Okay, I\’ll make the back story quick:

About two months ago, I was picking pizzas up. I parked, went in the pizza place, and walked back into the parking lot, just as another car was backing up towards my car. As it got closer and closer, I dropped the pizzas and started yelling \”stop!\” Clearly, they didn\’t see my car, and backed right into the rear passenger side. There wasn\’t a lot of damage, but I called the cops and got an incident report just to be safe. Actually, I was most miffed that I was out 30 bucks worth of pizza, which was frozen solid by that point.

I called the woman\’s insurance company, and they told me she preferred to handle it out of pocket. It took me a while to get an estimate, and when I finally did, I found out a new bumper was going to cost $500. That\’s really not any surprise, because everyone knows that any time any body shop has to lay a finger on your car, it\’s going to be at least 3 hundo.

Which brings me today. I had delayed calling this woman back, because I dreaded breaking the bad news. As it turns out, my intuition turned out to be uncomfortably correct.

When I told her what the repairs would cost, she acted as if I was asking for ransom money in exchange for one of her children. At first, she called me an \”opportunist\” who goes around looking to rip people off. Clearly, she was on to my scheme, whereby I park my car at various pizza places and wait for it to be backed into. Jackpot!

Then it got weirder. When were were waiting for the police officer to arrive, I must have told her that I went to grad school at Marquette. On the phone today, she actually called me a \”bad Catholic\” for asking her to pay for the damage she caused. (As it turns out, I accidentally ate meat on Good Friday – but there\’s no way she could have known that.) For some reason, she saw fit to mention to me that she and her husband are both pro-life, which will only be relevant if one day she runs over a fetus crossing the road.

Then, she accused me of getting into another accident and trying to pin it on her. At this point, I was thoroughly amused. I spent eight years in the Legislature fielding angry constituent calls, so I pretty much just let people go when they want to vent. She asked what insurance company I had, and I told her I had Progressive. \”Only bad drivers have Progressive,\” she said. \”So I guess it\’s only good drivers that back into people\’s cars, then,\” I retorted.

There were many other puzzling accusations weaved throughout the conversation. But at the end of the call, I just told her that I\’d be filing a claim with my insurance, and that was that. I don\’t care if the bumper costs $1 or $1,000, I just want a new bumper. I was thinking about selling my car soon, and a banged up bumper is going to cost me money, so I want it fixed. I actually would feel bad about asking them for money and not repairing the damage with it, so I absolutely will. But a small part of me now wants to get a check from them, then send them a picture of me giving a \”thumbs up\” with my brand new iPod and swim trunks.

So here\’s my \”Springer\’s Final Thought\” to this whole thing. If I had called her, and she thought the repair was too expensive but offered to work with me, I would have done so. I could have gotten another estimate or bargained a little. I realize $500 is a lot of money. But since she went nuts on me, I have absolutely no problem going after her for the full amount. She made it easy for me to file a claim against her with a clear conscience. Or, at least as much of a clear conscience a bad Catholic can have.

Interesting article in the Washington Post today about how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama tend to overstate their role in certain legislative accomplishments. This certainly isn\’t anything new – in his book \”Congress: The Electoral Connection,\” political scientist David Mayhew actually makes the case that \”credit claiming\” is one of the three most important roles of members of Congress. He defines \”credit claiming\” as \”acting so as to generate a belief in a relevant political actor that one is personally responsible for causing the government, or some unit thereof, to do something that the actor considers desirable.\”

In any event, the Post article uses several sources to clarify the two senators\’ roles in the formulation of certain legislation (apparently, Arlen Specter has a lot of time on his hands to talk to Washington Post reporters.) Of course, when discussing Hillary Clinton\’s travel schedule, the Post goes to the only definitive source on Clinton travel:

Clinton also has her share of colleagues only too willing scrutinize her claims. Her campaign Web site describes Clinton\’s \”successful effort to create\” the popular State Children\’s Health Insurance Program during her husband\’s tenure in the White House, and she has placed herself in the middle of major international events, including the Northern Ireland peace process and the Balkan conflict.

But prominent Democratic senators, Irish historians and even Sinbad the comedian, who accompanied Clinton to Kosovo, are challenging some of her assertions.

Wait… what?

