Teachers union crosses the line between pedagogy and politics

& Tweet Madness 2024 enters the round of 32

3-14-2024 (issue No. 132)

This week:

• The Chicago Teachers Union’s weird response to being called out for politicking on school time

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked

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

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

• Mary Schmich — What now-regrettable consumer goods did you purchase during the early days of the pandemic four years ago?

• What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week

• Quotables — includes Seth Meyers’ epic takedown of Donald Trump

• Word court — “None is” or “None are”? I stand corrected after a reader calls me out.

• Re:Tweets — Behold the pairings in the Round of 32 in Tweet Madness 2024

• Tune of the Week — Steve Earle’s “The Galway Girl,” in honor of St. Patrick’s Day

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.

The Chicago Teachers Union’s weird response to being called out for politicking on school time

In Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, I was among those who registered displeasure with the announced plans of the Chicago Teachers Union to have voting-age students rally at CTU headquarters on Friday morning — a school day — for a “Student Power Forum.”

Those who will turn 18 by Nov. 5 (the union letter says Nov. 7) are to hear from “candidates/political organizers” before joining in a trip to an early voting site.

The location of the event and the involvement of the union are problematic given that the union is a major sponsor of and advocate for the so-called “Bring Chicago Home” referendum on Tuesday’s ballot. That ballot proposition asks voters to OK hiking real estate transfer taxes on properties selling for more than $1 million “for the purpose of addressing homelessness.”

Further, the initial announcement from the union listed La Casa Norte and Bring Chicago Home as partners in the event:

La Casa Norte backs the referendum. Jose Muñoz, executive director, wrote “Voting ‘yes’ to Bring Chicago Home brings us closer to recognizing that housing is a human right” for Tuesday’s Sun-Times. And Bring Chicago Home is, of course, the umbrella organization promoting a “yes” vote on the referendum.

Asked about this student rally on “The Ben Joravsky Show” podcast Tuesday, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates attacked the Illinois Policy Institute, the libertarian/conservative think tank that publicized the email that urged teachers to “organize a group of voting age students” to attend. And while it’s true that IPI has been very critical of the public sector unions and the CTU in particular, the source of the information is irrelevant if the information is true.

Davis Gates insisted to Joravsky that the event was nonpartisan, the equivalent of an educational field trip, and that students wouldn’t be encouraged to vote one way or the other.

Some reactions:

"The Chicago Teachers Union is a partisan organization. It’s political. It supports political candidates and political causes. So by its own nature, this would be seen as, and would be, a partisan event.” — Laura Washington, ABC-7 political analyst

“The union’s motivation for sponsoring this ‘field trip’ is obvious to anyone not, shall we say, born yesterday. There’s no reason to trust that CTU can run a go-to-the-polls event for high school students without promoting Bring Chicago Home, whether that’s on the formal agenda or not.” — Chicago Tribune editorial

“They should simply not have any speakers or promotion of the referendum as part of the program” — Former Ald. Dick Simpson on CBS-2

The union then released a statement Tuesday reading, “Bring Chicago Home is not a partner or sponsor of this event and is not on the agenda.”

Not “no longer a partner.” Not “has withdrawn as a partner.” But “is not a partner.” As though we hadn’t seen the initial email heralding the advocates as partners.

Inspiring young people to get informed and to vote is a great thing. They’re going to be living in the world shaped by outcomes at the polls far longer than those of us in the demographic that votes in the greatest number. Any group is entitled to try to gin up that enthusiasm and even advocate for certain candidates and positions, but our public schools should not be blurring those lines.

Meanwhile, from the Trib:

The Illinois Supreme Court Wednesday rejected an effort to invalidate the so-called Bring Chicago Home real estate transfer tax referendum, clearing the way for the question to remain on ballots and for votes to be counted.

The court denied the petition filed by the Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago to appeal a lower court’s ruling. The decision from the state’s top court likely brings an end to weeks of legal feuding between the referendum’s supporters and opponents ahead of the election.

The brief order shared by the court Wednesday did not indicate why the BOMA Chicago appeal was denied.

Since the lower court ruling simply said that opponents’ objections to the wording of the referendum were premature, look for them to refile their legal complaint should the referendum pass and the City Council then vote to OK the new tax rates. Their objection, as ever, is that unnecessarily including a small transfer tax decrease on properties selling for under $1 million in the ballot question deprived voters of the opportunity to vote no on the increase — which requires voter approval — but yes on the decrease — which does not require voter approval.

