Trump's 'Gulf of America' nonsense has become a test for journalism

If reporters and editors don't stand up en masse against Trump's bullying of The Associated Press, there will likely be no end to his efforts to control them

2-20-2025 (issue No. 181)

This week:

• The news media are failing the ‘Gulf’ test

• Re: Gustibus. Is sushi our most divisive food?

• Last week’s winning quip — And a long note on the losing quip

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked

• That’s so Brandon! — Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s maladroit mayor

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

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

• Mary Schmich — About her hair

• Best Podcast of the Year finalists announced

• “Oh, What a Week!” returns to Ben Joravsky’s podcast

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

• Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

• Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists

• Good Sports — NB-eh! The Bulls have the worst ratings in the league, and I don’t wonder why

• Tune of the Week — “Jubilee” by Jonas Friddle

Pass the ‘Gulf’ test now, reporters and editors, or prepare yourselves for four years of dancing on the end of Trump’s puppet strings

Am I making too much of President Donald Trump’s order keeping Associated Press reporters out of his media availabilities and off Air Force One?

The Hill:

Tensions between the Trump White House and the press are reaching a fever pitch after the president banned The Associated Press from Air Force One and the Oval Office over its refusal to use the term “Gulf of America” in reference to the body of water previously known in the United States as the Gulf of Mexico.

This is bullshit phrasing by the Hill. It’s still the Gulf of Mexico to all in the United States except for those besotted by Trump’s jingoistic nationalism. Anyway:

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the administration’s actions regarding the AP.

“If we feel there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable,” Leavitt said.

Note the ominous characterization of the AP’s style choice as a lie. It is not a “lie” to refuse to go along with Trump’s looney declaration about the name of an international body of water.

I suggested recently that, instead of wringing their hands about this, media organizations ought to stay away from the White House press room, Air Force One and Oval Office PR stunts in solidarity. Trump thrives on attention, and like his spokespeople, he’s a geyser of lies anyway. You don’t have to be in the room to report on what his administration is up to.

If they don’t engage in a mass boycott in support of the AP’s right to refer to the Gulf of Mexico, they’re likely to be next. When an emboldened Trump doesn’t like their reporting on some other topic, he’ll kick them out, too. Maybe Leavitt will characterize as “lies” grim inflation or jobs numbers, reporting on the suffering of the poor in the wake of Trump’s budget cuts or fact-checks on Elon Musk’s claims about how much money he’s saving.

Axios has already compiled a long list of other gripes that MAGA has with AP style.

CNN’s Brian Stelter writes:

Why aren't more reporters and media outlets speaking out more vehemently to help The AP? In part, I'm told, it's because the White House Correspondents Association has chosen to keep a lid on the talks.

Rightly or wrongly, some of the people involved feel that grandstanding would only impede the goal, which is to get The AP back in its rightful place. To put it another way, increased pressure could result in decreased success.

But judging by the phone calls I'm getting, patience with this secret course of action is running thin.

Complicating matters further, "everyone assumes they're next," one of the people involved said — meaning leaders of other news outlets expect their White House reporters will face retribution too. Some of those leaders want to preserve access for as long as possible. They oppose a boycott because, as one put it, "rejecting access to the president is a strange way to argue that we should have more access."

Boycott opponents have it exactly wrong. Rejecting access to the president under these circumstances is the only way to maintain meaningful access in the future.

Readers, let your favorite news outlets know that if they go along with “Gulf of America” without acknowledging that this is Trump’s name for the Gulf of Mexico, you’ll unsubscribe or stop watching.

The lesson of history is like the lesson of the schoolyard: Stand up early to bullies because if you don’t, they’ll never stop.

Is sushi our most divisive food?

I lunged at a scrap of Trump-bait in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus — “Is this the scariest shit Trump has said yet?” — and the temptation is to continue sounding the alarm. He’s so much worse than I’d feared — so much a bigger threat to our constitutional order, our health, safety and freedom — and I’d feared a lot. But here’s a palate cleanser, so to speak: The results of the Picayune Sentinel’s click survey to find the most divisive consumable items.

