Scott Walker and Education Don't Mix

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

14 February 15

s we mentioned last week, ol' alma mammy is getting quite a workout in the news these days. First, there was the blow-up concerning Professor John McAdams and his blog. Then there was the gumshoeing that my fellow one-time Marquette Tribune editor Jennifer Haberkorn did on one of the straw people behind the King v. Burwell suit. And now, there's all kinds of news concerning the most prominent non-alumnus we've had since Maurice Lucas took the money and ran in 1974. That would be Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. At the moment, Walker is in England, thereby becoming an international man of mendacity. There he found that the tap-dance that flies on the Sunday Showz doesn't quite work on British television interviewers who don't particularly give a damn if he likes them or not.

In his last response, Walker declined to answer a question and follow-up from his interviewer about whether evolution was real, saying politicians were better off steering clear of that issue. "I'm going to punt on that one as well," Walker said. "I'm here to talk about trade, not to pontificate about other things."After Walker declined to state his views on evolution, the event's moderator, Justin Webb of BBC Radio 4, told him that he believed any British politician would answer such a question by making clear that he or she believed evolution was true.

This rather dubious view into the Walker brain cavern leads us inevitably to the sudden interest in the national press concerning Walker's unsuccessful pursuit of the degree they were nice enough to hand me in 1975. (That this interest is prompted by the fact that this low-rent grifter is now considered by a lot of people, including me, to be a serious contender for the presidency is something on which I am trying not to dwell.) The details are still pretty murky, but there's no question that his friends on campus looked up one day and -- poof! -- young Scott was gone.

And then he left Marquette altogether. Walker's disappearance from campus became a mystery that his political rivals seized on. As recently as 2013, the state's Democrats were still alleging that he might have been kicked out for election-related misdeeds. They dropped that after Marquette officials told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Walker had left "in good standing."...At the time, the Journal Sentinel found, Walker was not close to graduating. After four years, he was at least 34 credits short - about one-quarter of the required total away from earning his degree, according to its report. Walker's political spokeswoman said she would not contest that finding.

Which leads us inevitably to the fact that Walker's general attitude toward truth-in-campaigning hasn't improved very much since he absented himself from the academic end of Wisconsin Avenue. In Iowa, during his well-received speech at which people were astonished that he wasn't a wax figurine after all, Walker told the sad tale of how the 2010 "Teacher Of The Year" in Wisconsin, a woman named Megan Sampson, had been laid off because of those nasty teacher's unions that he has done so much to crush. (The teacher he name checked wants no part of him, either.) Well, we just happen to have one of the 2010 Teachers Of The Year right here. Not only that, but Ms. Claudia Klein Felske also happens to be a good daughter of Numen Flumenque her own self.

Your tenure as Governor has demonstrated nothing less than a systematic attempt to dismantle public education, the cornerstone of democracy and the ladder of social mobility for any society. How our paths have diverged from that August afternoon in 1986. True story: it was freshman orientation just outside Memorial Union. We were two of a couple thousand new Marquette University freshman wistful about what our futures held. Four years later, I graduated from Marquette and later became Wisconsin High School Teacher of the Year. You never graduated, and you became the Governor of the State of Wisconsin bent on dismantling public education. Ironic, isn't it? Situational irony at its best. I'd laugh if its ramifications weren't so utterly destructive for the state of Wisconsin.

A mark, that will surely leave.

This is what can happen when you close a place like Jim Hegarty's.

(H/t to Booman for grabbing the Felske letter)