SYNESTHESIA
Ron Legro
- Location
- Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, USA
- Birthday
- October 12
- Bio
- A lapsed and reformed journalist, one-time for-profit soldier of fortune in the private sector, and political functionary, Ron is now re-learning the joys of hanging around while watching the microcosm unfold. But he's not above rising out of his enlightened stupor to call out perfidy and hypocrisy when he sees it.
Ron was an award-winning reporter who worked at several newspapers, including the Milwaukee Sentinel and Wall Street Journal. His assignments took him aboard ice breakers and into the private lives of sexually miscreant clergy. In his years pounding the street with a notebook, he covered everything from tavern brawls to mob hits to political assassinations.
He has contributed to various magazines, incuding Time. As editor-in-chief of a weekly public affairs journal, he led coverage of Wisconsin government down to every last legislative vote.
Ron also pulled duty as a daily TV columnist and film critic, who spent most of his space examining the sociopolitical implications of mass media. He moved on to become a consultant to communities, nonprofit interest groups and government institutions on open networks. He's also worked for a power utility, several elected officials, a housing authority, and a university. He produced cable TV programming and once acted in a commercial, just to see what it was like.
He and his dear wife enjoy beach combing on Lake Michigan near their home. They go bike hiking on city streets or trails. They like sailing and cross-country skiing, too, but never seem to find the time. They hang their laundry on clothes lines. That's them in the photo, regarding the ultra-modernist, bird-winged cathedral that is the Milwaukee Art Museum.
MY RECENT POSTS
- George Will and the unpaid
volunteer
April 15, 2013 10:27AM - GOP `disaster capitalism' is
key to the sequester
February 25, 2013 03:01PM - "OVER THE TOP" GOP OUTS ITSELF
August 28, 2012 08:52PM - Is US Olympic uniform beret
truly "Frenchy"? Ask THIS guy
July 14, 2012 05:06AM - Dr. King would fight GOP
anti-unionism
March 18, 2011 01:32PM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “I thought about all the
free writing (okay, blogging)
that I
do here and
elsewher…”
April 15, 2013 11:09AM - “P.S. I completely reject
the idiotic, fact-free,
anti-Obama
TV commercials
appea…”
August 29, 2012 11:53AM - “The difference between
'64 and today is the far
greater
fragmentation of news
and…”
August 29, 2012 11:48AM - “Well written description
of a life about to be well
lived. Re
your broken cup:
Wh…”
March 09, 2011 11:23AM - “Good piece! Recall
petitions for State Sen.
Alberta Darling
here in
Milwaukee's n…”
March 08, 2011 01:23PM
Ron Legro's Links
George Will and the unpaid volunteer
Conservative columnist George Will thinks that volunteers by definition should not be paid. Because, apparently, that would be "Orwellian." In a generally erroneous column on a wider subject -- see http://www.politifact.com/... -- Will commented in passing on
… Read full post »"OVER THE TOP" GOP OUTS ITSELF
A moment of unwitting aposty took place today at the Republican National Convention when the party finished its blitzkrieg past reporters and Ron Paul's delegates to nominate Mitt Romney for president in record time.
The moment came when a giant video screen above the convention dais announced that R… Read full post »
Is US Olympic uniform beret truly "Frenchy"? Ask THIS guy
It's one thing to be upset that the US Olympic team's uniforms this year were manufactured in China. It's another to imagine they're un-American because they include berets. Discussing the uniforms on a Fox News program yesterday, Dana Perino asked co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle: "A beret? Do you like t… Read full post »
Dr. King would fight GOP anti-unionism
An increasingly frequent meme among Republicans in
Wisconsin and elsewhere is that public employee unions erroneously
refer to their collective bargaining "rights." No, shout the
Repubs, collective bargaining is not a right, it's a privilege. And
now, thanks to the current hegemony of wingn… Read full post »
The Wisconsin GOP's terrible, terrible victimization
On display once again in the wake of the Wisconsin Republican vote to destroy collective bargaining for public workers: the fetish of self-victimization that conservatives seem to possess in spades.