So the Post was like, \”We think Hillary Clinton is full of it. Get Sinbad on the phone!\” Was it Sinbad\’s role in \”First Kid\” that made him an expert on presidential travel?

For those still questioning the veracity of Sinbad\’s story, just remember – HE AIN\’T LYIN!

Discussion with my 4-year old daughter while watching the Marquette-Stanford game:

Her: \”Daddy, what\’s Stanford?\”

Me: \”It\’s a school that really smart people go to.\”

Her: \”Like you?\”

Me: \”No, I couldn\’t get into Stanford.\”

Her: \”That\’s because you\’re too silly.\”

So it is now official: My wife and I have given birth to my parents. My philosophy of \”silliness\” was a major talking point of theirs as I was going through high school, and now I still get speeches, just from my own kids.

As for the game itself, it\’s a pretty bitter pill to swallow when everyone in the arena can draw up Stanford\’s winning play and Tom Crean can\’t devise a defense to stop it. This ballbreaking final play was actually enough to get me on the treadmill, to burn off some frustration. I also needed to see if I still remembered how to walk after spending three straight days in a catatonic state. I think my wife snuck up and put a mirror up to my mouth a couple times to see if I was still breathing while the tourney was going on.

I also happened to notice that during the Marquette game, the Indiana Pacers were playing the Chicago Bulls. As you may know, former Marquette great Travis Diener plays for the Pacers. Now it just so happened that in the first half of the Pacers game, Diener dove into the stands and sustained an injury that forced him back into the locker room. Miraculously, Diener was back on the court in the second half, finishing out the Pacers\’ win. I\’m sure it was purely coincidence that Diener just happened to be in the locker room for the end of the Marquette game – and I\’m happy that that he healed so quickly from this devastating injury.

During this NCAA tournament, we also got to learn that Kyle Korver of the Utah Jazz has a brother named Klayton that plays for Drake and a brother named Kaleb who plays for Creighton. While I\’m not a big fan of government intervention in family life, I would have no problem with calling social services on the type of parent who slaps their children with matching initials. We also got to learn that this father is one of the \”most outstanding clergymen in the Midwest.\” How exactly do they determine this? Is he ahead of Jeremiah Wright? Did he get to the Sweet 16 in the \”Midwest clergymen tournament?\”

The most ubiquitous commercial during the tournament has to be the ridiculous DirecTV commercial featuring a hot babe trying to make signing up for satellite TV seem sexy. It\’s pretty over the top when she promises the \”ultimate hookup.\” They should have just gone the extra step and had her discuss when they \”plugged the cable into her box.\”

Oh, and congrats to the Badgers for their trip to the Sweet 16. Trevon Hughes had a huge game against Kansas State, who I thought might actually give them some trouble. I actually talked to Hughes at a bar once – a friend of mine mentioned to him that I was a basketball manager at Utah. He asked what year, and I said I started in 1993. \”Oh. I was four years old,\” he said. I then spent the rest of the evening with my head in the oven.

I\’m still wondering why they even play NBA games this weekend. The Badgers have now given me basketball fever, while the Bucks gave given me basketball syphilis.

As of this writing, I am excited to announce that my 4 year-old daughter has now picked more NCAA tournament games correctly than I have. In fact, in today\’s afternoon action, she picked Davidson, Western Kentucky, and San Diego all to win. (She liked San Diego because they mention the San Diego zoo in her favorite movie, Madagascar. She also has them in the Final Four.) Her bracket is kind of hard to read, since she took the scoring marker I was using and drew flowers all over the sheet of paper.

Next year, I will be charging for her services. Oh, and did I mention I spent four years working for a major Division I men\’s basketball team?

Living in Wisconsin subjects all of our residents to the cultural push-and-pull our state thrusts upon us. On the one hand, we have time-tested rituals that we treat with reverence. Fish fries. Hay rides. Cows. Packer football. Many of these, although not all, are inextricably linked to the small-town, rural ethos found in the Dairy State.

On the other hand, while we all recognize these as sacred Wisconsin institutions, we aren’t necessarily rushing to export these images of Wisconsin to the rest of the nation. We have a strong sensitivity to how we’re portrayed nationally, and don’t particularly take kindly to being branded as exclusively rural.

Heck – most of the popularity of the UW’s stem cell project is due to the fact that it proves to the rest of the nation that we don’t live in houses with hay floors.

