/dahmer-dahmer-everywhere.html?cid=dlvr.it

Thanks to Uppity Wisconsin where we found out that Scott Walker himself used a Jeffrey Dahmer comparison in politics.

"The key is, we feel that in particular you are hiding behind these issues that are legitimate issues, but do not necessarily make you a legitimate candidate, any more than in the city of Milwaukee, if Jeffrey Dahmer were to stand up and talk about family values, he’s not a legitimate candidate."


For the lazy press who did not use google, we can also be reminded that Republican Senator Bob Kasten, running against an upstart candidate named Russ Feingold, actually blamed Feingold for Dahmer!

Edit to add:

Or even the third to make the comparison. Thanks again to Capper:

http://cognidissidence.blogspot.com/2013/03/graeme-zielinski-victim-of-bipartisan.html?cid=dlvr.it

The Teapublicans, as you can imagine, are practically besides themselves with joy. First Walker gets off the hook and then Zielinski gets the hook. What more could they possibly want?

...Where was {the} outrage when Christian Schneider, who we already know to be a proven liar, made his comparison of former Milwaukee Brewer Prince Fielder to Dahmer?

Got that? It’s not the Senator who’s spent 18 years in Washington that’s connected to Jack Abramoff – it’s the guy who’s never had anything to do with the corrupt political machine in D.C. for the entirety of his life. This is like saying that since Prince Fielder plays in Milwaukee, he must eat people like Jeffrey Dahmer.