Scott Walker Once Ordered Doctor Fired for Modeling Thongs

WISCONSIN—The 27,000 pages of documents just released by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals not only implicate Governor Scott Walker as being cut from the same corrupt cloth as fellow Republican Chris Christie, who governs New Jersey like a mini-Mussolini, but also paint the governor as a cold-hearted prude and cad.

The main take-away from the documents is that Walker was more intimately involved with actions undertaken by his staff in 2010 during his campaign for governor than he has let on. Accusations that his staff illegally co-mingled county and political business have already resulted in criminal convictions for two of the aides, but despite rumors of his own complicity in the campaign fund improprieties, the extent of Walker's knowledge and actions had been mere speculation ... until now.

"The new documents show that it was Walker himself who directed that his county staff and campaign aides hold a daily conference call to coordinate strategy," reports the Washington Post. "Walker also routinely used a campaign email account to email county staffers also using private email addresses, a strategy prosecutors have said was used to shield political business from public release."

While a just concluded crimial investigation failed to find Walker as culpable as his aides, this and other inquiries are also dogging the governor and may impede his presidential ambitions. But it was the creepy episode from 2010, when he was Milwaukee county executive, in which he ordered the firing of a competent doctor who also happened to model thongs, that caught our eye.

Reported in detail by the Huffington Post, it involves a strange episode regarding "a woman who was hired as a doctor at the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division, which provides treatment for mental illness, substance use disorders and intellectual disabilities."

In April 2010, however, emails between Walker and his then chief of staff, Thomas Nardelli, revealed a simmering dilemma that demanded Walker's attention. Unbeknownst to the people who had hired the doctor—including the medical director, who Nardelli reported had 'failed to Google or MySpace' her—it had, he wrote, "recently [been] discovered that she has a checkered past and has done some modeling work."

But it was the type of modeling that was of concern to Nardelli and others. "It isn't pornographic," wrote Walker of the unnamed doctor's past activity, "but it is quite suggestive (I'm told - I don't know her name). He [sic] apparently models thongs and wasn't forthright in sharing that with staff prior to her hire as an hourly paid MD at [Behavioral Health Division]."

According to HuffPo, "[Nardelli] added that Behavioral Health Division leadership was looking at how to 'release her without much fanfare' because John Chianelli, who was then the director of the division, was 'concerned about having her on staff and subsequently having her Googled by staff only to learn of her 'other life' outside of her medical work. Apparently she's competent, but even the Medical Director is dismayed that she has a varied life style outside of her medical profession.'"

Walker replied tersely, "Get rid of the MD asap."

Whether the doctor was actually fired is unknown; without a name with which to check records, the Behavioral Health Division said they could not find out. But as far as the citizens of Wisconsin go, that should matter less than that their current governor tried to get her fired. After all, how many people would care that a doctor modeled thongs? A thong is just very, very small underwear, more like a bikini than anything else (and often used as such). Had the doctor been a swimsuit model— which she may well have been!—would that too have required her to forfeit her job? One presumes so. At the very least, the dividing line between "appropriate" and "checkered" is blurry in Wisconsin.

But the episode is also problematic for exposing the misogynistic morality that people like Walker all too easily impose on others as soon as they acquire the authority to do so. When progressives and others complain about a Republican "war on women," it is not only about their intent to deny women access to contraceptives, but also, and as perniciously, their willingness to use the authority of the state to proscribe behavior they dislike... even for adults.

Now just take a minute to imagine him as president of the United States.

Image: Is this the doctor who Scott Walker ordered fired?! We can only hope so.