In a Tribune op-ed, Carolyn Shapiro of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law argues that the opponents will lose.

Last week’s winning tweets

The regular weekly contest was won by this:

Stores today are like, “Thanks for buying this pack of gum, please tip us 20%, apply for our credit card and round up to save the children. Also fill out this survey.“ — @simoncholland

But there were 32 other winners last week in the Round of 64 as part of Tweet Madness, the annual bracket tournament to name the champion tweet of the last 12 months.

Check out the surviving tweets below.

News & Views

My comment on Mayor Johnson’s no comment

News: The Sun-Times reports that the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has offered Chicago more than a dozen shuttered churches, schools and other buildings rent-free to help house newly arrived migrants from South and Central America.

“City Hall … has yet to agree on any such offers from the archdiocese, instead renting private shelter spaces at high costs. … City officials did not respond to requests for comment.”

View: C’mon, MBJ, get your comms act together. This story is outrageous, at least on the surface, and you don’t have any mouthpieces who can put some kind of spin on it? Maybe there are good reasons not to accept these offers, such as the costs of creating habitable space or restrictions placed on who could be housed? Who knows? But failure to respond to requests for comment under these circumstances is either infamous or incompetent.

No to stadium mulligans

News: Both the Bears and the White Sox are coming with outstretched palms seeking significant infusions of public money to build new stadiums — the Sox in The 78 neighborhood east of the Chicago River just south of the Loop; the Bears in a parking lot along the lakefront south of Soldier Field.

View: Were these teams seeking to upgrade from dilapidated old venues, I could see it. But a wholly renovated Soldier Field reopened in September 2003, and the White Sox got a spanking new park in 1991 that was extensively renovated in 2001. Largely on our dime.

Now the same owners are asking us to pony up for their appalling lack of foresight. And they’re telling us that the public supports the idea of building them fancy new stadiums by feeding us results of private polling but not even telling us how they worded the questions.

Terminology limits

News: In the face of criticism from the left, President Joe Biden apologized for referring in his State of the Union speech to the man accused of killing Laken Riley as “illegal” instead of “undocumented.”

View: I agree that terminology is important, but I wanted to shout, “Not now, liberals!” The man accused of abducting and killing the 22-year-old nursing student as she jogged near the University of Georgia on Feb. 22 entered the country illegally and had a criminal record while here. To whine that “a person is not illegal” is a gruesome semantic point under the circumstances, and harping on it reminds the great middle of the country that a punitive obsession with sensitive language is a hallmark of often insufferable “woke” progressives.

Biden is 81. For most of his life, “illegal aliens” was a noncontroversial way to refer to those who had broken immigration laws and were living in our country. A quiet reminder a day or two after the State of Union to update his lexicon would have sufficed. Instead, he was squeezed into issuing an apology, which of course the Republicans spun as an apology to man suspected of a heinous murder.

Say their names, you disgusting opportunists!

Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was wearing a T-shirt bearing the message “Say Her Name” referring to slain nursing student Laken Riley when she confronted President Joe Biden as he walked into the House chamber to deliver the State of the Union speech last week. She pressed into his hand a button with that slogan.

PBS reports:

The phrase was popularized by civil rights activist, law professor and executive director of the African American Policy Institute Kimberlé Crenshaw in 2015, following the death of Sandra Bland. Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman, was found dead in a Texas jail cell a few days after she was arrested during a traffic stop. Her family questioned the circumstances of her death and the validity of the traffic stop and the following year settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the police department.

So while it’s a clever form of political jiu-jitsu to swipe an expression from the other side, Biden and others should turn in back on the ghouls attempting to score points with Riley’s tragic killing by demanding they say the names of all the children and other innocents mowed down in mass shootings enabled by the weak gun laws they champion, as letter writer Mike Leone of Frankfort noted in the Tribune:

I would like to remind everyone of the blood on the hands of many in the GOP by asking them to say the names of the children and educators killed in shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Robb Elementary School in Texas, Virginia Tech and Oxford High School in Michigan. The list is endless.

I would like to ask the congresswoman from Georgia and the former president to say the names of those killed in Highland Park while attending a Fourth of July parade.

