Walker angers temperance union by serving beer

The rod up that woman's a$$ has a rod up it...

Women's Christian Temperance Union, sounds like a great mob...

WCTU? I thought prohibition was repealed. This is the 21st century, right?
Susie

Are we sure this wasn't originally from The Onion?

Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

Purported to be by Abe Lincoln (but probably not).

Magnanamous said:

Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

Purported to be by Abe Lincoln (but probably not).

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Actually,it's quite possible to be his quote. The temperance league was fighting for prohibition since something like 1840-ish. But they fouind that beer/alcohol wasn't the problem. The bars were "tied houses" tied to a particular brewer,the owner isn't making much money,so he has ho's & gambling to make up the difference. The solution was to make it illeagal for the brewers to own the bars & deliver their own product. Seems to me the ABV% was lowered as well.

The article's comments are particularly entertaining (as usual):

"Walker angers temperance union by serving beer. In other news, anthropoligists have discovered a temperance union."

Lincoln ran a grocery in the 1840s (co owner)... in those days grocery stores were primarily for the purchase of Alcohol (espcially liquor).

lol...the president of WCTU is named Wert...anybody find this ironic?

Well, maybe not, since wort is non alcoholic

I saw the article too from the Trib. It's legit.
Susie

What I find more insulting is that the AP feels their readers are so stupid they had to print this sentence:

"The cookout menu features brats, a local sausage whose name is pronounced "brahts," "

unionrdr said:

You'd think so,yeah. Maybe over all these decades,it's just the quest & not the ideals behind it. Like they just got so lost in how can we? that they haven't thought about why should we?...

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Unionrdr;
You have A good point. Oftentimes it is the quest and not the goal.
Susie

mojo_wire said:

What I find more insulting is that the AP feels their readers are so stupid they had to print this sentence:

"The cookout menu features brats, a local sausage whose name is pronounced "brahts," "

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And here, all this time, I thought people in Wisconsin were eating their own badly behaved children.




(not really)

The cookout thing is legitimate. I saw it in the local paper this morning. I actually thought the WCTU had died out a long time ago, but apparently not. The lady's response was hilarious. She says "I don't think it's cool at all." Seriously. You're the leader of a 5000 member group that is struggling for recognition and that's the best quote you can give.

As an aside, I just love that people outside Midwest seem to need to have the word brat defined for them. Pronounced "brahts."

bcgpete said:

lol...the president of WCTU is named Wert...anybody find this ironic?

Well, maybe not, since wort is non alcoholic

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Yes it gave me a chuckle when I read the article as well.

So, I'm guessing that temperance unions are kind of like Westboro Baptist Church - every once in a while they rear their heads to make an outlandish statement that gets picked up by bored reporters and spun into a controversy that provides fodder for pundits to yak about in lieu of real news stories.

JJL said:

As an aside, I just love that people outside Midwest seem to need to have the word brat defined for them. Pronounced "brahts."

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You know, growing up in California I have never met anyone who hadn't heard of and didn't know how to pronounce brats. I think the AP just doesn't think too highly of their readers.

Proboscidea said:

So, I'm guessing that temperance unions are kind of like Westboro Baptist Church - every once in a while they rear their heads to make an outlandish statement that gets picked up by bored reporters and spun into a controversy that provides fodder for pundits to yak about in lieu of real news stories.

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That's not really a fair comparison. I'd guess most members of the WCTU have had their lives touched by alcohol abuse in some awful way (family alcoholics, DUI accidents, etc) while the Westboro people are just morons.

I think the AP reporter was just fishing for a story here, and probably called the WCTU out of the blue for a quote. It doesn't say anything about them releasing a statement or making a formal complaint, there is nothing about it on their website, and the quotes sound totally off-the-cuff. There's no story here, the reporter just needed to file something beyond the entomology of the word "bratwurst."

Thats what happens a lot of the time when you hear those weird statements from PETA -- reporters go looking for them to get a quote. PETA didn't really care that time Obama swatted a fly before a TV interview, but when reporters call them up looking for a quote, what is the press person there going to say, "we don't really care"?

Proboscidea said:

So, I'm guessing that temperance unions are kind of like Westboro Baptist Church - every once in a while they rear their heads to make an outlandish statement that gets picked up by bored reporters and spun into a controversy that provides fodder for pundits to yak about in lieu of real news stories.

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That's not really a fair comparison. I'd guess most members of the WCTU have had their lives touched by alcohol abuse in some awful way (family alcoholics, DUI accidents, etc) while the Westboro people are just morons.

I think the AP reporter was just fishing for a story here, and probably called the WCTU out of the blue for a quote. It doesn't say anything about them releasing a statement or making a formal complaint, there is nothing about it on their website, and the quotes sound totally off-the-cuff. There's no story here, the reporter just needed to file something beyond the eytomology of the word "bratwurst."

Thats what happens a lot of the time when you hear those weird statements from PETA -- reporters go looking for them to get a quote. PETA didn't really care that time Obama swatted a fly before a TV interview, but when reporters call them up looking for a quote, what is the press person there going to say, "we don't really care"?

It's a good thing they indicated brats are sausages because for a second there, I thought they were planning to eat unruly children with their beer.

Reading that quote, I'm picturing Rev. Lovejoy's wife: "Won't someone PLEASE think of the children?!?"

Just wait until he angers the EAC brat crowd by boiling the brats in beer.

Damn, this dude can't get along with any unions, can he?

Sounds like a good opportunity for a DWI checkpoint, set up by the local police union.

mojo_wire said:

...I'd guess most members of the WCTU have had their lives touched by alcohol abuse in some awful way (family alcoholics, DUI accidents, etc)...

I think the AP reporter was just fishing for a story here...the quotes sound totally off-the-cuff...

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Good insight, I'd really like to give these ladies the benefit of the doubt.

Entertaining story, nonetheless. I didn't even catch the brat part the first time I skimmed it...that's the best part of the whole article!

ktblunden said:

You know, growing up in California I have never met anyone who hadn't heard of and didn't know how to pronounce brats. I think the AP just doesn't think too highly of their readers.

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You'd be surprised. I lived in the South in a few different places over the years, and people would look at me like I was speaking a foreign language when I mentioned brats. Although, I would agree the AP probably is fairly clueless as well.