Should we pardon the interruption of protesters?

& good riddance to Fruit Stripe gum

1-18-2024 (issue No. 124)

This week:

• Last week’s winning tweet

• How disruptive can a protest be before it becomes ineffective? — Two views in the Sun-Times, my ruminations and a click survey

• News and Views — On lack of transparency from City Hall on conditions at a migrant shelter, the end of Fruit Stripe gum and funny highway signs, and the hypocrisy of self-styled Christian Republicans

• Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go

• Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go

• Bookmark this: The hilarious graphic art of ‘Phil Largo’— A Chicago-area wit creates fake vintage ads and book covers

• Word watch — Is “dibs” really the right word to describe the practice of claiming a street parking spot with household junk after a snowstorm?

• Forget your white noise — Brown noise is the thing now

• Mary Schmich — A poem about cold weather without much snow

• “The Mincing Rascals” podcast preview — An emergency guest host fills in to lead a scintillating conversation about the news of the week

• Quotables — Including Parker Molloy and Nancy Nall Derringer

• Re:Tweets — The winning visual tweet and this week’s contest finalists

• Good Sports — Why the shameful treatment by fans of Jerry Krause’s widow may be good for his legacy in the long run; who I’m rooting for this weekend in the NFL playoffs and why.

• Tune of the Week — “I Am Very Glad, As I Am Finally Returning Back Home,” the unforgettably peppy Russian pop hit that went viral 14 years ago

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.

Last week’s winning tweet

The doctor says, “Don’t worry, Michael. Everything is going to be OK.” Patient says, “I’m not Michael.” Doctor says, “I know. I am.” — From WGN host John Williams’ best jokes of 2023

Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-tweets poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.

How disruptive can a protest be before it becomes ineffective?

Syndicated columnist S.E. Cupp wagged her rhetorical index finger at protesters who earlier this month blocked streets and bridge access in New York City to demand a cease-fire in Gaza:

Similar protests blocking access to JFK, LAX, and Chicago O’Hare airports over the holidays — on the busiest travel days of the year — also resulted in dozens of arrests and delays for legions of frustrated travelers who couldn’t get to their flights.

If you’re wondering how these obnoxious, self-important, unserious, and even dangerous antics would be an effective way of eliciting sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians suffering in wartime Gaza, your guess is as good as mine. I’m betting that most weary travelers who couldn’t get to work or missed a flight to see their loved ones aren’t going to be buoyed by the fact that, “Hey, at least it’s for a good cause.”

In the wake of that awful tragedy in October, pro-Palestinian groups like PYM and Students for Justice in Palestine have embarked on misguided and arguably ineffective stunts like these to get their point across and try to bring some favorable attention to their efforts. But harassing unsuspecting bystanders hasn’t done the trick. Nor has it endeared them to anyone but each other.

Cupp, a very liberal Republican — she says she voted for Joe Biden in 2020 — went on:

There are plenty of Americans who are persuadable on this, who simply want peace in Gaza, who are sympathetic to the suffering of the Palestinian people, who might even object to Israel’s political objectives. But holding up their flight or keeping them from their family is itself a version of indiscriminate hostage taking, and that is sure to change no one’s hearts and minds. … Outside of that small group of activists, it just turns everyone else off.

The cause of peace for innocent Palestinians and an end to the war in Gaza is a serious, righteous and good one, at its core. It needs serious voices, and deserves advocates who promote compassion and clarity, not callousness and chaos.

Katie Hannon of Albany Park fired back in a letter published in the Sun-Times:

The nature of protest is that it lies outside typical avenues of debate and objection. It is meant to draw attention and interrupt the status quo. I’d argue that blocking interstate traffic is the opposite of unserious. It is high-visibility and requires careful planning. …

I wonder what methods of protest would be acceptable to Ms. Cupp. When senators’ mailboxes are full and they’re not listening anyway; when we’ve marched, posted online, made endless appeals to anyone with power to do something, and are met with not just indifference but contempt — what’s next? … Our country’s low tolerance for inconvenience is, to put it mildly, embarrassing. … Let’s focus on why people are protesting, not the protest itself.

