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The effort by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Republican-led state legislature to deprive the state's teachers of collective bargaining rights

was catnip to rightbloggers last week. This is because it involves two

of their traditional objects of hatred: Unions and public education.

You know things are serious when the intensely rightwing Andrew Breitbart's Big Government and the Washington Times actually use the famous communist President Franklin Roosevelt as a stick to beat the teachers' union. (Real Clear Politics even added, "FDR's Ghost Is Smiling on Wisconsin's Governor," perhaps in admiration of his nerve.)

Liberals suggest that Walker deliberately blew a hole in the state budget

so that he could claim an economic necessity to deprive the local union

of its traditional right to bargain. (This became easier to believe

when the union offered concessions on wages -- it had made others previously -- and Walker ignored them.)

The apparent goal is to destroy the teachers' union. (See Joshua Treviño's Guardian column, accurately summarized by him as "my Guardian

piece on the need to smash Wisconsin's public-sector unions.") But long

acquaintance with conservative rhetoric suggests that their ultimate

goal is to "smash" all unions, via anti-union front groups and legislation.

As we have seen in our own Labor Day coverage, and in countless excoriations of "Big Labor," rightbloggers are on the union-smashing case. The Wisconsin controversy has only strengthened their resolve against "international socialist labor unions." Some, like The Anchoress,

admit that unions were perhaps useful once -- that is, back when their

parents relied on unions to help them earn enough to feed and clothe

their kids -- but now "unions have overplayed their hands, and we've

reached a point of unsustainability."

In my day, we paid teachers with dried leaves and bread crumbs. Now they all want "decent wages" and "health care." Oooh, right away, Your Highness!

rightbloggers seemed to feel, they ought to hate the people who belong

to them, too. So they heaped abuse on teachers.

National Review's Jay Nordlinger

denounced teachers as "some of the most petulant, greediest, nastiest

unionists around." While once upon a time, he said, "teachers were

rather like missionaries. You practically had to take a vow of poverty

to be a teacher," now they are "well paid," which Nordlinger considered an outrage.

Bookworm

of Right-Wing News, while generous toward his own, underpaid

teacher-father, called current teachers "well-paid cogs benefiting from

the union's depredations," said that "because of tenure, too many

incompetent teachers occupying America's classrooms, bringing the whole

profession into disrepute" (he also blamed "women's lib"), and called

the Wisconsin standoff "the public sector's Gettysburg or Midway or

Battle of the Bulge." (We're sorry we couldn't summarize his argument

more coherently, but look what we had to work with.)

Rightbloggers also claimed that teachers were outrageously highly-paid.

Does this contradict your actual experience of teachers? Ours too.

Rightbloggers had to play around with the numbers to make it look more

convincing.

Robert Stacy McCain

wrote that "the average teacher in Wisconsin receives $77,857 in total

compensation, when the value of their generous benefit package is added

to their salaries. Given that the median household income in Wisconsin

is just above $50,000 (and the typical household has more than one

wage-earner), this means that the striking teachers are earning

substantially more than the people whose taxes pay their salaries."

But according to McCain's own sources,

the Wisconsin median household income figure doesn't include benefits

(which, believe it or not, many employed non-teachers enjoy), and the

Wisconsin teachers' average salary is $49,093 -- close to the norm, it

would seem.

Here's another freeloader. I bet We The People paid for his fancy glasses.

more honestly admitted the similarities in teacher/non-teacher

salaries, but moved on to this interesting attempt: "A two-teacher

family employed in Wisconsin public schools (and it's not uncommon), is

pulling in double what the average Wisconsin family does." Yes, and if

that teacher-family has two teacher-kids living at home (or if liberals

succeed in their plan to institute polygamous teacher-marriage), they

could earn four times as much as the non-teacher kind!

"Wisconsin Teachers are Damn Greedy," snarled Conservative Blogs Central. "Political muscle-flexing by a well-funded special interest group," scoffed Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner. "Wisconsin Hatemongers Control the Children," roared Nevada News and Views. "Teachers in Wisconsin are demonstrating... that their greed knows no bounds," quipped The Conservative Libertine.

Some rightbloggers seemed to sense that ordinary people don't despise teachers as they do, and tried to sugar-coat it. Kyle Olson

of TownHall, "Founder and CEO of Education Action Group Foundation,"

allowed that "the majority of public school teachers are dedicated and

hard working," but had been let down by the unions who are "Cheapening

Our Profession" by making teachers take decent wages and job protections

against their wills. Olson also said "there are myriad examples where

the union has to 'rein in' an eager teacher who willingly works beyond

her contractual duties," but failed to provide one example, let alone a

myriad.

Rightbloggers weren't all negative. They lustily applauded the heroism

of Governor Walker. "We need more leaders like Scott Walker," bellowed Angry White Dude, and "less of the RINO turds currently in office."

John Rosenberg

of Discriminations compared Walker to Wisconsin's famous Progressive

governor, Bob LaFollette, but in reverse (a Regressive?): Rosenberg

quoted an old paean to LaFollette's battle against "corporate

exploitation," and said, "all one need do is substitute 'union' for

'corporate' in the passage above to see the striking resemblance." And

if one substitutes "Scott Walker" for "Jesus" in the Bible, this also

speaks well of the Governor.