The search started after my former colleague Mary Schmich posted about her strong aversion to eggs on Facebook. This touched off a lengthy discussion in her comment threads and later my comment threads about likes and dislikes — our gustatory quirks.

So I commenced a search to find what I’m calling “50/50 foods”— those foods or beverages that roughly half the people like and half the people avoid. I started with a dozen possibilities, giving respondents three choices: “Like,” “Avoid,” or “Will eat but would never order.”

I included eggs in the survey even though I was pretty sure that Mary is in a tiny minority in hating them. And, indeed, only 5% of more than 1,400 respondents said they didn’t like eggs, while 91% said they liked them. Here’s the full list from most liked to least liked:

• Eggs — 91%

• Shrimp — 80%

• Mushrooms — 77%

• Spinach — 77%

• Salmon — 76%

• Cooked broccoli — 75%

• Coffee — 75%

• Olives — 69%

• Feta cheese— 67%

• Raw onions — 51%

• Sushi — 46%

• Lima beans —29%

Though lima beans scored the lowest in the survey, just 36% of respondents reported that they actively avoid them, compared to 41% who actively avoid sushi. Lima beans had the highest “I’ll eat them, but I’d never order them” score — 34%. The next highest “eat but never order” score was raw onions at 20%.

Forty-one percent of respondents actively avoid sushi, making it the closest to a 50/50 food in this survey.

But I received numerous suggestions for a follow-up survey. Here are the eight entrants I selected for that:

• Cauliflower

• Asparagus

• Eggplant

• Blue cheese

• Plant-based imitation beef (Impossible/Beyond burgers, etc.)

• Beets

• Coconut

• Tofu

Fill out the survey and check back here next week for the results.

Last week’s winning (and losing) quips

I told my dad I ran out of alcohol and didn't have any money to buy any for the weekend. So he gave me the huge bottle of vodka from the cupboard that I’d replaced with water when I was 16. Life really does come back to bite you in the ass. — @Lizbeth_Ellen

I received many questions from readers about the last-place finisher in the poll:

A brunette, a redhead and a blonde were trapped on a desert island. And I won't get into the details, but the blonde did something rather foolish. The egg was very much on her face in the end. — @camerobradford

I loved this one! I’m a fan of what’s known as “anti-humor” in which the joke is the violation of the audience’s expectation that there will be a joke.

The classic anti-joke is:

Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?

A. To get to the other side.

The dry hyper-literalism is so antithetical to actual humor that it doubles back on itself to become funny again, at least to some of us.

Jokes tend to be rooted in the twist on expectations, as noted in “Academics just created a theory that explains why your favorite joke is funny.”

Humor most reliably originates from the “violated expectations” definition of incongruity—that is, when something upsets your idea of how things should be, rather than just how they usually are. The type of stuff that makes you say “That’s so wrong,” as opposed to “That’s not typical.”

Take this joke:

Shortly after her elderly father went out for a drive, a woman saw a TV news report about a problem on the freeway and called her dad’s cellphone. “Pop,” she said, “Be careful out there. They’re saying that there’s a car going the wrong way down the interstate.”

“One car?” says her father. “There are hundreds of them!”

Even if you anticipated the twist, you are likely to be amused at how the father doesn’t express awareness and alarm, as you’d expect, but insouciant surprise and a little indignation.

Had the father responded, “Yes, that’s me, I made a terrible mistake turning onto the exit ramp and I’m very afraid I’m going to cause an accident,” that would turn the joke into an anti-joke, funny for not being funny.

The futile act of analyzing humor can itself turn into anti-comedy, as illustrated by the offerings of “Professor Kenilworth,” the dour, fictional academic whose pitiless critiques of jokes appeared every so often in the National Lampoon from 1982 to 1985.