The contrast in these views prompts me to ponder the purpose and mechanics of protest. Between vandalism and violence at one extreme and online petition drives on the other, there are obviously civil actions that are unlikely to move decision-makers and neutral voters into your camp.

I suspect the property destruction and attacks on law enforcement officers during the “unrest” of 2020 broadly associated with the Black Lives Matter movement didn’t advance the effort to change police procedures, and that totally peaceful protests putting forth “debate and objection” would have been more effective.

But I might be wrong!

Disruptive protests — even and maybe especially those that involve injuring innocent people either physically or financially — may, in the long run, awaken a somnolent population to a cause they would otherwise ignore. A protest is an in-your-face demand to at least pay attention to an issue or point of view you might not have considered. In this case, the deaths of so many innocent civilians on both sides of the conflict in Gaza cannot and should not be ignored or shrugged off.

The trick is to win hearts and minds and not harden them, to come right up to that line between attracting attention and provoking a backlash. Effective protests need to be large, and large protests will inevitably inconvenience motorists and pedestrians and others trying to move about.

I wonder about the Jan. 6, 2021, protest in Washington, D.C., that turned into a deadly attack on the Capitol. Did it discredit Donald Trump and the MAGA movement? In many eyes, yes.

But it also inflamed and inspired literally millions of people into thinking that the 2020 election was stolen, a belief that might not have the same purchase if the crowd had peacefully dispersed and gone home to post screeds online. History may say it was politically smart to horrify much of the nation with a brazenly illegal incursion into the halls of Congress that involved ugly threats and smeared shit on office walls.

Effective acts of protest and rebellion can involve destruction. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 that helped ignite the American Revolution comes to mind, as does the Stonewall Inn riots of 1969 that kicked off the gay rights movement. Yet other effective protests involved acts of passive, peaceful resistance, such as the Greensboro sit-in at Woolworth lunch counters in 1960 and related civil rights actions of that era.

Overall, though, looking at “Famous protests in US history and their impacts,” it’s notable how many of them didn’t seem to move the needle on public opinion either way, no matter their tactics. Occupy Wall Street of 2011, to wit, or the Million Mom March in 2000 and so many other gun-control protests.

Still, there may be incalculable value in simply having raised your voice and suggested to others that there are different ways to think about important matters and they should consider joining you in some way. Not raising your voice, standing up and standing out, may indicate indifference, which is all but guaranteed to prove ineffective.

News & Views

News: Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration tried to hide the fact that it knew about unhealthy conditions at a migrant shelter less than a month before a boy died there.

View: So much for transparency. The most damning portion of WTTW-Ch. 11 correspondent Paris Schutz’s report on this story read as follows:

WTTW News filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the city for a copy of (an Oct. 27 email from a community volunteer concerned about conditions at the shelter forwarded by Ald. Nicole Lee, 11th), and received a heavily redacted document in response. … But a nonprofit government accountability organization called the FOIA Bakery shared with WTTW News an unredacted version they say they obtained.

The redacted parts allege the shelter had insufficient bathrooms, exposed pipes with raw sewage, cockroach infestation, a possible outbreak of illness with many people being sick, insufficient provision of meals and water and poor and disrespectful treatment of migrants housed in the shelter by staff. …

WTTW News also filed a FOIA request for (Department of Family and Support Services Commissioner Brandie) Knazze’s response to Lee’s concerns, which was sent on Oct. 29. Once again, the document was nearly completely redacted. … The city’s FOIA officer cited exemptions under the law that allow them to withhold “Pre decisional, deliberative information.”

The administration, which released the unredacted emails to WTTW after Schutz’ report, needs to be reminded that it’s FOIA, not CYA.

News: Chicago-based Ferrara Candy Co. is discontinuing Fruit Stripe gum.

View: Good riddance. The initial burst of flavor from a stick of Fruit Stripe was tremendous, but it faded faster than any gum ever. “Family Guy” nailed it:

@LaurenC30 offered this valedictory on Twitter: “A moment of silence for the moment of flavor.”

The original packs in the 1960s when the brand was owned by Beech-Nut (“Yikes, stripes!") contained wild cherry, mixed fruit, lemon, lime and orange. In later years, as the brand changed hands, melon and peach replaced mixed fruit and lime.

