Oh, no! Former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch’s spokesperson Alec Zimmerman has found himself in the soup with a Jeffrey Dahmer joke about Governor Tony Evers!
Okay, let’s do the post-mortem dissection of Zimmerman’s joke:
- He is not accusing Evers of being a cannibal.
- Zimmerman is saying that Evers is responsible for killing the economy like Dahmer was responsible for killing his victims.
- It would have been funnier if he was accusing Evers of being a cannibal.
Nonetheless, Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee goes on at length about how the joke is in poor taste by asking the usual suspects of Democratic politics to comment.
Murphy even lets us chew on a comment from Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) who used the victims of Covid-19 to attack Zimmerman.
“I’m sure the 6,500 Wisconsin families who have had to bury a loved one during the pandemic will appreciate the serial killer jokes at the expense of a Governor who did nothing but try to help people while Republicans thwarted his every move,” state Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said.
Should we accuse Larson of poor taste for equating Covid-19 victims with the victims of a serial killer? Is Larson accusing Zimmerman of being a serial killer? Is he accusing the Republican Party? If Larson issues a stupid press release, will Murphy quote it?
Murphy even casts back to the days when Graeme Zielinski was fired by the Wisconsin Democrats as their spokesman for making a Dahmer joke about Gov. Scott Walker. What Murphy neglects to mention is that Zielinski, unlike Zimmerman, had a history of making horrible statements that embarrassed the Democratic Party. Zielinski was also under fire after a drunk driving scandal. And, unlike Zimmerman, Zielinski actually did joke that the governor was a cannibal serial killer.
Hyperbole in politics is as common as spokesmen making bad jokes. But Dahmer’s murders took place 30 years ago. I think we can dispense with the spoiler alerts and stop asking if it’s too soon for an edgy remark or two. Murphy is no précieuse in need of a fainting couch when someone mentions Dahmer, and neither are any of the Democratic rogues gallery quoted in the piece.
If it was so serious, Murphy wouldn’t have acted like the Milwaukee Police Department and ignored it for a full week.
