Beware Walkers Bearing Gifts

Last spring, when President Obama made a trip to merry old England, he met with the Queen and gave her an iPod as a gift. The usual suspects, including Charlie Sykes, James Harris, and WISGOP had a conniption about it, even though it turned out the Queen had actually requested this gift.

Later in the spring, Sykes et alia had themselves another conniption fit when Obama gave the British Prime Minister a collection of classic American movies.

Interestingly, these aficionados of gift giving etiquette seemed to have missed a real terrible blunder of poor gifting here on a local level.

Just this past week, when Archbishop Jerome Listecki was welcomed by political leaders of the area at a ceremony at City Hall, Walker decided to welcome the Archbishop and commemorate his recent installment in Milwaukee by giving him a Bradford Beach sweatshirt. I am sure that the Most Reverend Listecki will be glad to have it as he is playing beach volleyball this spring.

I don't know how the conservative gifting gurus could have missed it, since so many of them, Sykes most of all, were falling all over themselves to ingratiate themselves with Listecki. Not only that, but Walker crowed about it both on Twitter and on his publicly-funded campaign site.

I can't wait to see Aaron Rodriguez question the safety of Walker's eternal soul after this non-Catholic insulted the local Catholic leader.

I'm just glad it wasn't a Cardinal or even the Pope that came for a visit. The way Walker handled this, he probably would have given the visiting dignitary some Elephant Poo Poo Paper of a Windup Hopping Lederhosen from the Milwaukee Public Museum's gift shop.