Feeling nostalgic? Check out the Discontinued Foods social media feed.

News: Exit polling shows 65% of Iowa Republican caucusgoers think Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election, and 55% of those who call themselves evangelical or born-again Christians supported Donald Trump over other conservative rivals.

View: The Republican Party has gone crazy, with two thirds of those who voted in Iowa drunk on the big lie Kool-Aid. Self-styled Christians had a choice, and they revealed their amoral hypocrisy by choosing, in greater numbers than other Republican voters, the least Christian — by any definition — candidate on the ballot. This wasn’t a "well, it’s either this grotesque Republican or a dreaded Democrat." This was an affirmation of who Trump is and what he stands for, which is an appalling reflection on these people who claim to follow the teachings of Christ.

Amanda Marcotte put it well in an essay for Salon:

(White evangelicals) are done pretending to be "compassionate." The mask is entirely off. Evangelicals are not the salt-of-the-earth types idealized by centrist pundits. They are what feminists, anti-racists and pro-LGBTQ activists have always said: authoritarians who may use Jesus as cover for their ugly urges, but have no interest in the "love thy neighbor" teachings of their purported savior. … That Iowa evangelicals turned out to back Trump isn't a betrayal of their values. It reveals the values that always fueled their movement. It's just the last bit of plausible deniability has faded away.

When I brought up this point on WGN-AM 720 the other day, a Christian Trump supporter called in to say that Trump “shut down the border” and “had no problems with the economy,” which was enough to cement his support.

This is, of course, not true. But it’s simply not possible to talk, shame or argue Trump cultists out of their love for him. They will not be moved. The way to defeat him in November will be to focus on unlikely voters and independent, persuadable voters and remind them of the likely consequences of returning Trump to the White House.

News: The U.S. Federal Highway Administration is banning funny electronic messages on highway signs.

View: Humorless Big Brother needs to check himself. The Associated Press reports:

Overhead electronic signs with obscure meanings, references to pop culture or those intended to be funny will be banned in 2026 because they can be misunderstood or distracting to drivers.

Examples culled from news stories:

Visiting in-laws? Slow down, get there late 
Get your head out of your apps
Turn signals, the original instant messaging
We’ll be blunt, don’t drive high
Han says, 'Solo down, Leia off the gas’
Not a bee? Don’t drive buzzed
Only Rudolph should drive lit

Not found in any news stories I read: statistical evidence these signs are more harmful or distracting than boring ol’ safety signs and therefore lead to more crashes.

I suspect such evidence doesn’t exist. A I suspect that, to the extent these signs have any impact at all, the funny ones are more effective in getting people to slow down, buckle up, stay sober and watch the road.

Land of Linkin’

• It was very strange — wasn’t it? — when a former Olympic superstar had to resort to online fundraising to pay her hospital bills after a recent severe bout with a rare form of pneumonia. KFF Health News tries to unpack the mystery in “Mary Lou Retton’s Explanation of Health Insurance Takes Some Somersaults.”

• “A Keith Haring Painting ‘Completed’ Using A.I. Generates Backlash.” Artnet reports on the art community’s response to the use of artificial intelligence to complete a painting by an artist who died of HIV that he deliberately left unfinished to suggest the ravages of AIDS. It inspired me to look for renditions of Venus de Milo with arms:

  

• “Why unfrosted Pop-Tarts have more calories than the frosted kind.” This is just the sort of vital information that Picayune Sentinel subscribers have come to expect.

• “Oscar Brand - Bawdy Songs And Backroom Ballads Volume 1.” Brand — (1920-2016) — is so canceled for this 1949 album.

• “Biden was right.” Josh Marshall writes, “The United States remained in Afghanistan for ten years after anyone had any good explanation for why we were there. Obama wanted to leave. But he got rolled by the Pentagon. Biden knew that the only way to really leave was to leave. Someone had to bite the bullet.”