She did it her way

News: Mayor Lori Lightfoot said this to Chicago Magazine: “Someone once asked me, ‘What would you have done differently?’ Ridiculous question. What I would say is that if you have the time to build authentic relationships, that’s always best. But sometimes you don’t have the time. Sometimes you’ve got to say, ‘I need you to be a grownup and work with me here.’”

View: This hardheaded refusal to look back introspectively or learn from her mistakes is emblematic of Lightfoot’s four years in office. Ridiculous question? It’s a great question, one that those with a capacity to learn and grow ask themselves frequently.

Land of Linkin’

• The Huffington Post: “If You Know A Kid About To Go To College In A State With Abortion Restrictions, Read This.”

• Tribune contributing columnist Laura Washington’s “Restaurants walking a line between value and rip-off” focuses on the rip-off. “Traditionally, most restaurants planned to get four glasses of wine from every bottle. That was once considered an ‘accurate pour,’ the gold standard of wine service. Now, restaurateurs everywhere are squeezing five glasses out of every bottle. … Typically, that would be $16 for a glass of sauvignon blanc, for a brand that goes for $14 a bottle in the store.”

• “How WBEZ got its start as the OG remote learning tool: ‘Reset’ kicks off a new Chicago history series with a look at WBEZ’s origin story.” Two of my old friends — station programming Vice President Heidi Goldfein and former news director, program director and host Ken Davis — joined Sasha Ann Simons for a look back.

• “Where to watch this year’s Oscar-winning films online,” from the Associated Press.

• NPR’s “Code Switch” podcast asks, “Why is race still used to help diagnose certain conditions, like keloids or cystic fibrosis?” Duke University pathologist Andrea Deyrup “unpacks the problems she sees with practicing race-based medicine, from delayed diagnoses to ignoring environmental factors that lead to different health outcomes.”

• “News ain’t free” is my look at the Sun-Times new promotional campaign aimed at reminding readers what it costs to put out a newspaper.

• This week marks the launch of “The Rebel Kind,” a 12-part podcast series hosted by Sun-Times investigative reporter Bob Herguth and his former colleague Abdon Pallasch, now a spokesman for Illinois State Comptroller Susana Mendoza. The podcast tells “the story of a 6’7”, 350-pound trucker from Chicago, David Rupert, who managed to infiltrate and take down the Real Irish Republican Army (a militant Irish republican group). … A story of loyalty, perseverance, and the bonds that connect us to our homelands.”

• I usually don’t have a lot of patience for the “cicadas are back!” stories, but “Illinois will soon be cicada central when 2 broods converge on state in historic emergence” by the Tribune’s Adriana Pérez is a thorough look at what might turn out to be Cicadapalooza ‘24.

• The Tribune printed some actual swears on Sunday, and I’m fine with it. So are Picayune Plus readers who answered my survey:

  

• Problems with your subscription? I’ve created a handy help page.

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:

■ An excerpt from Tribune reporter Gregory Royal Pratt’s new book, “The City is Up for Grabs: How Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Led and Lost a City in Crisis,” details how she dealt with the riots of 2020.

■ Radio woes. The Verge documents the ad-revenue disruption creeping up the digital bandwidth scale, from text-based newspapers to broadcast audio— and specifically to public radio stations: “Sponsorship dollars won’t return to previous levels.”

■ A Tribune editorial warns that the vaunted casino Bally’s has promised Chicago—the one the newspaper’s vacating its Freedom Center complex for—is lookin’ like a lousy old “slot shed.”

■ An Illinois Senate race has split U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and state Senate President Don Harmon.

■ Critic Bill Carter says “Saturday Night Live” delivered “just about as perfect a satirical dissection as could be executed with only two days’ notice,” as Scarlett Johansson parodied Sen. Katie Britt’s State of the Union rebuttal.

■ Some have identified Britt’s affected presentation as “fundie baby voice.”

■ Columnist Parker Molloy: “It matters that mainstream media missed Katie Britt’s lie.”

■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke says Britt as Donald Trump’s running mate would be “just the laugh America needs right now.”

■ Columnist Matt Yglesias connects the dots between Trump’s “corrupt flip-flop” for Bud Light and TikTok.

■ Daily Show host Jon Stewart laid into Trump supporters for their fake patriotism: “Next time you want to dress up at the rallies, wear the right-f**king-colored coats.” 

■ The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg explains why “Poor Things” outperformed “Barbie” at the Oscars, during which Trump trolled host Jimmy Kimmel—but Kimmel got the last word.

