Jay Weber Show transcript 3-16-23 7:10am
I want to take you back...just ...two months or so...and remind you who Everett Mitchell is: he is a liberal judge in Dane county who was Janet Protasieitz’s primary challenger.
Remember Everett Mitchell?
Do you remember what story, essentially, ended his campaign?
Mitchell wasn’t likely to overcome Protasieitz as the stronger of the two liberal candidates, anyway, but....do you remember what revelation essentially ended his campaign?
Allegations of domestic abuse against his wife.
Remember? Mitchell’s ex-wife accused him of physically and sexually abusing her toward the end of their marriage. Mitchell denied them.
But, hey, the allegations were detailed and put ‘in print’ by the Wisconsin State Journal and the j/s, and from that moment on, Everett Mitchell’s campaign was essentially over.
Why?
Well, because the ‘word got out’ on him being an alleged abuser...and it did. Because the reporters and editors at Wisconsin’s two largest newspapers took it seriously.
As they should have, given the allegations. They determined that Mitchell’s ex-wife sounded like a credible accuser and there might be some merit to the allegations- there was certainly a public interest in making the allegations public, correct?
I mean. This man wanted a ten-year term on our state supreme court. To their credit, the Madison newspapers and the j/s took those allegations seriously.
Or did they?
Or? - did they only report that story because it would help Janet Protasieitz grab the liberal position in this upcoming state supreme court race?
I believe we will have the answer to that question in short order, here, given the very credible and detailed allegations of domestic abuse that have now been leveled at Janet Protasieitz -by her step-son.
Jessica McBride and Jim Piwowarczyk dropped a -very credible-exclusive, midday yesterday, and it includes allegations that other serious Wisconsin media outlets practically have the obligation to report, and to investigate further.
After all- the political left is engaged in a very high priced-all-out campaign- to put this woman on our supreme court.
And according to her stepson, at the time she was married to former judge Patrick Madden, she was a domestic abuser...and the abuse got worse when she was heavily drinking. The stepson, Michael Madden, characterizes it is ‘alcoholism’.
And one measure of allegations such as this-the most important measure- when they are initially floated- is: is this person credible? Who are they? What position would they have been in...to either see this...or experience it?
And what ulterior, or dark, motivation could they have to make up the terrible story or smear?
Well, Michael Madden, the stepson, was in the household, watching it. He claims to have seen-with his own eyes- repeated hits to the head, pushing and shoving and verbal demeaning...on Protasieitz’s part.
And as for motive or ulterior motive? He clearly doesn’t like his former stepmother, but he didn’t rush to the media to tell this story. Wisconsin right now found him, as they engaged in the ‘acts of journalism’ that the liberal news outlets apparently, aren’t, and found him.
And I’ll use a mix of Jim and Jessica’s narrative, here, and the audio that they have posted on Wisconsin right now-from their sit-down interviews with the stepson, Michael Madden.
He was also a smaller 70-year-old man with a slight build, at the time, and a photo contained in the story confirms that even at that age, Janet war, Well....beefy.
If she was hitting as hard as the stepson says she was, Judge Madden really was suffering abuse.
Also adding to the overall credibility of the story- Madden’s other two children -who weren’t living in the house- tell Jim and Jessica that they didn’t know about the abuse, because they didn’t live in the home like Michael did, but it didn’t surprise them to hear about it, and they back the overall credibility of their brother.
They, too, say judge madden was a proud man who wouldn’t have want ‘the family secrets’ known, but as his daughter says – something fueled a divorce just nine months later. Didn’t it?
Part of Michael’s story includes the alcohol abuse that he says- escalated this even more. Really seemed to fuel Janet’s anger.
Jim and Jessica also did something that’s really smart: at some point, they asked Michael Madden-have you ever contacted , or spoken to, judge Daniel Kelly? Protasieitz’s challenger.
Madden said no.
They asked: have you ever been a member of the republican party, and he said no, although he usually votes that way.
And for the record, judge madden was a staunch conservative when he was alive.
But...this is a stepson who isn’t political, never reached out to Daniel Kelly, never went to the media with some ax to grind, or to try to destroy Protasieitz.
Word of this domestic abuse got out as ‘gossip’ among door knockers and in gop circles, and Wisconsin right now picked up on it-and pursued it.
The stepson-never contacted the media himself. He says that-at one point-weeks ago-Dan Bice from the j/s contacted him on this same topic, but then never ran a story on it.
Which is interesting.
This is-also-something that Wisconsin right now addresses in its’ piece: so, Dan Bice and the j/s ran a piece detailing the sexual assault allegations against Everett Mitchell.
And they even broke long-standing journalistic codes of ethics in order to report a bogus story smearing Jennifer Dorow over her son’s legal troubles...remember?
Bice and the j/s broke two or three long-standing ethical tenets of journalism and newsrooms on the claim that the ‘public had the right to know’. Correct?
Or was the motivation behind those two stories to disqualify Janet Protasieitz’s strongest opponents and help ensure that she was boosted into ‘frontrunner status?
It sure looks hinkey, doesn’t it?
It turns out that Dan Bice has known about this for weeks, and the j/s hasn’t run the story?
I’ll give bice the benefit of the doubt-and say-maybe it’s still coming. Maybe he feels as if his version of these events isn’t ‘fact checked’ properly...
Or maybe it’s being held up because Protasieitz’s camp is refusing to comment on the story, and so Biden’s editors are overly worried about ‘fairness’ or balance-
There could be reasons that Bice’s piece hasn’t been published yet...
But...okay...now it is ‘out there’. And in a very detailed and credible way, thanks to Wisconsin right now.
Are other media outlets going to tell this story?
Are the liberal editorial boards at the j/s and Madison newspapers going to ‘be fair’ and have their own reporters investigate this? Or dog Janet Protasieitz at events until they get a response from her?
That’s’ what they’d do if this was a conservative, right?
Can you imagine if similar allegations were leveled at Daniel Kelly?
My god-it would be a never-ending, major headline story, with new installments each day-between now and election day.
We will see if the people who run these liberal newsrooms have-any- journalistic integrity or compunction to be fair, anymore.
And by the way-this is a great test for the journal/sentinel’s new managing editor: Greg Borowski. He was a good reporter, himself, and mostly struck me as fair.
So-we’ll see how he’s choosing to act as the boss here, after George Stanley ran that newspaper as an open partisan, and wasn’t even pretending they were a fair and unbiased news operation toward the end of his tenure.
story and photo credit: Wisconsin Right Now