• Chicago Magazine writer Edward Robert McClelland’s list of the “The 10 Pols Who Could Replace (Illinois Democratic U.S. Sen.) Dick Durbin” in order of likelihood to win: Raja Krishnamoorthi, Lauren Underwood, Nikki Budzinski, Alexi Giannoulias, Darin LaHood, Kwame Raoul, Susana Mendoza, Juliana Stratton, Michael Frerichs and Robin Kelly.

• “Illegal bribe or legitimate ‘gratuity’: How a $13,000 payment to an Indiana mayor could alter political corruption cases in Chicago” by the Tribune’s Jason Meisner, Megan Crepeau and Amy Lavalley is a thorough look at a U.S. Supreme Court case that could upend the definition of political corruption and embolden sleazy officeholders throughout the land.

• “Platformer’s Reporting On Substack’s Supposed ‘Nazi Problem’ Is Shoddy And Misleading” by Jesse Singal: “This is not good reporting, and it fits a pattern I’ve discussed in this newsletter before: Journalists caring more about showing they are on the right side of a controversy than critically investigating that controversy.”

• Taking the other side from Singal is (now apparently former) Substacker Josh Drummond: “All the garbage I found on Substack in 1 hour

• Arbitrator Edwin Benn’s full final opinion blasting the (understandable) grandstanding by members of the Chicago City Council over police disciplinary matters (see last week’s item on this topic).

• “What is the value of an education at a prestige college?” I say it’s the student body. Some readers disagreed.

• Did I set a world record by using the same set of AirPods daily for three years?

• This intro to Episode 7 of Season 1 of "The Bear" will be moving to anyone who lives in or has lived in the stunning, complicated city of Chicago.

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran WXRT, Tribune and WGN-AM journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he shares a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing, Chicago Public Square:

■ Chicago’s deep freeze has been a challenge for organizations tending to the homeless—like Chicago’s Night Ministry, which could use your help.

■ Low temps have also exposed electric vehicles’ Achilles’ heel.

■ The Illinois Tollway Authority is retiring those battery-powered transponders—to be replaced, as they expire or their batteries die, with radio-frequency ID stickers.

■ The Markup and Consumer Reports say each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies — and you can see which of them have shared your data with Facebook by visiting this page.

■ Gizmodo: The end may be near for “the self-checkout nightmare”—partly because “not only is it easy to steal from self-checkout machines, it can be hard not to steal.”

■ Warning that laundry is a top source of microplastic pollution, a Rutgers biological sciences professor offers advice on how to clean your clothes more sustainably—and she calls for regulation to require microplastic filters on new washing machines.

■ The Conversation: “One good thing about the Iowa caucuses, and three that are really troubling.”

■ Trump’s niece Mary: “Judge Engoron did what no one in my family—or America—has ever been able to do.”

■ Telegraph critic Chris Bennion is outraged by the Emmys: “Why did three shows win everything?” (Paywall)

You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.

Bookmark this: The hilarious graphic art of ‘Phil Largo’

Belatedly, I have come across Phil Are Go, the brilliant blog of Phil Gullett, a Chicago-area animator and graphic artist who creates faux vintage book covers and advertisements under the name “Phil Largo.”

I reached out to him for the backstory. Here’s part of his reply:

In college, my art professor had stacks of old magazines he kept around to use as reference for sketching. This was in the late eighties and early nineties, when keeping a horde of images on a hard drive wasn't really practical yet, so paper was pretty much the way. I realized that the older the magazine was, the funnier it got.

After graduation and through my career, I retained the habit of keeping around a pile of "visual references" as artists call it. Again, the older the better.

Phil Are Go started as a project to scan and archive my visual reference collection, offloading it onto the internet. So, in case my house burned down, I could still make fun of old pictures from any internet cafe. It just made good financial sense to let Google bear the burden of storing the pictures on their servers, where I could access it from anywhere in the world... and also share it with friends... and might as well share it with every rando who owns a computer, right?

But what was my angle? In the early 2000s, every multi-celled organism on the planet had their own blog / website / gallery of pornographic oven mitts. What would make mine worth looking at? Well everybody had Photoshop, and nobody was good at it, whereas I had been retouching photos since 1987 or thereabouts, and making my edits undetectable was not only a point of professional pride, but made my work more valuable to my employers.

