That conversation at Meadhouse at 5:22 a.m.

I'm downstairs about to make my second cup of coffee, and this text is the first sign that Meade is awake:

Here's the article he was texting me about: "After failed search for police monitor, Madison oversight board opts for recruiting help" (Wisconsin State Journal). 

The search for someone to fill this newly created position was deemed to have failed "after the person recruited and selected by the board, with help from the city’s Human Resources Department, took himself out of the running amid revelations that he’d discriminated against a woman he’d been having an affair with and violated state licensing requirements at a company he ran more than 15 years ago." 

We're told the position will pay $125,000. I can't picture it ever being properly filled, yet apparently now we're going to pay people to try to fill it, because God knows, they can't back down.

ADDED: More about Eric A. Hill's lawsuit here. 

[H]e began looking at the public social media pages of members of Madison’s Police Civilian Oversight Board [and found]... “29 separate instances of biased, defamatory statements — occasionally containing obscene language — impugning my race, gender and former profession, among the social media accounts of seven out of the 11 voting members in charge of hiring for this position,” he says....

“As a white, male, former military policeman, I found their brazenly racist, sexist and anti-military posts not only personally demeaning, but professionally deleterious to my status as a candidate for this position, as I was additionally required — and not permitted to decline — to self-identify my race and gender to the city of Madison in its initial application form,” Hill said in a statement....

"Did these work for anyone?"

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"We're supposed to be for each other! We're supposed to be for each other! No! No! No!"

Game of Dodgeball in Antifastan, Seattle. The game ended in confusion and frustration as players were told to continue playing even after getting hit by a ball to prevent hurt feelings. pic.twitter.com/bMzXhnurYD

— John Henry Cash (@fake_news_u_r) June 13, 2020

"[S]ome of the usual tools for organizing students may be of limited use in the coming months if colleges begin the fall semester virtually...."

"... That makes messaging to large groups of students at once trickier, and Democrats are making plans to be as present as possible on the virtual versions of those quads and dorms: 'There are so many campus-based meme pages where you can spread content dedicated to people usually on those campuses,' he said. He cited the University of Wisconsin at Madison as an example: The 'UW-Madison Memes for Milk-Chugging Teens' Facebook group has nearly 28,000 members; the school has around 32,000 undergraduates. Meanwhile, the Biden camp itself has so far been tentative about its digital outreach to young voters, wary of looking like it’s pandering and conscious of the need to target its messaging to relevant media....  Biden himself has stepped only gingerly into such targeted outreach.... Internally, Biden’s senior aides have been vetting possible appearances and content by asking if it will be a chance to focus on the message of decency, empathy, and connection to real people, which they believe are the former VP’s best attributes to communicate online...."

From "Joe Biden Would Like a Word With the Youths" by Gabriel Debenedetti (Intelligencer/NY Magazine).

It's hard to do social media gingerly. If you're careful, it doesn't work. If you're not careful... you're Trump.

"You can’t tell people in a dense urban environment all through the summer months: 'We don’t have anything for you to do. Stay in your apartment with the three kids.' That doesn’t work. There’s a sanity equation here also that we have to take into consideration."

Said Governor Cuomo, quoted in "Coronavirus Live Updates: Some States Ease Restrictions..." (NYT).

Cuomo "laid out a broad outline on Sunday for a gradual restart of the state that would allow some 'low risk' businesses upstate to reopen as soon as mid-May. He did not speculate when restrictions would be eased in New York City and surrounding suburbs. But he noted that they could not persist indefinitely."