Professor Kenilworth might, for example, explain that the joke in which a duck asks for ChapStick at a pharmacy, and then, when asked for payment, says “just put it on my bill,” isn’t funny because ducks can’t talk and their bills, as mandibles rather than lips, wouldn’t benefit from the application of a waxy balm.

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

News & Views

News: The Trump administration is wildly cutting vital federal programs in the name of “government efficiency.”

View: I believe in government. It’s necessary on all levels to keep us safe and healthy — particularly the disadvantaged — and to guarantee meaningful liberties. That said, it’s also undeniable that the Democrats, in particular, have not been nearly as critical of certain government spending as they should have been.

Every level of government needs a “Really?” person or department to challenge expenditures to make sure they are targeted, efficient and necessary — not just employment or enrichment opportunities. That person or department should carefully wield a scalpel when trimming spending, not indiscriminately swing a meat cleaver.

The fallout from cuts to medical research, housing and health care assistance to the poor and to clean energy initiatives could be enormous and in some cases tragic, and all in the service of tax cuts that will primarily benefit the well-to-do.

For example …

News: Trump slashes funding for Alzheimer’s research

View: I doubt this is what MAGA voted for. The New Republic reports:

Approximately one-tenth of the workers have now been let go at the NIH’s Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias, or CARD, including its incoming director, a highly regarded scientist credited with important innovations in the field. What makes this particularly jarring is that it could set back efforts to treat and develop cures for these awful afflictions.

News: Quincy radio journalist apologizes for putting an imaginary gun to her head and pulling the trigger during a citizen comment at a City Council meeting.

View: She should have gone with the jerk-off motion. “(I) made a gesture universally understood to mean I would rather kill myself than listen to this,” said WTAD-AM/FM news director Mary Griffith said in a public apology at a subsequent meeting. “This was wrong, and there is no excuse for it. Feigning suicide is insensitive. … I will strive to do better.”

Of course the citizen who prompted this gesture by droning on about stolen elections then took to social media to declare the gesture “a threat from her to myself.” The Muddy River News reported that the man “also said he planned to file a report with the Quincy Police Department.” (insert jerk-off motion here).

Kicking an oil barrel down the road (Meta AI)

That’s So Brandon!

Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s mayor

Two potential challengers to Mayor Brandon Johnson in the 2027 election — Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza and 34th Ward Ald. Bill Conway — penned op-eds this week attacking Johnson’s ambitious bond proposal, which the council deferred Wednesday but is likely to come to a vote in a week or less.

The Tribune described the proposal this way:

Finance officials said that of the $830 million in planned borrowing, about $108 million would go to “menu” projects decided by each alderman and supplemental work from the city’s Department of Transportation; another $99 million would replace or repair bridges; $157.5 million would go toward new streetscapes and safety improvements at up to 150 intersections where crashes are most common; $74 million would update city buildings, including firehouses and fire-damaged buildings; and $65 million would replace city cars, install new speed cameras and provide new gear to firefighters.

Another $100 million would help replace lead service lines and $102 million would resurface residential and arterial streets and create 50 “green” alleys to help alleviate flooding.

Mendoza in the Sun-Times: “City Council, vote no on Mayor Johnson's $830 million bond issue.”

As ill-advised and tone deaf as it was for the Johnson administration to seek an additional $830 million in bonding less than 24 hours after having its credit downgraded, it would be absolutely reckless to structure it as an interest-only deal that defers principal for the first 20 years, as the Johnson administration reportedly plans. Paying only interest and no principal for the first 20 years would take the cost of the $830 million bond deal to upward of $2 billion. This shortsighted cash grab is a full scam on taxpayers and needs to be stopped. It would very likely invite another credit downgrade, plunging the city into junk territory.

Conway in the Tribune: “Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan to borrow $830M is reckless.”

