That was hysterically funny. It lends no insight whatsoever to the actual situation in Wisconsin. But, it is masterful comedy, from a comedy channel. Well done, Daily Show.

I have stayed at the Clock Tower Resort in Rockford, by the way. I can testify that it is not a cave. Not a cave at all. Not a cave at all. It's a hotel room.

Rockford is actually in Illinois. Darkest Illinois. I should know, I went to high school there.

Despite the hours I've spent in the Wisconsin cold with hundreds of thousands of workers since the first night of public worker protests on February 15, I just watched my collective bargaining rights vanish as part of Fitzgerald and Walker's illegal maneuver to strip me, my fellow teachers, and other state employees of the right to a voice in my professional workplace. I hope the law will prevail and overturn this, but I'm starting to wonder if it's too late for any of our voices to be heard.
Tomorrow I will stand in front of a classroom full of middle school students who may or may not understand that they are seeing me for the first time as a human being without professional dignity. I will no longer have a voice in my workplace. Someday, I hope all of my students will understand the significance of our fight for representation. I struggle to understand why the Republican majority in my state government has decided to revoke and invalidate my professional judgment.
In less than 30 minutes, I watched 18 elected officials determine that I could no longer have a say in how or what my students learn, despite the fact that I will have spent 185+ hours discovering, encouraging, and instructing them this year, despite and because of their excitement, indifference, incredible strength, and troublesome weakness. My input has been deemed invalid. It stings. It is meant to crush me and it is meant to crush my colleagues. How can we continue? What is happening to my country, my job, and the community that I love? We have stood together since Day 1, and although hundreds of thousands have joined together in solidarity, we need for the rest of the country to not simply support our struggle in conversations around the water cooler, but to take symbolic action of their own. We need to leave our dark houses and the flicker of our televisions and do something real and significant. We need to stand, peacefully, together.
I read your work faithfully on Facebook and through your website. I think you are the best writer working in the media today. I learn from and admire your work. You're right that Wisconsin is in a dark place. But we need everyone behind their computer screens right now to shine a light on us. We need the press to stand up as our checks and balances against government officials who abuse or misinterpret their powers. We need investigative reporting, interpretations and commentary based on researched facts, and writers who understand that sometimes there are people who will make decisions that are only in the best interests of the few.

I'm still an idealist. (I'm a teacher, after all.) Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of workers have spoken together as one, the public employees of Wisconsin were officially silenced tonight. But even though I lost my voice at work, I can't help it: I still believe that the voices of many cannot be silenced.

One of the great myths, unfortunately, for a lot of the protesters out there is that, somehow, if we pass our budget repair bill dealing with collective bargaining, all their rights as workers will go away. Couldn’t be further from the truth,” Walker said.

“The reality is, Wisconsin, at the turn of the last century, passed the most comprehensive, the strongest civil service protections in the country. For our state workers, they have the right outside of collective bargaining, so, regardless of their contract, they have the right because of the civil service laws in this state to have merit hiring and just cause when it comes to discipline or even to the point of termination. Those provisions, those safeguards, protecting workers’ rights continue.”

What wouldn’t continue under Walker’s bill is the practice of automatic payroll deductions to fund unions. Public employees could opt out of union membership and return the dollars they now have to pay in union dues (up to $1,100) to their own pockets. Maybe, Walker said, for union leaders, that’s the money that’s really at the heart of the debate.

“Really, these national leaders coming in don’t care so much about their rights as much as they care about the money, and the money they really want is the money that, right now, by law each of those workers is forced to pay to their local union, which ultimately streams up to the internationals in Washington or across the country,” he said.

“They want their hands on that money and it’s not about protecting the workers or the workers’ conditions of pay.”