Most importantly, a joke is funnier if the magazine looks as though "Easy Food Hats" had always been the real title. If readers couldn't tell whether or not Sears actually sold "girthy ties" in 1971, not only was the ad funnier, I could then laugh at their confusion. Yep, what a jerk.

Lastly, having an editorial policy that answered to no one but myself was something I'd never had before. The career of a professional artist is one of perpetually being subject to someone else's sense of "rightness", whereas anything I put up on the blog is there because I thought it was funny, regardless of whether anybody else does. If it lands with a wet thud, it costs me nothing. If it's a smash hit, I might get a couple hundred views. This heroic artistic integrity is why Phil Are Go brings in nearly $200 a year.

Look for Gullett’s work to make appearances in the weekly visual tweets poll in the Picayune Plus.

Word watch: Dibs

I’m no longer interested in participating in the endless debates about when and whether it’s right to use household junk to claim parking spots on public streets after a snowfall.

Chicagoans call the practice “dibs,” a usage my research credits to former Tribune columnist John Kass. I’m interested in whether that usage makes sense.

For generations, "dibs" has been the word that people, mostly children, have used to preemptively stake claims to objects, privileges or opportunities they haven't earned.

Dibs on the PlayStation! Dibs on the last piece of pizza! Dibs on the top bunk!

It’s like calling “shotgun” when you and your friends are headed toward a parked car — a random vocalization to claim priority or preference.

Yet the whole idea of parking dibs, say its proponents, is that you have earned your space — that your claim to a spot derives from the effort you put in to shovel it out.

The best analogy is not to grabby children, but to 19th century American homesteaders who were able to "prove up" their ownership of 160-acre parcels of federal land by building a home on it and farming for five years.

The Online Etymology Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary say that 1932 marks the first recorded use of "dibs" to express an otherwise unearned "claim or option on some object" and that it is an Americanism.

In meaning, it's identical to "bagsy" (sometimes "bagsie" or "bags"), a British slang term that appears in writing as far back as 1866. It seems to be etymologically related to the way small-game hunters claim and store their kill in bags, but no one is quite sure.

Evan Morris wrote in his "Word Detective" column that researchers "surveyed the playground rituals and protocols of more than 5,000 British schoolchildren just after World War II" for the book "The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren" and found:

A child in Southern England who spots the one cookie left on the plate might exclaim “Bags it” or “Baggsy,” whereupon by the sacred code of children the prize is hers. Her London counterpart might say “Squits.” Other words which seem to work as well include “Barley,” “Bollars,””Jigs” and, in Scotland, “Chaps” or “Chucks."

Lexicographer Michael Quinion argued at his World Wide Words site that there is "a howling great gap where we might expect historical continuity" in the usage history of "dibs." He suggested that the word “is a modified abbreviation of `division' or `divide.'"

But of course "dibs" as practiced here in the winter is not about dividing or sharing. Even if we renamed it "car-steading," it would still be about meeting your own needs and not concerning yourself with anyone else.

Either way, it seems fitting that our name for this activity comes straight from the selfish rituals of childhood.

What brown does for me

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution story reprinted in last Thursday’s Tribune extolled the virtues of "brown noise,” of which I’ve been aware for some time.

A GQ article in September explained:

Unlike its better-known cousin white noise, brown isn’t every audible frequency combined into the sound of television static. It sounds more condensed, powerful and deep, with a slight rumble that brings to mind a rolling thunderstorm or a rotating tumble dryer.

To me, it sounds a lot like road noise, the thrum of tires on the interstate combined with the purr of a car engine.

Brown’s lower frequency has been shown to improve executive functioning and result in improved performance on tests of memory when compared to quiet.

From a 2022 Guardian article:

Brown noise is the familiar, staticky sound of white noise (that is, all the audible frequencies simultaneously) but with the low frequency notes augmented and the less pleasant high frequency notes turned down, counteracting the human ear’s natural tendency to hear higher frequencies louder.

I use it primarily to mask or block out other sounds, but it also does seem to have the same soothing, focusing effect as the other sounds in my “White Noise” app — vacuum cleaner, hair dryer, rain storm, ocean waves and so on — and many report that it’s a dandy sleep aid.