■ For the first time in a year-and-a-half, a fresh Chicago Public Square podcast: An interview with tech-savvy science fiction author Cory Doctorow, explaining how he got scammed out of $8,000 and sharing the one “ironclad” rule you should follow to avoid a similar fate.

■ Roku users have been angered by a legal ultimatum showing up on their screens: Agree to new dispute resolution terms or see your Roku devices rendered unusable. You can opt out, but you’ll need to do it quickly—with a stamp, an envelope … and a lot of squinting at the back of your gadgets. Or, if you have an online Roku account, you can find an index of your registered Roku things—and their model and serial numbers—by scrolling down this page.

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

Mary Schmich: On the haunted house of pandemic purchases

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

On March 13 four years ago, COVID-19 was declared a national emergency. And I still have the aloe vera that pays witness to the panic.

Remember how we all rushed to the grocery store to stock up on essentials? Toilet paper, beans, cans of godknowswhat that would tide us through the apocalypse.

I’d heard a radio report that said there was a run on aloe vera. I cannot remember what magical properties aloe vera was supposed to have during the crisis, but I’d heard it was hard to find in the pandemic crush and so when I saw a bottle — the last bottle on the shelf! — I bought it.

I have never opened that aloe vera. But, as the above photo attests, I still have it.

I made some pandemic purchases that were useful and make me happy to this day. I indulged in a new pillow (we were stuck at home, so making home more comfortable was a high priority). I bought a new vacuum cleaner (we were all cleaning a lot more).

But I also feathered my pandemic nest with a few things I still haven’t touched. The frozen pie dough? Still in the freezer. Turns out I wasn’t really that eager to bake. Still got some cans of panic-purchase beans too.

The pandemic was a frightening and sad time. It may be tempting to laugh now at our responses, but the threat was real. So much life was lost. I keep the aloe vera in part to remind me.

Tell me about your own pandemic purchases, the ones you enjoyed and the ones that turned into clutter. And tell me what to do with this aloe vera. — Mary Schmich

Minced Words

Cate Plys and Marj Halperin joined host John Williams and me on this week’s episode of the “The Mincing Rascals” news-talk podcast. 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

It is no longer surprising, but still must be noted. The GOP's presidential candidate is openly campaigning against the rule of law, on a platform promising to abuse the pardon power, free criminals, and normalize political violence. — Gregg Nunziata, conservative legal scholar

Trump may be among the most famous and powerful people in modern history, but he remains a small-minded bully. He mocks Biden’s (stuttering) disability because he believes the voters will reward him for it—that there is more to be gained than lost by dehumanizing his rival and the millions of other Americans who stutter, or who go through life managing other disorders and disabilities. I would like to believe that more people are repulsed than entertained, and that Trump has made a grave miscalculation. — John Hendrickson, The Atlantic

MAGA is now in control of the Republican Party!! — U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban. He’s fantastic…He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it. Right? He’s the boss. No, he’s a great leader. — Donald Trump

Donald Trump is now the presumptive GOP nominee for president again, for a third time, despite the fact that he’s a twice-impeached, four-time criminal indictee and racist, who has been found liable for fraud and sexual abuse, banned from doing business in the state of New York for three years, owes over half a billion dollars in fines, took millions from foreign governments while he was President, tried to extort a foreign country to interfere in an election in 2020 and encouraged another to help him win in 2016. Actively undermined the nation’s response to a once in a lifetime pandemic and let a deadly disease spiral out of control, is about to go on trial for breaking campaign finance laws by paying hush money to cover up an affair during the 2016 campaign. Orchestrated a months-long coup attempt that culminated in a violent insurrection to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and install him as an unelected dictator. Stole classified documents and obstructed attempts to get them back, has never once won the popular vote and has been routinely rejected by a majority of Americans in election after election. Spews deranged conspiracy theories about everything from climate change to immigration to vaccines to windmills. Glitches on three-syllable words, two-syllable words, and one-syllable words. Cheats at golf, can’t spell his own name, his wife’s name, or the words “indicted,” “education,” “unprecedented,” “stolen,” “Denmark,” “Kentucky,” or “tap.”And is, on top of everything else, the single weirdest and most off-putting human being on the face of the fucking planet. And this is the same planet Ted Cruz lives on, so that’s saying something! — Seth Meyers

Word court

A letter from a reader:

Marianne E. Goss — Last week you wrote, “Very, very few of (Pete) Maravich’s opponents were Black, and none of his teammates was Black,” referring to his record-setting career at LSU in the late 1960s.

