Bill Lueders' Silver Anniversary

Growing up in Chicago, I was raised in a media environment where there was lots of homegrown talent who were notable beyond the city. There were people like Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, and Clarence Page. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were on television and in print. These people and their words provided a lot of starting points for conversations with family and friends. When I moved to Madison I had to start over. There weren’t any nationally syndicated columns or TV shows originating here. The local media were, well, more local. I was attracted to Isthmus at first because it carried the column The Straight Dope - from Chicago. But it wasn’t long before I became familiar with the words of Bill Lueders. He was likely the first Madison media figure who lodged himself in my head as being part of the larger landscape. (Either him or Sly.)

I had no idea at the time who he was or that he’d moved to Madison just five years before I did. And so it made me feel a bit old reading his latest book, Watchdog: 25 Years of Muckraking and Rabblerousing. Have I really been reading Lueders for 20 years? I bought the book last month at his appearance at the Wisconsin Book Festival but it was quickly relegated to the back of the to-read pile. But, for some reason, it got elevated and I finished reading it recently.

Watchdog is a literary triptych. It is divided into three parts and cull some of Lueders’ best work from Isthmus, Milwaukee Magazine, and various other outlets where his work has appeared.

The first part of the book is called “In My Opinion” and consists of several dozen short opinion pieces. In one he inveighs against hate crime laws while in another the his target is the cowardliness of citizens to fight for what they believe is right. “Surviving the New McCarthyism”, published less than a month after 9/11, drips with sarcasm as Lueders decries the pall of fear that fell over this country in the wake of the attacks on that day. In addition to sarcasm, there’s satire and perhaps the best example is “King Soglin: A Farce in One Act” which lampoons the then mayor in the form of a play. And there’s even a poem in this section to be had as well.

“Investigations” is the middle part of the book and it is comprised of longer pieces of investigative journalism. The nonfeasance, malfeasance, and misfeasance of the Florence County Department of Social Services comes under the microscope first. And it doesn’t get any better. Indian casino operators get ripped off, the SuperMax prison in Boscobel essentially mentally tortures inmates, Wisconsin’s clean government goes the way of the dodo, &c. There’s plenty of things in Madison and around the state that just ain’t pretty.

The book’s last section is “Getting Personal” where Lueders gives the reader some glimpses into his personal life. There’s an encomium, of sorts, for his departed father as well as a welcome letter (with plenty of advice) for his newborn son. Lueders skydives and kills his own Thanksgiving turkey. Some welcome distractions from the messes that he chronicles in the first two parts.

Reading the book brought back a lot of memories from the past two decades since I moved here. The great investigative pieces were yet another collective reminder of how important such reporting is and that we need even more of it. Hopefully the rise of the Internet and the corresponding decline of the newspaper industry can be reconciled lest we lose any more in-depth reporting.

If I have anything resembling a criticism, it can be embodied in the title of his piece about the embattled and embittered Eugene Parks: “A Time For Anger”. I’ve met Lueders a handful of times and I don’t doubt for a second that he’s passionate about journalism. But there were times when I was reading this book that I wished he’d get angry. Or, perhaps more correctly, let his anger loose rather than tempering it with sarcasm.

I wish he would have assumed the persona of H.L. Mencken’s normal man and given in to his temptation to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. But we’re talking about Bill Lueders here not Hunter S. Thompson.