Give me a break

From the How Lazy Can You Get Department:

This gem appears as the only comment from Mark Green in a Journal Sentinel story on Gov. Jim Doyle's trimming of the state workforce:

Green doesn't believe making blanket statements about cutting state employees is good management practice, Green campaign spokesman Rob Vernon said in a statement.

"Mark Green will run the state government with the taxpayer in mind, always working to spend their tax dollars wisely and efficiently," Vernon said in an e-mail.

The reporter needed a comment from Green to "balance" or flesh out the story, right? That clearly isn't from Green, doesn't address the topic, and says nothing about what Green would do about the state payroll.

It's nothing more than unadulterated, self-serving claptrap. "Always working to spend their tax dollars wisely and efficiently" indeed. There must have been a round of high-fives in the Green press shop when they saw this one had actually made it into print.

You can't blame Vernon; his job is to try to compose drivel like that and get someone to print it. But you certainly can blame the reporter who settled for a vapid e-mail response and dutifully pasted it into the story, with no followup to get any real answer or content. Let's hear it for the copy editors, too, if they still have any at the JS. It's been hard to tell lately.