Give it a try by playing this or any one of a number of other lengthy brown noise videos on YouTube:

Mary Schmich: A no-snow poem

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a Sunday offering:

The temp today is 8 below
And yet there’s hardly any snow!
I miss the snow, those piles of white
The wintry wonderland delight.
I know that shov’ling is a pain
But worse is all this icy rain
Slipping sliding falling—ouch!
It turns a girl into a grouch.
But, no, I will not whine and pout
Because at least the sun is out.

Minced Words

“The Mincing Rascals” podcast host John Williams was off this week, and panelists Brandon Pope, Cate Plys, Marj Halperin and I were in the Zoom holding area waiting for guest host Jon Hansen when our producer, Pete Zimmerman, popped on the say something had come up, Hansen couldn’t make it, so I’d have to host.

This is how it went. We talked about the Iowa caucuses, Jerry Krause and the proliferation of bike lanes in the city. I polled the panelists for their favorite books and/or streaming TV series of 2023, but I ruled out anyone mentioning “The Bear” since everyone already knows how great that show is.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

Quotables

For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it, and I’m proud to have done it. Nobody else was going to get that done but me. We did it, and we did something that was a miracle. — Donald Trump

In 2024, to continue supporting Trump is to knowingly back a candidate whose actions and rhetoric run counter to the principles of a democratic society. It's a choice that, regrettably, leaves little room for empathy or understanding from those committed to preserving democratic ideals and ethical governance. There’s nothing more to “understand.” — Parker Molloy

I will not miss this human mosquito, this motormouthed bundle of empty grievance, this misbegotten whelp of privilege and resentment. — Nancy Nall Derringer on Vivek Ramaswamy’s withdrawal from the field of Republican presidential hopefuls.

Re: Tweets

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• I’m working on personal growth by asking more questions this year, like, “How is this my problem?” and “Where do you get the nerve?” — @adamgreattweet

• Day 14,235 of not using trigonometry. — @BrickMahoney

• Dorothy: What is that? Scarecrow: Looks like a guy with an ax and a can of lube. I'll ask if he wants to join us. — @IamJackBoot

• Friend: It sounds terrible but sometimes I find myself disliking my own children Me: Don't worry, that's really common. Friend: Really? Me: Yeah, everyone hates your kids. — @ItsAndyRyan

• If I could time travel to assassinate a historical figure I’d probably choose Archduke Franz Ferdinand. — @eileencurtright

• I just said “Grandpa and Grandma” instead of “Grandma and Grandpa” and it feels like a betrayal. — @TheMomHack

• My 3-year-old, who has to have everything read aloud to him, opened a fortune cookie tonight that said, "The path to success lies in taking a bath without fussing or throwing water out of the tub and getting out nicely with no crying." What are the odds? — @sewistwrites

• Every conversation with a child getting ready for school in the winter ends with a parent yelling, "FINE, THEN FREEZE." — @RodLacroix

•  Me: I think this is where my character should have a redemption arc. Dentist: A redemption arc? Me: Things are at their worst, so this is when my character bravely faces his mistakes and redeems himself. Dentist: Well, your character could floss. Me: Sure. He could do that. Maybe. — @IamJackBoot

• No, tell me what you were doing during that gap in my résumé — @ModeratelyMused

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Good Sports

A blessing for Krause’s legacy in an unpleasant disguise?

The widow of former Bulls general manager Jerry Krause wept when fans booed her late husband Friday night at the Ring of Honor ceremony at the United Center honoring the championship teams of the 1990s.

This rudeness bordering on cruelty was ghastly and embarrassing, no question. Thelma Krause experienced real pain in the moment. But long term, the Krause family and friends may be glad for the way the rudeness of the fans provoked an outpouring of not only sympathy but also reconsideration of the narrative of Krause as the self-important villain who ended the Bulls dynasty prematurely.

There is much to debate and to criticize about Krause’s moves — his enthusiasm for Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry comes to mind — but he did build a dynastic team around the singular talents of Michael Jordan and gave us a decade like no other in Chicago sports.

