Waukesha, Not Janesville, Goes Hand In Hand With Paul Ryan

Tweet

Paul Ryan’s loyal media tool, the Janesville Gazette, did what they do best when they recently published a one-sided rambling article with a bewildering troll-like title, “Janesville is his oxygen. Ryan and city go hand in hand” as one in a series of Gazette stories about people, events or things that helped insert Janesville into the national consciousness.

On one hand, it's completely fair to say Paul Ryan's failed run with Mitt Romney in 2012 for the White House meets the benchmark for their compilation. But the story itself quickly morphs into Ryan's relationship with his hometown, rewriting it into a lovefest that is quite contrary to the historical facts.

Now, I’m not one to dispute anyone’s personal account of important events in their life because each individual will see and experience things from a unique angle that nobody else has or can relate to in the exact same way. So as the Gazette eagerly writes up Ryan's high praise for his hometown, few would know of Paul Ryan outside of his sphere of family and friends if he weren't a politician and thus, articles like the Gazette's spin-job about him would never be written.

So to that end, it is Ryan's behavior and identity as a politician that best reflects his real view of Janesville because anyone with Ryan's proclaimed love for his hometown (as the story implies) would certainly not let politics get in the way of showing it once in a while.

With that said, history shows Rep. Paul Ryan has done much more for himself than he ever did for Janesville or the district he represents and also fair to say his personal ideology coupled with his ugly divide-and-conquer style of political gamesmanship has actually hurt Janesville. Economically, he's a no-show. Politically, he's hostile.

But the biggest problem with the Gazette article is their attempt to paint Paul Ryan as a little country-bumpkin skipping down the street innocently kicking a can along the curb and whistling sweet nothings about his hometown, and they publish it without any journalistic curiosity towards a record that tells a very different story.

Only that he helped put Janesville into the national consciousness is all that should matter.

In short, how Ryan describes Janesville in the newspaper's article is fairly accurate ...for now. But it doesn't change anything. He will still continue to hold the town and its diversified political constituency up as a hostage when the need arises to advance himself. It's in his history.

ADDITIONAL:

RNR - Why did Glenn Beck gasp "Holy Cow" at Janesville?

RNR - Conservative Newspaper Wants "Progressive" Community For Its Own backyard

RNR - Janesville Is Not Paul Ryan's Kind Of Town

RNR - When Ryan said joining a labor union is similar to Iraqis being forced to join Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party