When the Wisconsin Democratic state senators left the state rather than supply the GOP with a quorum for a vote, rightbloggers considered it a cynical ruse -- sort of like filibusters

when someone other than Republicans is using them. "It serves as

further proof the loathing progressives have for the will of the

people," said Eye of Polyphemus.

Plus they get free apples!

developed his own unique plan: Since the state constitution allows the

governor to fill "vacancies" in the senate, reasoned Mouth, Walker "is

well within his rights to call an election" for the absent senators'

seats. Vox populi, ladies and gentlemen.

Rightbloggers endeavored to show that, despite the hordes of protesters

surrounding the state capitol, the people were on their side. But they

had some trouble finding Wisconsinites to go on record. The Weekly Standard

listed several opponents of Walker who were native to the state; the

Walker proponents they drummed up were the Governors of Ohio and New

Jersey. The sole local supporter they cited was an unnamed "long-term

substitute teacher."

Not to worry -- Phil Boehmke

at Pajamas Media had the hometown team covered. He quoted several

"friends" who were "positively beside themselves at the insane behavior

of their public servants." "A co-worker named Jason who hails from the

Dairy State," for example, allegedly told Boehmke, "Walker should do

like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers and fire their a**es!"

and "Jack-ass Jesse Jackson? That proves we're right."

Rightbloggers were of course angry that President Obama sided with the teachers. John Hideraker of Power Line found this "infuriating," and the teachers "overpaid, underworked and greedy."

Because Obama's political organization, Organizing for America, more actively supported the strikers, Craig Crawford of CQ Roll Call asked: "Is it legal for a president to lobby a state legislature?" Sharon Rondeau

went further, asking, "Are There Traitors in Wisconsin, and is Obama

Among Them?" and "Could such activity be considered 'high crimes and

misdemeanors'" and thus grounds for impeachment?" Rondeau also suggested

that the Democratic state senators' flight could be "presented to a

Wisconsin grand jury."

Their news cycles being so close, comparisons were made between the

Madison protesters and the Egyptians revolutionaries. These comparisons

were made both by supporters, who equated the two groups' fight for their rights, and by detractors like Glenn Beck, who believed that the Egyptian revolutionaries and the teachers were equally evil.

Traditional rightblogger ordnance was not ignored. Many condemned the mean signs hoisted by protesters. Hinderaker

found a reader who wondered why the protesters were "predominantly

white," insinuating some kind of liberal racial hypocrisy. (The

population of Wisconsin is 89 percent white.) Ann Althouse told the world that the protesters were litterers, a popular favorite with Tea Party people.

Blackfive

complained about the "reprehensible signs" the protesters were carrying

while applauding a Tea Partier's "SCOTT KEEP YOUR PIMP HAND STRONG"

sign. "The cry that budget cuts will affect teachers is no longer going

to gain any sympathy," Blackfive claimed. "We have seen the teachers in

action and we are probably better off with our kids being taught by

someone else" -- whom he would call something other than teachers, we

suppose, and pay much less.

Wait a minute -- where are the tricorner hats and Obama Hitler signs?

suggested that the Egypt comparison might become more literal,

comparing the proximity of pro and anti forces in Madison to the naval

confrontation which triggered the Battle of Jutland in World War I, "a

clash of dreadnoughts which happened that day because the stars were

right." To help readers assign blame, Fernandez dragged in the

rightwing bete noir Frances Fox Piven.

There was no violence -- merely the usual publicity coup

as the small Tea Party group got coverage comparable to that received

by the larger pro-union protests. But doctors were seen offering to

write notes for teachers who had called in sick so they could protest,

which "exemplifies everything that's wrong with the Soros-controlled,

hard left Democrat Party," said Doug Ross,

who also claimed President Obama, whose name does not appear on the

doctors' notes, was "busy urging state workers to commit fraud."

Other rightbloggers spent a lot of time imagining scenarios to capture and punish both the protesters and the doctors. "Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?" cried Michelle Malkin. "White House used fake doctors to promote Obamacare." (Malkin is referring to real doctors who wore lab coats at an Obama photo op; Malkin had previously tried to make it seem as if the doctors were not real, but now she's just flat-out saying they were fakes. That's how the pros do it, folks.)

Given Walker's intransigence, the conflict seems destined to go on a

good deal longer. We expect the pattern will hold: Conservatives will

continue to denounce the teachers as parasites,

and encourage their readers to be jealous of their advantages. Later

they'll use the same shtick on another group of organized employees --

maybe the hotel and restaurant workers union will strike, and

rightbloggers will tell us how waiters get free meals and bellboys make

so much more than bellboys did in their day, and did you know the hotels give them free uniforms?

The great work won't be done until every conservative who imagines

everyone else is getting over on him -- that is to say, all of them --

is mad as hell at anyone whom they think has a sweeter deal than they've

got.

Except the bankers and brokers who ruined our economy. Unlike teachers, those guys are indispensable.