I wondered whether it should be “none of his teammates were Black.”

The usual advice is that none is singular when it means not one, or any amount, and plural when it means not any. I thought it could mean either in your sentence, so I looked for examples of what experts deemed was correct usage:

“None of my friends are going to watch the game tonight.”

“None of the movies are worth watching.”

“None of the doughnuts are left.”

When I worked as an editor and was undecided, I would rewrite to evade the issue if something jarred my ear. Your sentence jarred my ear.

My reply:

The idea that "none" means "not one" was drilled into my head early on even though that usage often jars, as you note. Conversationally, I would have said “none of his teammates were Black.”

The Associated Press Stylebook says: None “usually means no single one. When used in this sense, it always takes singular verbs and pronouns: ‘None of the seats was in its right place.’ Use a plural verb only if the sense is no two or no amount: ‘None of the consultants agree on the same approach.’ ‘None of the taxes have been paid.’”

The difference between “no single one” and “no two or no amount” is not intuitively obvious to me. “No single one of his teammates was Black” or “No amount of his teammates were Black”? Both sound wrong.

Language columnist Barbara Wallraff at theAtlantic wrote in 2005:

Not one (ahem—please notice I didn't say none) of a dozen leading usage manuals and dictionaries that I checked agrees unequivocally … that none has to be singular. … But most of my reference books say that none may be used with either a plural or a singular verb and that the plural use is more common. A few books suggest that we try to avoid the singular use because it sounds stilted.

Evidently many people believe … that none is equivalent to “not one.” But this isn't quite right. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage succinctly explains why not:

"The Old English nan 'none' was in fact formed from ne 'not' and an 'one,' but Old English nan was inflected for both singular and plural. Hence it never has existed in the singular only; King Alfred the Great used it as a plural as long ago as A.D. 888."

Thus none can mean not any or no part as well as not one.

When should none be singular, then? Bryan A. Garner presents the contemporary majority opinion in the grammar-and-usage chapter of “The Chicago Manual of Style:” "If it is followed by a singular noun, treat it as a singular (“none of the building was painted”); if by a plural noun, treat it as a plural (“none of the guests were here when I arrived.")

Per Garner, then “none of his teammates (plural) were Black” is correct. And it sounds better to me. Objection sustained! But I am not the only member of this jury.

Re: Tweets

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, Visual Tweet Madness is ongoing. Please go there and vote if you haven’t yet. Today begins the Round of 32 in the Tweet Madness 2024 bracket tournament for written tweets. To see the results from the pairings last week, go here. To vote in the pairings below, go here.

Doctor: Your parents were in a car accident. Me: How are they? Doctor: They're extremely critical. Me: So they're awake, that's good. — @Browtweaten

vs.

In today’s episode of “How Strong is Your Marriage?” we take a trip to Home Depot to pick out a shade of white. — @daddygofish

---

If you burned CDs for the car so your original copies wouldn't get scratched, it's time to schedule your colonoscopy. — @benboven1

vs.

Mobster: Take Jack up the hill and make it look like an accident. Jill: You got it, boss. — @prufrockluvsong

---

A week ago my mother-in-law began reading “The Exorcist.” She said it was the most evil book she ever read. So evil she couldn’t finish it. She took it to the beach and threw it off the pier. I went and bought another copy, ran it under the tap and left it on the bedside table in her room. — @deelomas

vs.

Instructor: "Welcome to salsa class! Who's ready to learn how to dance?" Me, hiding tortilla chips bag: "There's been a misunderstanding." — various

---

Therapist: Anyways… Me: “Anyways” isn’t a word. You mean “anyway.” Therapist: ANYWAY… we were talking about your difficulty making friends. — various

vs.

You don’t see faith healers working in hospitals for the same reason you don’t see psychics winning lotteries — Unknown

---

Sometimes I have to remind myself to get off the internet, go outside and judge people in person. — @Tbone7219

vs.

Never say never. Unless someone asks you when you want to go camping. — @AbbyHasIssues

---

When the inventor of the USB stick dies they’ll gently lower the coffin, then pull it back up, turn it the other way, then lower it again. — @Cluedont

vs.

