The baloney and Panburger Partner issue of Picayune Plus

Another meaty dispatch

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Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

Notes and comments from readers —lightly edited —- along with my responses

Patrick H. — The analogy to ships sailing back to port you made in your piece about your reunion with college housemates last week didn’t work for me. The ship of life is always headed forward. You never know where it will end or know the pace of the journey. We all know people we lost in their 40s or 50s. Their halfway point — when they began sailing back to port, as you would put it — was in their 20s, but they didn’t know it.

Zorn — Yes, though it’s undeniable that me and my buddies — now in our mid 60s — have more than rounded that halfway buoy and we are far closer to the end of life’s voyage than the beginning. The analogy feels apt to me. We all seem to be in decent health, but the knowledge that the number of these four-man reunions is dwindling — tomorrow ain’t promised to any of us — does add savor to each gathering.

John C. —Regarding the item about your friend paying $76 for a pair of Louis Vuitton coffee mugs he just had to have: That’s five to six hours’ pay for a minimum-wage worker in Illinois.

Zorn — I was aware that saying scornfully, “What are you going to do, buy a nicer coffin?” to someone hesitating about purchasing something a bit costly that they like but don’t need has more than a whiff of privilege. But it is a funny suggestion to many of us not to cheap out on everything, especially as we sail back to port.

The line came up a lot during my reunion last week in various ways — “the mahogany casket has just become a pine box” and so forth.

George H. — The Tune of the Week as nominated by the Twilight Stealers band was the best one yet. Thank you.

Dave J. — Thanks for “Twilight is Stealing.” That song lifts and warms like a hymn.

Zorn — Apropos of music and uplift, the River Valley Rangers bluegrass band featuring ace fiddler Ben Zorn will be providing the tunes for a two-hour sunset cruise on the Illinois River Saturday at 7 p.m. The Sainte Genevieve sternwheel riverboat, leaves from downtown Ottawa and takes in the picturesque riverside by Starved Rock state park.

Steve S. — Regarding the debate that broke out in last week’s Zmail: Anybody proposing flat federal income taxes who doesn’t understand that it is a euphemism for tax cuts for the rich is either naïve or disingenuous.

Jeffrey M. — To the person who argued that a flat tax would never win the approval of voters, I say look at the results of the referendum in Illinois in 2020 when voters were asked to approve a switch from our current flat-rate income tax to a graduated rate. Some 53% of voters said no, they preferred the flat tax.

Zorn — Yeah. I really felt like the arguments for a graduated income tax in Illinois were really good and the arguments against were just anti-tax scare tactics. But the proposition fell way short of the 60% needed to pass.

Bob E. — You ripped Gary Johnson as a “fringey libertarian” while complaining about the Tribune’s 2016 endorsement of him for president. But how could you have disagreed? Republican Donald Trump was demonstrably awful and totally unqualified. Democrat Hillary Clinton was disingenuously supporting fiscal craziness, and was highly ethically/morally flawed. Like the Tribune Editorial Board, I “reject the cliche that a citizen who chooses a principled third-party candidate is squandering his or her vote.” Johnson received mine.

Zorn — Yes, and you squandered your vote. Hillary Clinton was flawed, but in ways that Congress and public opinion would have kept relatively in check. It doesn’t even take the benefit of hindsight to see that Trump posed a far graver threat to democracy than the conventionally imperfect Clinton. Most elections pit people with massive egos and dubious track records against one another — and many races also have lightly examined fringe candidates who seem to offer an intriguing set of new solutions and styles. Major newspapers nearly always rightly ignore the hopeless idealists mired in the single digits — Johnson got 3.3% of the popular vote — because they have taken it upon themselves to presume to offer meaningful, useful guidance to those who don’t want simply to cast protest votes.

“None of the above” or “don’t bother” are perfectly viable options — I chose that path in the recent mayoral election — but not when the only real choice was as stark as it was when Trump was on the ballot in 2016.

Any vote for Gary Johnson was, theoretically, a vote that could have gone to Hillary Clinton and saved the country from the Dumpster fire of the Trump presidency and post-presidency. Not that it mattered in Illinois, where Clinton won the popular vote and claimed all our Electoral College votes, but the paper’s reputation took a hit and I still hear about it to this day.

