More than They Bargained For: Scott Walker, Unions, and the Fight for Wisconsin

10. A State Divided

O n the miserable, slushy day of February 21, as Jack Craver later described it, the Madison blogger was walking near Wisconsin Avenue and the Capitol square on his way to the gym when he heard a worker at a bratwurst stand say, “Is that a fucking camel?” Craver assumed the blue-collar type was talking about some kind of machinery. But when he looked, Craver found that, yes, there was indeed a camel on the city’s icy streets. The one-humped camel had what appeared to be a saddle on its back, and a handler had the animal by a bridle. They were standing beside a horse trailer and behind a series of metal barricades similar to those used to direct crowds. Craver began to shoot a video with a flip camcorder he’d had with him and ask questions of someone standing outside the shot. “You know why there’s a camel here?” he asked. “Isn’t it pretty obvious?” the man replied, as if it should be clear to the bundled-up bystanders how a camel came to be there. “It’s for a bit we’re shooting for The Daily Show.” The camel flicked its tail and defecated. “For The Daily Show? Oh, I recognize you guys. Wow,” Craver said. The man nearby was John Oliver, the British comic and “correspondent” for the satirical comedy show featuring Jon Stewart. The camel’s handler led the animal in a circle around the metal fencing as Craver looked on, amazed. At that moment, the handler tried to lead the animal by a tight spot between the fencing and the trailer. That maneuver turned out to be a mistake—just like bringing a camel to a chaotic Wisconsin street in the middle of winter in an attempt to compare the Madison protests with the Arab Spring uprisings. 10  A State Divided 128 Within seconds, the animal got its leg caught between the bars of the fencing and fell into the slush. The handler and two men struggled to free it, with one of them slipping onto his butt like the camel, as the frightened animal made deep guttural sounds. Oliver later joked about the mishap with the “typical Illinois camel” and the numbness in his toes that supposedly lasted for weeks after leaving frozen Madison. But at that moment he wasn’t laughing. Oliver held his hand in front of Craver’s camera and told him to “put that down.” Craver ignored him and kept shooting the video, which he posted afterward on his blog, The Sconz. (The blog’s name played o¤ the slang term ’Sconnie, for Wisconsinite.) Soon, a few protesting firemen showed up to help, though as Craver later pointed out, camel crises had probably not been part of their training. As the cheers of a rally carried over from the nearby square, the group tugged and eventually raised the camel to its feet. The fencing fell o¤, and the crowd that had gathered to watch cheered as the camel took a few steps, showing no sign of any grave injury. The scene summed up Walker’s legislation and the action of recent days: the sense that things both unprecedented and unbelievable were afoot in the city. Many on both sides of the debate found the demonstrations exhilarating. The incredible outpouring in the streets convinced union supporters that they were sweeping Republicans before them on their way to victory. But for Walker and his allies, the protests helped confirm they were close to achieving something of great moment that was worthy of the national attention they were receiving. Day by day, the events got even stranger. Like the camel, the crisis was outlandish and at times funny, but unlike The Daily Show gag it was no joke. The fight seemed to be doing harm to the state and to the ties between its citizens, maybe just temporary damage, maybe something more crippling. It showed up in media reports from around the state. A veteran bartender at the Whiskey on Water tavern in Princeton in central Wisconsin for the first time in decades cut her patrons o¤ from talking about politics. On the Internet, the decline in civility was even worse. David Coyle, a history teacher in the Milwaukee Public Schools, said his wife, Jessica, a school psychologist, was left in tears after reading a cousin’s Facebook post calling public employees “whores and a bunch of other nasty things.” “What made matters worse was...