Without Krause’s picks and trades, Jordan might have gone down in NBA history with Elgin Baylor, Charles Barkley, Allen Iverson, Reggie Miller, Karl Malone, Steve Nash and other superstars who never won a championship. Friday’s unpleasantness seems likely in the end to soften his image.

For more background, see Rick Telander’s 1993 Sports Illustrated article, “The Sleuth.”

Who I’m rooting for in the best weekend of the year for football

Quarterfinal weekend in the NFL — four very consequential games among the top teams in the sport — provides the most reliably satisfying two days of sportswatching all year. My rooting interests and reasons:

Detroit Lions over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I grew up in the Detroit area but was never a die-hard Lions fan because they were uninspiringly back then (and most years since, actually; they’ve never been to the Super Bowl). But this season I went all in for Lions after the Bears lost their first four games.

Buffalo Bills over the Kansas City Chiefs: Buffalo has never won a Super Bowl — indeed the team has lost four — and their long -uffering fans deserve another shot.

Baltimore Ravens over the Houston Texans: I don’t care about either of these teams, but when it comes down to it ,I have a hard time rooting for a team from Texas.

Green Bay Packers over the San Francisco 49ers: Yes, I know, the Packers are a hated rival of the Bears, but midwestern and divisional pride are bigger than the rivalry. Plus a great showing by Packers quarterback Jordan Love will remind the Bears that they need an upgrade at that position if they are ever to end their losing streak against the Packers.

Peacock sports is for the birds

Saturday night, we went to a dinner party, and when we got home I thought I'd zip through a recording of the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Miami Dolphins wild-card playoff game, which by then was long over. Normally I would have saved the game on the DVR, but because it was available only on NBC’s Peacock streaming service, I went to our account to see if I could watch it from the beginning.

But the first thing I saw when I logged in was this spoiler screen …

… and no option to watch the game from the beginning. The platforms that will be streaming more and more sports need to wake up to the fact that we live in a time-shifting society.

Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy is right to head to the NFL, but head coach Jim Harbaugh ought to stay

Like all Michigan football fans, I felt a pang of sadness to learn that junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy will enter the NFL draft. He’s a terrific talent and seems like a great teammate. Another year of experience at the collegiate level will improve his pocket awareness and his occasionally errant aim.

But he has nothing left to prove on the collegiate level and would be seen as a disappointment if he didn’t lead the team to a repeat championship. Plus he’ll make much more money in the pros.

Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh also seems destined to return to the NFL, and he, too, has nothing left to prove on the collegiate level. But I’d think there’d be enough value in securing a long contract in Ann Arbor — where he grew up, played college ball and is now widely revered — that he’ll decide to stay rather than take the helm of some struggling pro team with an easily disgruntled fan base (meaning all of them).

The talk on the Michigan sports podcasts is that Harbaugh wants to win a Super Bowl like his older brother John did with the Baltimore Ravens (coaching against Jim’s San Francisco 49ers). Good luck with that. So far he’s interviewed with the Los Angeles Chargers, who went 5-12 last season, and the Atlanta Falcons, who went 7-10.

Tune of the Week

In 1976, Russian baritone Eduard Khil, then in his early 40s, appeared on a TV show to sing a version of a cowboy song whose title translates, “I Am Very Glad, As I Am Finally Returning Back Home.”

He beamed giddily as he sang nonsense syllables instead of the lyrics — cowboy scat, if you will. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, Khil’s remarkable, silly but uplifting vocal stylings went viral starting in early 2010, and he became known as “Mr. Trololo” in imitation of some of syllables he burbled out as he sang:

A clip of “I Am Very Glad …” appeared on the March 10, 2010, “Colbert Report” on Comedy Central, ostensibly inserted to cheer up the host, and Khil made a guest appearance in the Sept. 25, 2011, episode of Fox TV’s animated comedy“Family Guy.”

Khil was not the first to perform the song in this manner — here is a clip said to be from the 1960s of Muslim Magomayev’s rendition — but he performed it so joyously that his version became canonical.

Khil died in June 2012 at age 77, just six months after reviving the song on a Russian TV New Year’s show.

And yes, this is two gibberish songs in row for Tune of the Week. Thanks to reader Liz Westen for the suggestion.

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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