The great cream puff scandal!

Jessica McBride, apparently still trying to justify why taxpayers should send Scott Walker around the state on a Harley to hand out $19,000 worth of free tickets to events and tourist attractions, reveals that -- gasp! -- the news media take other freebies!!! (I've adopted her style, just for fun.)

McBride's amusing post reveals the long list, obtained by an open records request, of media outlets which accepted free cream puffs and clown noses from the Wisconsin State Fair.

She writes:

This is part of my effort to expose the media's mock horror over the promotional freebies Walker had the audacity to hand out to reporters and media organizations. I wondered: Did the State dish them out too? And had the same media organizations wringing their hands in horror taken other freebies? Media organizations should not take freebies. Period. Whether it's a cream puff or, yes, a clown nose. It's a bit shocking how many of them do.

But it's silly for them to pretend to be - horrified! - that Scott Walker would dare to hand out freebies. The fact of the matter is that Walker was participating in a common promotional practice. Now we could debate whether his gubernatorial bid changed the equation. Again, I get that. But it's completely disingenuous for the media to act like freebies are - shock! - unusual.

Nice try, but the issue never was whether the media were being offered or accepting freebies -- except in some media circles, perhaps.

Of course Walker's candidacy for governor "changed the equation." If Kathleen O'Leary, the state fair marketing director, were delivering cream puffs to media outlets across the state and then doing interviews about her campaign for governor -- which is what Walker did -- this would indeed be comparable.

The first issue in Walker's ride -- even before anyone knew about the freebies -- was whether Milwaukee County taxpayers should foot the bill for him to ride around the state and increase his visibility and name recognition in his campaign for governor. Taxpayers paid it all -- his salary and those of the staff who went with him, hotel, meals, you name it.

The second question is whether Walker's giving something of value to a voter (like hundreds of dollars worth of tickets) violates state elections law. So far, no one has addressed that question. And Walker's freebies did not all go to the media, as outlined in a previous post.

Maybe a few of those clown noses should go to the county and state ethics and elections boards, who so far have found nothing wrong, in large part because they haven't bothered to look for themselves and have taken Walker's version of events at face value.