My visitors cancelled on me at the last minute, so here I am with a clean house like a fucking idiot. — @Anniewritess

---

At the grocery store some old lady seemed like she was hitting on me. Turns out we went to school together. — @fozzie4prez

vs.

It's been 6 months since I joined the gym and no progress. I'm going there in person tomorrow to see what's really going on. — @_CakeBawse

---

When I was a kid you could go to a store with just a dollar and come home with four comic books, three candy bars two packs of trading cards, a bag of chips and a cold drink. Now they have cameras everywhere. — Unknown

vs.

The kids are asking for fun shaped sandwiches for their back-to-school lunches and I’m so flattered they’ve mistaken me for the kind of mother who would do that. — @IHideFromMyKids

---

Once you hit a certain age, life is just a delicate balance of trying to stay awake and trying to fall asleep while slowly getting worse at both. — unknown

vs.

Most of my trips into Home Depot are to fix something that I screwed up after my previous trip to Home Depot. — @RodLacroix

---

I’ll bet the guy who invented the snooze button never invented anything else. —@BobGolen

vs.

Ordered new coats for my kids and for convenience I had them shipped directly to their school’s lost and found section. — @Chhapiness

---

Just to expound a bit, ladies, mansplaining is a portmanteau of man and explaining. — @Shade510One of the best examples of someone posing a question that they already know the answer to is the WeightWatchers website asking me if I accept cookies. — @Pundamentalism

vs.

One of the best examples of someone posing a question that they already know the answer to is the WeightWatchers website asking me if I accept cookies. — @Pundamentalism

---

I love when my husband says, “correct me if I’m wrong,” like I would pass up that opportunity. — @MumOfTw0

vs.

Sorry I didn’t make mashed potatoes. The potato masher was stopping me from opening the drawer. — @sixfootcandy

---

Me: it's not about how many times you fall, it's about how many times you get back up. Cop: That's not how field sobriety tests work. — @HenpeckedHal

vs.

I never understood how the little drummer boy’s parents could just send him outside alone at night to play his drum, until my daughter brought a recorder home from school. — @simoncholland

---

Laundry: Washing = 45 minutes. Drying = 60 minutes. Folding = 7 to 10 business days. — @dougboneparth

vs.

Magic Johnson wasted the world's best porn name on a basketball career. — @MsMurfie

---

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

vs.

Why do they call it “delivering” a baby? If I have to drive to the hospital and then take the baby home, it’s not delivery, it’s baby takeout. — @Writepop

---

All movies about teenagers have to be set in the 90s or earlier, otherwise we’d just be watching kids on their phones for two hours. — @CooperLawrence

vs.

The main cause of immigration is we're still a country where people want to go. But we're working on fixing that. — @InternetHippo

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, bad coach

My alma mater, the University of Michigan, ended its dreadful men’s basketball season Wednesday night with its 9th straight loss, a 66-57 drubbing by a mediocre Penn State team in the opening round of the Big Ten tournament. It was an embarrassing season from a team that showed little heart, and the program needs a major reset, starting with a new head coach. The Juwan Howard experiment has been a failure.

Tune of the Week

For St. Patrick’s Day festivities, here’s “The Galway Girl,” a peppy 2000 song with an Irish theme by American songwriter Steve Earle:

 And I ask you, friend, what's a fella to do?
Because her hair was black and her eyes were blue
I took her hand and I give her a twirl
And I lost my heart to a Galway girl

From Wikipedia: “A cover version of the song by Mundy and Sharon Shannon reached number one and became the most downloaded song of 2008 in Ireland; it has gone on to become the eighth highest selling single in Irish chart history.”

Now a peek behind the Picayune curtain: Late Tuesday night, lying in bed, Johanna heard me in my upstairs office auditioning Everly Brothers songs and thought ,“Oh no!” Her criticism of the not-particularly-popular Tune of the Week feature is that it comes from the mental record collection of an aging folkie, and if I’m ever going to attract even slightly younger readers, I’m going to need to diversify this feature.

So I mothballed the Everly Brothers song — they were really good! — and have decided to turn this feature over to Picayune Sentinel subscribers for at least the next few months. In the comments section — available to paid supporters — leave your nominations along with a YouTube link and at least a few sentences explaining why this song is meaningful or delightful to you. Make the case!

I’m hoping for and will give precedence to songs that first appeared in this millennium.

Consult the complete aging-folkie Tune of the Week archive!

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