Pete P. — Letter writer Jim S. is right that playing more innings would more often result in the better team winning the game. That’s a fundamental law of probability that is recognized in medical experiments, polling, economics, gambling, etc. But you are right that the game would change, too. So how about adding up the scores of all contests between the two teams into one season-long game per opponent? That would give a team hope right up to the last out that they could come back from a 30-run deficit. There would be no “mathematically eliminated” teams in a season — better for the fans.

Zorn — More likely you’d see end-of-season games with so preposterously lopsided scores that fans wouldn’t bother coming out.

Tom K. — For baseball and sports in general: Do we want the better team to win the vast majority of the time? Some variation makes it more exciting to watch. I'm in a softball league where the more talented team wins a given game 95% of the time. The best teams always beat the good teams, the good always beats the mediocre, and the mediocre always beat the bad. It's still fun to play, but we kinda already know who's gonna win in the playoffs and in the title game.

Zorn — Obviously there is some middle ground between coin-flip random results and 95% certain results. Without the possibility of upsets, sports is just exercise. I would say ideally teams would be balanced enough in any league that a 66% winning percentage would be first place and 33% would be last place.

Rick W. — There were so many good visual tweets last week. I thought Jingleheimer was the cleverest (that’s my name, too!), but the hair on the screen made me laugh out loud. The visual tweets are a major perk for subscribing.

Zorn — I hear from a lot of people who say evaluating and voting for the tweets — often with the help of a spouse or partner — is a highlight of the week. Which has made me afraid of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter failing to produce in the future.

Peter Z. — I say baloney to your comment, “Giving up your identity as a football player and possibly your scholarship is another (reason Northwestern football players probably didn’t report the hazing). I’m guessing a lot of the men on those teams had qualms but went along either as victims or victimizers in order to belong to a very meaningful part of their college experience.”

Did you play football in college? Do you know any women who had the advantage of playing football as a meaningful experience?T he players who excel in this experience tend to leave school for the big bucks of the NFL before getting a degree. I would guess that many more of these folks will leave this meaningful experience with long term injuries.

And yes maybe some of the players risk losing their scholarships - they would have to find a way to pay for their schooling, like the majority of their classmates.

Zorn — And I say stuff and nonsense to your accusation of baloney! I didn’t play college football but I did play high school basketball and, yes, that team experience was meaningful. It was difficult, occasionally frustrating, time consuming and monetarily totally unrewarding, but it gave me a certain purpose, friendships and experience in dealing with others.

Now, true, I didn’t risk brain damage or crippling injury. But it would have taken a lot to have gotten me to bail out and leave behind that part of my identity.

Lisa — Oh my stars, your dad’s sculptures!!! (Yes, I just used three exclamation marks.) Thank you so much for linking to his site. I’m gobsmacked. His portfolio of creations is fascinating and beautiful, and totally delighted me.

Joan P. —- The writers’/ actors’ strike is helping me catch up on my backlist, but of books, not TV.

Zorn — That should have been an option in my poll. See just below.

Two-thirds of respondents are finding some relief in the Hollywood strike

Click poll result after 476 votes:

The poll was not scientific, of course, but this response tracks with what I’ve been hearing in conversation. Not to trivialize the issues faced by writers trying to make a living working for the rapacious, short-sighted studios, but it does seem that the age old question, “What is there to watch?” has been replaced for many by “When am I ever going to find the time to stream everything I really want to watch?”

Ya gotta see these tweets!

Here are some funny visual images I've come across recently on social media. Enjoy, then evaluate:

Not every day you get a prostate cancer joke in a newsletter!

Not sure why there’s an extra “hey” in the last line of the coffee tweet’s allusion to Toni Basil’s 42-year old hit “Hey Mickey,” but I have to allow it:

Vote for your favorite. I will disqualify any tweets I later find out used digitally altered photos to make the joke. I’ll share the winner in Thursday’s main edition.

There’s still time to vote in the conventional Tweet of the Week poll and in the bonus dad-tweets poll.

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