Imagine taking out a mortgage on your house, but not making a single payment for the first two years. Then, for the next 18 years, you pay only the interest — never touching the actual loan balance. By the time you start paying off the principal, you’ve racked up so much extra interest that you’re now paying more than double what you borrowed. That’s exactly what the mayor’s office has proposed. … And conveniently, the real payments don’t start until after the mayor and City Council face reelection. …

Our financial crisis isn’t new. Past leaders left us with underfunded pensions, reckless borrowing and asset sales that prioritized short-term cash over long-term stability. They selfishly ignored the structural problems lurking beneath the surface, but now, the bill is coming due. We have a choice: Change course or keep kicking the can into a brick wall and hope it magically disappears.

Former Ald. George Cardenas, now a Cook County Board of Review commissioner, also weighed in with a Tribune op-ed:

I understand the critical needs to invest in infrastructure. Roads, bridges and public safety facilities are the foundation of a strong and vibrant city. No one disputes that these investments are necessary. … (But) the latest financial data shows that this bond issuance is not an isolated event — it is part of a broader pattern of unsustainable borrowing.

The Tribune quoted Joe Ferguson, the former city inspector general and current head of the Civic Federation, a fiscal watchdog group:

(Ferguson), said he … supports borrowing for capital projects, even in a budget crunch like the on the city faces. Without it, “it costs more later and your city starts to look like and function like the city everybody fears it is becoming. That feeds on itself.”

But given the structure of the payback schedule, Ferguson said the city “might as well carry a giant placard that says, ‘We’re kicking the can down the road before we even get on the road.’”

“This idea of no payments of principal for 20 years is really off the rails,” Ferguson said. … He expressed similar worries about even more backloaded payoff schedules for planned city capital borrowing in 2026, 2027 and 2028 laid out in briefing materials.

Johnson is by no means the first politician to want to spend tomorrow’s money on today’s initiatives, and Ferguson is right that we can’t let our infrastructure fall apart in the name of fiscal discipline, but not paying any principal for 20 years seems more cynical than prudent.

The “kicking the can down the road” metaphor, heard often in this debate, is clearly inadequate here — Johnson is kicking an oil barrel down the road.

Oh, and this…

Jake Sheridan in the Tribune: “Mayor Brandon Johnson and other mayoral administrations have hindered probes over fear of political embarrassment”:

In a scathing 14-page letter sent late last week to the head of the City Council’s Ethics Committee, Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said the law departments for Johnson and other mayors selectively impeded investigations by withholding records, slow-walking compliance with inspector general’s office subpoenas and demanding top mayoral lawyers be allowed to attend confidential investigative interviews. …

Witzburg wrote in her letter, which was first disclosed by the policy team at the Better Government Association, that the city’s Department of Law regularly asserts an undue and “expansive attorney-client privilege” to avoid complying with inspector general records requests without justifying why. The claim makes Chicago an “outlier on the national landscape,” she added, citing federal law and national standards.

Johnson allies Wednesday stalled an ordinance to curb the law department’s power in these investigations.

Land of Linkin’

• PoliticsGirl (Leigh McGowan) wants to know: “Where the fuck are our leaders?”

• Martin Short’s fake commercial for Short Blast! energy drink is a scream. Literally. “Lucifer’s rectum, that’s spicy!”

• I’ve updated my list of famous people who are turning 80 in 2025. Thanks to all who pointed out that Lou Dobbs will not be turning 80 this year because he is dead. Common sense tells me that DEI was responsible for that error.

• Capitol Fax: “Carol Marin named Lincoln Laureate.”

• Variety: “Julia Sweeney Defends SNL's Pat.” She contends the jokes in those skits were on the people who couldn’t tell her character’s gender. But I don’t know about that.

• Mark Guarino: “Bob Dylan’s lost Chicago month set him on a history-changing path — ‘A Complete Unknown’ documents Bob Dylan’s history in New York, but the singer spent an influential month in Chicago before heading east.”

• Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg had been indispensable lately. “FDA foot-dragging might have saved your hands, and you never knew it” is but one example.

• “Trump says Ukraine started the war that’s killing its citizens. What are the facts?” Spoiler alert, Trump is a damn liar echoing Russian propaganda.

• Steve Chapman: “Trump’s Executive Order Makes Anti-Trans Bigotry Official State Policy.” Chapman writes, “His campaign spent $215 million—or $134 for every trans person in America—on media ads to spread his demeaning message (about transgender people). … The ads were a textbook example of how authoritarians operate: Identify a vulnerable minority, portray it as a terrifying threat, and use the resulting fear and loathing to win votes.”

• Can you solve this week’s NewsWheel puzzle? It’s now a regular feature of the Picayune Plus, which is delivered first thing Tuesday mornings to the paid subscribers who keep this publication afloat.

• Devyn-Marshall Brown in the Chicago Reader: “The fight to ban mail into Illinois prisons ramps up” even though the American Civil Liberties Union says “there is no evidence that mail is the predominant source for contraband entering IDOC facilities.”

• “Is this the scariest shit Trump has said yet?” I made the case Tuesday that, yes, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” is the most ominous Trumpism ever.

• I mused in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus on which part of “DEI” — diversity, equity and inclusion — has so many on the right and even in the center stirred up. New York Times contributing columnist John McWhorter adduces some of the wretched, counterproductive excesses of DEI initiatives in “DEI Must Change: But Donald Trump’s executive order throws the baby out with the bathwater.”and concludes:

While deep-sixing the nakedly anti-white posturing of today’s DEI is one thing, it is another to strike down the basic acknowledgement that people should be given a fair shake regardless of sex or color. A mature society endeavors to search for talent beyond where it might seem most intuitive to look and uses imagination—and compassion—in allocating avenues to success. Affirmative action, in its initial sense—unsullied by the distortions of identity politics, the tacit commitment to lowering standards, and the temptations of virtue signaling—was a model of moral advancement for the world and something that the United States could be proud of. Outlawing affirmative action of any kind, as Trump attempts to do, will discourage institutions from trying to level the playing field at all. This overreaction to DEI’s acknowledged missteps not only sets us back—it is immorality incarnate.

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:

■ SFGATE: “Grappling with a staffing shortage under Trump, Yosemite National Park faces what one tour operator calls an ‘honestly terrifying’ round of chaos.”

■ “Safeguard”? Hah. The president of the Illinois League of Women Voters explains how Republicans’ “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act” would endanger voting rights for, among others, married women who’ve changed their names.

■ The Brennan Center for Justice: It would “undermine voter registration for all Americans. Congress should reject this antidemocratic and ill-conceived bill.”

■ The ACLU, which calls it “a direct attack on voting rights,” has launched an online letter-writing campaign to press Congress to vote no.

■ MapQuest now will let you name the Gulf of Mexico whatever you’d like.

■ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the [last] Week: Google.

■ Cooper’s colleague David Dayen: A “fire sale” of federal office space could spark a financial crash—because “real estate markets … are particularly depressed when it comes to the very type of inventory the government wants to sell.”

■ Wired: “Musk claims to have found rampant fraud in the Social Security Administration. There’s a much simpler explanation.”

■ Author and Chicago-born journalist Jonathan Alter offers “four ways to hold the line on Trump and the Muskrats.”

■ Politico: Democrats have been trolling Trump by projecting digital phrases onto Trump’s Chicago tower.

■ “24-Hour Economic Blackout”: A nascent movement targeting companies retreating from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has declared Feb. 28 a day to boycott companies that have been bending the knee to Donald Trump’s administration …

■ … and to avoid all nonessential spending in general that day.

■ Kindle user alert: ZDNET reports that, after Feb. 26, Amazon’s “changing the rules on stuff we already bought and paid for”—revoking the ability to download that material to files you can control yourself.