In the aftermath of their most successful power grab in history, Wisconsin Republicans are in some
… Read full post »
When Wisconsin Republicans and their enablers yell
about the need to cut the pay of average public employees to
balance the state budget, they leave out some very
inconvenient and illuminating facts. THE CRISIS-INQUIRY CRISIS
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: Guns mandatory, health insurance no
This just popped into my head, always a dangerous thing:
For nearly two decades now, Kennesaw, Georgia, has had an ordinance essentially requiring heads of households to keep at least one firearm in their homes.
Now, if Republicans around the country are successful in convincing courts to overturn p… Read full post »
PRYING VIOLENCE FROM THEIR MOUTHS: The Heston prescription
After the tragedy -- and, yes, terror -- of the Tucson shootings, in which six people were killed and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was among the badly injured, Rep. Bob Brady (D-PA) says he will introduce a bill in the House criminalizing certain uses of threatening imagery against lawmakers and judges.&n… Read full post »
TAKING A LEAK: Wikileaks past
And now let us regard yet another case of failing to learn from history: The Wikileaks affair.
When military analyst Daniel Ellsberg back in 1969 leaked embarrassing government papers on the Vietnam War -- thereafter dubbed the Pentagon Papers -- the political establishment went nuts. President Nixon… Read full post »
GOP AND MONEY: AN IMMORAL EQUIVALENCE
This political development, as reported in the mainstream press today, suggests a lot about the direction of our soon-to-be, same-old government in Washington:
> House Republicans temporarily blocked legislation to fund free and healthier school lunches for thousands more poor children. They used… Read full post »
CAT FOOD COMMISSION POPS A TIN
The co-chairs of the president's deficit reduction commission -- known derisively in some progressive political circles as "the cat food commission" -- today issued tentative recommendations. If you're not a multi-millionaire, you probably aren't going to like what you're being asked to eat.
THE FALL 2010 ELECTION OUTCOME, explained in a sentence
NO GOOD DEED
GOES UNPUNISHED.
EXTENDED REMARKS: We got your back, Teabaggers
The slogan, dusted off and recycled from previous Republican election cycles:
We're taking back our country
Extended by me for the sake of improving factual clarity, and to answer the question, "From whom?":
We're taking back our country ... from ourselves
PERMANENT MAJORITY: The GOP's Soviet-style descent
When the USSR was still, in its own mind, flying high back in the '70s, leader Leonid Brezhnev attempted to continue the Soviet custom of installing puppet Communist regimes in Third World countries, Eastern European buffer nations and the Baltic states. In the Soviet vernacular, a country that throu… Read full post »
COMPROMISES, COMPROMISED
House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner (R-Ohio) this week joined other Republicans who have made it very clear going into Tuesday's midterm election that, should they gain control of one or both houses of Congress, they are not planning to compromise with Democrats on anything. If so, we can formally… Read full post »
ONE WORD DEFINING RON JOHNSON
About Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin plastics manufacturer and millionaire who is spending tons of money to unseat progressive Russ Feingold in Wisconsin's US Senate race, much has been revealed, although not by Johnson himself.
But there's one exception, and it speaks volumes about who this guy is and… Read full post »
Creative destruction and the GOP disloyal opposition
The Republican Party's political strategy manual is now down to,
"Win by functioning, without exception, as the disloyal
opposition."
By that standard, a good bill -- if enacted by Democrats -- is
automatically a bad bill that must be repealed and/or replaced at
once, even though a majority supported… Read full post »
REPUBLICAN LIGHT BULB JOKES
Q: How many Republicans does it take
to change a light bulb?
A: None to change the bulb, but several
thousand to scream that the bulb doesn't need to be changed, along
with the entire complement of House and Senate GOP minority
pledging that if the Democrats go ahead and… Read full post »
PROBABLE EVOLUTION OF A REPUBLICAN MEME
CANDY CROWLEY: Let me start with your ending position after the summit. And that is, start over again. Short of that, is there any way the president can reconfigure this bill that would get your support?
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): I don't thi/… Read full post »
It's really about paid, not free, speech
SECURING INSECURITY: GOP and the TSA
Republican
Sen. Jim DeMint is one real piece of work.
After the reported terrorist bombing attempt on the airliner
landing in Detroit, it came to light in news stories this week that
DeMint has placed a hold on President Obama's nominee to run the
Transportation Security Administration. Obama's… Read full post »
emma peel 2
C Berg
mginmn
Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
Salon.com