Then Johnny Depp showed up.

When news hit that a big-time Hollywood movie would be filming in Wisconsin, residents took it as a sign that Wisconsin had finally hit the big time. Hollywood had finally given us the stamp of cultural approval for which we so longed. Finally, we stand shoulder to shoulder with the biggest in popular entertainment and get to shed our image as corn-fed yokels.

Predictably, when “Public Enemies” began shooting in Columbus this week, it immediately reinforced our image as corn-fed yokels. Local news breathlessly led off their broadcasts with news that Johnny Depp had arrived to free us of all of our feelings of cultural inadequacy. A young woman standing near the movie set breathlessly confided to a Madison television reporter that “this is the most exciting thing I have ever done in my entire life.” The same TV station ran pictures of Depp taken by fans that appeared to be taken with the Hubble Telescope.

Not to be outdone, another channel interviewed a subtle young woman who indicated her desire to have the movie star plant a baby Depp in her womb upon visiting his trailer. (A “Depp charge,” if you will.) A third station combed the crowd looking for the woman who had been waiting out in the cold for Depp the longest. In reality (and unbeknownst to the reporter), the report actually exposed the fact that Columbus currently has an 85% unemployment rate.

Now don’t get me wrong – it certainly is exciting for the people of Columbus to have such a big event in their town. I can’t imagine things would have been any different in any small town in America.

But the media have a responsibility to put this all in context for people. It’s not as if Christ himself had descended upon South Central Wisconsin. (In fact, I believe he just retired from his job in Green Bay.) One of these days I fully expect to hear the local broadcast start out:

“Tonight, we’ll have details on a virgin birth reported in Columbus, Wisconsin. But first, JOHNNY DEPP was here!”

As a side note, the economy is on fire and you will likely be thrown out of your house in a couple months. Maybe you can call Johnny Depp to bail you out.

First, a qualification – on the 1 to 10 outrage scale, this barely registers a \”1.\” But it is interesting, nonetheless.

Today on his radio show and on his blog, Charlie Sykes was critical of a pro-Mike Gableman for Supreme Court advertisement. (I happen to share his sentiment, incidentally.) In his words, he decided to \”throw a flag\” on his own team for the inappropriateness of the ad.

Miraculously, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who it appears goes out of its way to deny Sykes\’ existence, thinks this is newsworthy. On their \”All Politics\” blog, a mention of Sykes\’ position warranted its own posting. Funny that every time Sykes makes an outstanding point criticizing a Democrat, it disappears into the ether.

Now, I understand that there\’s a certain \”man bites dog\” element to a right-wing radio talk show host being critical of his own preferred candidate. But it is ironic that Sykes suddenly becomes so newsworthy when he\’s critical of a Republican.

It\’s a long, time-tested rule that if you happened to be a Republican looking for the media to cover you, all you have to do is criticize other Republicans. This is largely how John McCain became the media darling he currently is. You don\’t have to look too hard to find stories about anti-Iraq war Republicans, yet trying to find news articles about pro-war Democrats is like finding Eliot Spitzer in a monastery. People under 30 years old in Wisconsin only know who Bill Kraus and Lee Sherman Dreyfus are because of their infinite press appearances as \”Republicans bashing Republicans.\”

Perhaps no dissent among Democrats exists on any issue. Maybe every single one thinks Louis Butler\’s equally baseless ads attacking Gableman are perfectly appropriate. But somehow, I\’m not sure we\’d be hearing as much from them if they did.

SIDE NOTE: The Journal Sentinel blog post was written by Stacy Forster, who is an outstanding reporter – and I am NOT alleging any kind of bias on her part. I just think it\’s interesting how this whole \”Republicans criticizing Republicans\” phenomenon fits into the larger picture.

The NPR music crew made their way down to Austin, Texas last weekend for the South by Southwest music festival. While down there, they managed to maintain a blog, as well as archiving some live shows, including R.E.M., Vampire Weekend, Yo La Tengo, Jens Lekman, and Eau Claire native (and current darling of the indie music scene) Bon Iver (A.K.A. Justin Vernon).

Definitely worth checking out. You\’re paying for it, might as well enjoy it.

This ESPN story detailing the lengths to which \”die-hard\” fans are willing to go to be buried with their favorite teams is a must-see.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMGpbNqmADw&hl=en]

You\’re telling me a plot in a Packer Cemetery wouldn\’t be the hottest real estate in Green Bay?