■ Apple’s closing its store in the struggling Northbrook Court shopping center.

■ If you rely on stuff from the Joann chain of craft retailers to make gifts, act quick: It’s closing hundreds of stores—including 26 in Illinois.

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

Mary Schmich: Hair!

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

I just stumbled on this photo of me and my sister Melanie back when we had some serious hair going on.

When I was about 4, my mother's mother chopped my white-blonde locks off to about ear level.

My father was furious. He declared my hair would never be cut again.

And that was fine because I came of age in the 60s when long hair was groovy.

(Though there were phases when I envied the girls with pixie cuts and flips and page boys.)

By the time I was old enough to make my own choice about my hair--meaning college--I was so accustomed to it long that it didn't occur to me to cut it.

Finally, in my mid to late 30s, I started getting it trimmed, which was terrifying at first. Then I came to appreciate slightly shorter as a vast improvement.

But I've never been able to relinquish long hair entirely, despite the people who have told me that it's inappropriate on a woman of my age. (A thing I started hearing about the time I started writing a column at the Chicago Tribune. Occasionally someone would send me my column logo with my hair redesigned by their ink pen.)

Her readers shared their hair stories here.

Good listening: Ambie finalists announced

The Podcast Academy has announced the nominees for its fifth annual Awards for Excellence in Audio (The Ambies). Comedian Tig Notaro will host the awards ceremony on March 31 at Chicago’s McCormick Convention Center.

The nominees for podcast of the year are:

99% Invisible: Not Built For This

“In a 6-part series, 99% Invisible explores how climate change is laying bare the vulnerabilities in the American built environment and how communities across the country have been left to bootstrap their own survival.”

Beyond All Repair

“Sophia Johnson was newly married with a baby on the way when she became the prime suspect in her mother-in-law's brutal murder. WBUR's Amory Sivertson reexamines a case unsolved, a family torn apart, and the woman who wasn't believed.”

Cement City

“Donora, Pennsylvania is a small town, about an hour south of Pittsburgh, with a population of 4,500. The steel mill there closed decades ago. There is no bank, no gas station, no grocery store and no McDonald’s. In 2017, journalists and University of Pittsburgh professors Jeanne Marie Laskas and Erin Anderson went to Donora, bought a house and stayed for three years, reporting on life in this one, small town. ‘Cement City’ is their new 10-part documentary podcast about the people of Donora.”

Dragon Age: Vows & Vengeance

An eight-part “immersive fantasy podcast series. … You’ll meet Nadia, a retired thief unknowingly working for the Dread Wolf. Nadia and her lover, Elio, find themselves in the midst of something much greater than them — a threat to the entire world —until Elio is seemingly banished to the Fade. Enter: Drayden, a writer with an interesting connection to the Fade. Drayden and Nadia team up on an arduous adventure to rescue Elio from the Fade with a little help from some familiar friendly faces.”

Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD

“Takes listeners on a journey to uncover the hidden history of the largest police force in the world – from its roots in slavery, to rival police gangs battling across the city, to everyday people who resisted every step of the way.”

Faraway

“A new sci-fi thriller podcast from Sonoro (that) explores the highs and lows of family, loss, and resilience against extraordinary odds.”

Fire Escape

“Amika Mota was a young mother, a midwife, and the daughter of a feminist icon. One night she caused a fatal crash that would separate her from her family and brand her as a criminal. Trapped inside prison, looking for any way out, she gets the call to join an all-female crew of incarcerated firefighters.” (Dramatized version of actual events)

Hot White Heist 2 (for Audible subscribers)

“Hot on the heels of ‘Hot White Heist’s’ critically acclaimed first season, Judy Fink and his team of amateur heist experts are back–and they’re in bigger trouble than ever.” (fiction)

Hysterical

“Hysterical investigates a mysterious illness that spreads among a group of high school girls in upstate New York. What is causing their sudden, often violent symptoms? Is there something in the water or inside the school? Or is it ‘all in their head?’ The series examines the outbreak in LeRoy, NY, believed by some to be the most severe case of mass hysteria since the Salem Witch Trials.”

