You may remember the case of Joshua Inglett, a UW-Platteville engineering student whom Gov. Scott Walker nominated in 2013 to be student member on the UW System Board of Regents. Walker withdrew the nomination in short order. The governor refused to say why Inglett's name had been yanked from the confirmation process, but Inglett himself said it was because two years earlier, when he was an 18-year-old freshman, he had along with nearly a million other Wisconsin residents signed a petition to recall Walker.
We mention this now because the story has resurfaced again, and in a big way. "This American Life," a nationally syndicated public radio show that is akin to "60 MInutes" on TV, only more quirky, has just broadcast a piece on Inglett's 15 minutes of fame.
Producer Ben Calhoun describes how Inglett, a Republican from Portage, was everything you could hope for in a UW regent, even if you were Scott Walker. But Inglett ran afoul of the searchable online black list that conservative groups made out of the petition papers. The report tells the story of how Team Walker shot itself in the foot by withdrawing Inglett's name, especially after Walker praised him effusively.
And there's more in the piece about how the conservative black-listing of recall petition signers has ended up with Wisconsin Republicans recklessly going after some of their own, apparently in the name of total political correctness.
You can listen to the 28-minute installment below. The report comes at a bad time for the Walker campaign, which appears to be hanging on by its fingernails and doesn't need any more bad PR right now. Click on the link below to the streaming audiocast:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/509/it-says-so-ri...
