Who Said It Best (And Worst) rounds up the week’s best and worst quotes from notable Milwaukee figures and folks-about-town.
SAID IT BEST
Edge Advisors principal Mike Bark, on the endless obsession with “attracting millennials”:
“We recently received recognition as a Future 50 honoree from the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and joined the roundtable discussions at the awards program. How to retain millennials as employees took up a big part of that discussion. No surprise. I shared my opinion—do nothing—and my tablemates looked like they had just tasted a kale smoothie. […] How did we attract such talented young people? We gave them an opportunity that would have taken them several more years to secure in a big firm. Anyone who joins our firm will get the same opportunity, and we’ve found people will seize a good opportunity regardless of their age. To quote the Talking Heads lyric: ‘Same as it ever was.’”
The title of Bark’s editorial, “Don’t try to attract millennials; just offer them an opportunity,” says it all.
SAID IT WORST
Sheriff David Clarke, on the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement:
“Look, a bunch of thugs, a bunch of creeps, criminals, race-hustlers, with a scattering of some law-abiding people, converged in this are and ripped the town up. I would like to think that this phony movement would have come back to Ferguson one year later to apologize to the people, the good law-abiding people of Ferguson, Missouri. But instead, we get this whole phony movement that’s just been turned into a political construct, Eric, I think you know that. This is nothing more than an attempt to try to energize and mobilize the black vote through the 2016 election. And there’s no better way for them to inflame it than to bring race and police together in the same narrative because it’s an explosive issue.”
Honest question: How exhausting is it for Clarke to be such a dull, pandering, by-the-numbers troll? He’s the Sharknado of political pundits/law enforcement.