Throughline

“‘Throughline’ is a time machine. Each episode, we travel beyond the headlines to answer the question, ‘How did we get here?’" We use sound and stories to bring history to life and put you into the middle of it. From ancient civilizations to forgotten figures, we take you directly to the moments that shaped our world.”

The full list of nominees by category is here.

Oh, what a bit of nice news!

Also on the podcast front, I’m happy to report the return of “Oh, What a Week!” the Friday afternoon iteration of “The Ben Joravsky Show” in which Joravsky and former producer Dennis Schetter banter entertainingly about the past seven days in the news.

It was one of my favorite news-review programs, but Joravsky let it drop after Schetter left the show in early 2003. Now he’s returning to co-host the weekly segment, and the first two OWaW segments have been terrific.

The Chicago Reader launched Joravsky’s daily podcast in 2019, but in light of a severe budget crisis, the alt weekly recently discontinued sponsoring the show. Last month, the paper put Joravsky, its veteran political columnist, on indefinite furlough.

Minced Words

Cate Plys, Brandon Pope and Austin Berg joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. They talked about how Trump is blaming Ukraine for the Russian invasion of that country, Gov. JB Pritzker’s attacks on Trump during his budget address and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s ambitious borrowing proposal.

Recommendations:

• John: A yellow light for the Oscar-nominated movie "Anora"— streaming for $6 on YouTube; will be streaming on Hulu beginning March 17.

• Brandon: A green light for "Court of Gold" — a docuseries on Netflix

• Cate: A giant red light for the movie "You Are Cordially Invited," streaming on Amazon Prime.

• Austin: a green light for "Stax: Soulsville U.S.A." a docuseries on Max.

Subscribe to the Rascals 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.

Read the background bios of some regular panelists here.

Quotables

A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

Trump and Musk are blowing America’s imperial foundations to kingdom come. Take USAID, which as the largest distributor of humanitarian aid in the world, has both done a tremendous amount of good work and also served as a carrot for America’s global predominance—until now. The agency has been all but dismantled, unleashing havoc all over the globe. HIV and drug-resistant tuberculosis are now spreading unchecked in many countries reliant on USAID medication, both proving America cannot be trusted and threatening outbreaks of those diseases in the U.S. itself. … America suffered no military defeat. We were not outstripped economically by a bigger or better-organized competitor. Rather, we elected an insane tyrant who is blowing up the foundation of our international power for no reason, all while he lets a South African immigrant ultra-billionaire and his crew of teenybopper fascists tear the wiring out of the federal government. — Ryan Cooper

Whole lot of folks, drenched by misinformation, are about to figure out that the 'deep state' they've been taught to despise are actually civil servants who keep our planes in the air, stop diseases from ravaging our communities, prevent banks from preying on us. — Dan Cluchey

America is finally being run like a business: a business acquired by private equity that’s being stripped for parts before being liquidated. — Jesse Brenneman

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame. I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks — arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends — After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face — what comes next?

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history — then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it. … If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this: It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. — Gov. JB Pritzker

Quips

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 Quip of the Week:

• If you want a reply from Santa, now's the time to write. The guy's just sitting on his ass. — @kipconlon

• I’m calling Waffle House to get an estimate on an omelet. — @Marcmywords2

• The first law of thermodynamics: Do not talk about thermodynamics. — @DamonHunzeker

• Most Looney Tunes characters are effectively indestructible, but I don’t think that’s true for Pepe Le Pew. I bet if you ran him over with a car he’d just die. — @pixelatedboat.bsky.social

• I'm not an idiot anymore, universe. Please stop with the lessons. — @checkthenest

