{"id":2021,"date":"2005-12-17T07:46:41","date_gmt":"2005-12-17T07:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=2021"},"modified":"2005-12-17T07:46:41","modified_gmt":"2005-12-17T07:46:41","slug":"shaking_hands_w","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=2021","title":{"rendered":"Shaking Hands with Bill Proxmire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/images\/2005\/12\/16\/national\/16proxmire1_184.jpg\"><br \/>My one fleeting contact with Bill Proxmire occured many, many years ago (I was perhaps 10 years old).  I recall walking around the Dodge County Fair (Beaver Dam) and my hand suddenly swung away.  I looked up and a tall lanky guy shook it and said &#8220;Hi, I&#8217;m Bill Proxmire&#8221;.  He was on the campaign trail, one handshake at a time.<br \/>\nWe could use his &#8220;Golden Fleece Awards&#8221; today.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/12\/16\/national\/16proxmire.html?ex=1292389200&#038;en=375fa02ed1dfde2f&#038;ei=5090&#038;partner=rssuserland&#038;emc=rss\">Richard Severo<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Another Golden Fleece Award went to the National Institute for Mental Health, which spent $97,000 to study, among other things, what went on in a Peruvian brothel. The researchers said they made repeated visits in the interests of accuracy.<br \/>\nThe Federal Aviation Administration also felt Mr. Proxmire&#8217;s wrath, for spending $57,800 on a study of the physical measurements of 432 airline stewardesses, paying special attention to the &#8220;length of the buttocks&#8221; and how their knees were arranged when they were seated. Other Fleece recipients were the Justice Department, for spending $27,000 to determine why prisoners wanted to get out of jail, and the Pentagon, for a $3,000 study to determine if people in the military should carry umbrellas in the rain.<br \/>\nHe returned to Harvard, earned a second master&#8217;s degree &#8211; this one in public administration &#8211; and moved to Wisconsin to be a reporter for The Capital Times in Madison.<br \/>\n&#8220;They fired me after I&#8217;d been there seven months, for labor activities and impertinence,&#8221; he once said, conceding that his dismissal was merited.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My one fleeting contact with Bill Proxmire occured many, many years ago (I was perhaps 10 years old). I recall walking around the Dodge County Fair (Beaver Dam) and my hand suddenly swung away. I looked up and a tall lanky guy shook it and said &#8220;Hi, I&#8217;m Bill Proxmire&#8221;. He was on the campaign [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}