I am going on record as being 100% for this:

Note the look of irritation by Herb Kohl as fans stage a paper bag protest during last Saturday\’s Bucks-Celtics game. BrewHoop has the details:

On Friday we told you about a group of RealGMers\’ plan to wear paper bags during the Celtics game, and as the above picture suggests, they not only made it out to see the Bucks\’ 99-77 loss to the Celtics, but also managed to confront owner Herb Kohl near the end of the fourth quarter.

In sum, the bag revolutionaries totaled 39, certainly far fewer than what some previous fan demonstrations have mustered, but not surprising given it was organized over a closed message board. However, what they lacked in numbers they made up for in strategy (kudos to Dan for that). Shortly before tipoff and during halftime they paraded through the concourses to maximize exposure, led by Nowak\’s brilliantly subversive \”Where Amazing Happens\” sign, and after the game they stationed themselves by the escalators. They were seated in a block of 30 in the upper deck, so not surprisingly the television cameras managed to avoid them, though the group did make it onto the jumbotron briefly during a prize giveaway, forcing an abrupt cut to a different camera.

Recent revelations about Barack Obama\’s minister, Jeremiah Wright, have forced the political world to go back and re-calibrate the Obama-Meter to try to place his supporters in order of coherence. After a complicated mathematical formula was devised, the continuum now looks like this:

Outstanding article in the Washington Post today about the Eliot Spitzer revelations yesterday. Specifically, it describes the whole routine of having your wife stand next to you while you announce to the world that you pretty much hate your wife. As author Dana Milbank puts it, \”Silda Wall Spitzer looked like a victim of food poisoning as she stood by her man\’s side.\”

As a pre-emptive strike, I told my wife that at some point in my life, I\’d probably do something monumentally stupid. So she better get her glazed over \”standing by my idiot husband at a press conference\” look ready. She replied that I should probably get my \”being chased around the house with a meat cleaver\” look ready.

The article points out that on the night before Valentine\’s Day, Client 9 spent $4,300 and only used up two of his four allotted hours. All I know is, if I spend $4,300 on a prostitute and I get four hours, that hoochie better stick around and play Battleship with me for the remaining 3 hours and 58 minutes.

The article also mentions that Spitzer liked to do things that were considered \”dangerous.\” Like what? Like sitting too close to the TV? Trying to figure out the recipe for McDonald\’s secret sauce?

All told, Spitzer is alleged to have spent up to $80,000 on prostitutes – an appalling sum. (Any prostitute service that costs that much better also provide sandwiches.) Appalling mostly because he\’s the Governor of New York for Christ\’s sake – he couldn\’t get any free booty on the side? What is the point of being famous if not for the hot side action? He missed out on all the fun of going around and offering hot chicks \”a position on his staff.\” When you think about it, that whole \”governing the state\” thing really should have been a secondary goal in Spitzer\’s life.

More lurid details are coming to light which probably aren\’t worth mentioning. But if there\’s a lesson in all of this, it\’s this:

Spitzer spent his entire professional career trying to show everyone how much smarter he was than they were. And as a result, they\’re all going to come down on him like a house of bricks. It is ALWAYS in your best interest to have people think you\’re a lot dumber than you are, rather than vice versa. Nobody likes a know-it-all.

I was waiting to get my hair cut and reading an old Newsweek article about John McCain, when I came across this tidbit:

McCain does have a refreshing knack for reaching across the aisle. In 2004, he had a vodka drinking contest with Hillary Clinton on a Senate junket to Estonia.

WHAT?

Let\’s back up here. Hillary Clinton and John McCain sat down and went shot for shot? And this was documented somehow? How is this not major news? Who sponsored this junket? Smirnoff?

And how did this drinking contest not lead to Hillary cuddling in McCain\’s loving arms? (To the extent that McCain can actually bend his arms, anyway.) I\’m literally speechless. Are they running for President of the U.S. or rush chair for the interfraternity council?

Incidentally, I am 100% for getting chicks drunk now being called \”reaching across the aisle.\” In that case, I\’d be the most bipartisan individual on the planet. I\’d be the Joe Lieberman of horny college dudes. I was certainly not afraid of trying different parties – especially if the keg was empty at one of them.