• You look like the last math class you took was called “Math.” — @TheBoydP

• If I were a king I would let my guests sit on the throne for a bit. It would be a special day for them and they would spread the word that I’m a good king. I would, of course, still do evil stuff as well. — @thenatewolf

• 1972-2024: The Price Is Right. 2025: This Price Can’t Be Right. — @RickAaron

• MY MAN: (comes home) ME: (nervous) How was the store? MY MAN: Fine. ME: Oh, thank God! MY MAN: I ran into Jolene. ME: Oh, no! MY MAN: She mentioned you left kind of an intense voicemail. — @robdubbin

• Pluto is no longer a planet. It is now part of America. — @JoePontillo

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Why the new name for this feature? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.”

Good Sports

Tribune column by Julia Poe: “Bulls lead the NBA in lost viewers”:

Bulls television viewership has plummeted 63% from the 2023-24 season, the largest drop-off of any NBA team. … The change in regional network from NBC Sports Chicago to the new Chicago Sports Network has vexed Bulls and Blackhawks fans. CHSN has yet to negotiate a carriage agreement with Comcast, meaning many area fans must purchase an antenna — or dust one off from the attic — to access games over the air. And with the Bulls sitting 11 games under .500 at the All-Star break, many have chosen not to engage with the team at all.

I have not watched even one minute of a Bulls game this season, in part because of this annoying effort to put games behind paywalls, in part because I don’t have a rabbit-ears antenna, in part because the Bulls are mediocre and in part because the NBA season is simply too long to care much about any one game.

Wasn’t the lesson of the Blackhawks that keeping games off TV depressed fan interest and cost the team money in the long run?

Tune of the Week

Johanna and I had enough foresight to score tickets to Jonas Friddle’s recent sold-out album-release party at Space in Evanston. Friddle, a multi-instrumentalist and gifted songwriter originally from Black Mountain, North Carolina, now lives in Chicago and teaches at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

Friddle, 43, considers “When the Water was the Sky," the latest of his six albums, to be his “best work” to date. Just below is a fun song from it — “Jubilee,” also called “Swing and Turn, Jubilee,” a song first recorded in 1952 by the late legendary folk singer Jean Ritchie. In an online forum in 2001, she explained:

“Jubilee” is a Ritchie family gamesong, but I never (took out) a protective copyright on it because it was collected from another source in the community — everyone around knew it. A lady named Marian Skein wrote it down at Ary, Kentucky, and it was published by Lynn Rohrbough, Cooperative Recreation Service, Delaware, OH in 1939.

“Gamesong” is a term for dance-like movements performed in a group to a song that is often sung without accompaniment. “Ring Around the Rosie” is an example many people are familiar with, but there are hundreds of others. They often go by “play parties” or “singing games.”

As the liner notes on Jean Ritchie’s 1952 album explained:

Dancing for the adults was sinful—but singing games were quite proper, and thus the ingenuous mountaineer settled the weightiest question in the world—what is sin— with a euphemism, and had his pleasure too! Jubilee is a reel, lines of dancers facing, couples reeling with whirlwind elbow swings down their length. The lines join in a big circle for the chorus verse, “It’s down along the old railroad” as each couple ends the reel.

That’s Anna Jacobson of the “Songs of Good Cheer” cast playing fiddle behind Friddle.

I recommend sampling the entire Space concert playlist on YouTube. You will see why comparisons to John Prine and Steve Goodman — other local trad/folk musical treasures — are apt.

Support local musicians and buy a digital download of his new album at JonasFriddle.com or Bandcamp. The sad truth, as Friddle notes, is that “a single purchase offers more support than a thousand streams.”

I’ve been opening up Tune of the Week nominations in an effort to bring some newer sounds to the mix. I’m asking readers to use the comments area for paid subscribers or to email me to leave nominations (post-2000 releases, please!) along with YouTube links and at least a few sentences explaining why the nominated song is meaningful or delightful to you.

Info

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. Browse and search back issues here.

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