The right hates cancel culture!

Except when it doesn't

9-18-2025 (issue No. 210)

This week:

• The political right is perfectly willing to try to ‘cancel’ people they don’t agree with

• Last week’s winning quip

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked on Trump’s lawsuit against the New York Times; on the death of former Gov. Jim Edgar; on the Republican effort to impeach Gov. JB Pritzker for his rhetoric

• Charlie Kirk in his own words

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

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

• Media notes

• An update on how my parents over in Michigan are doing in their mid-90s

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

• Cheer Chat — Update on preparations for the 27th annual “Songs of Good Cheer” winter holiday singalongs

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

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

• Good Sports — Should we change the rules on field goals, punts and tush pushes? In defense of Notre Dame football. How to enjoy stinking at golf.

• Green Light — Two readers recommend the book "Outclassed: How The Left Lost The Working Class and How To Win Them Back" by Joan C. Williams

More proof that the political right actually embraces ‘cancel culture,’ their piteous bleating about it notwithstanding

The White House and the conservative establishment are hell-bent on punishing those whose responses to last week’s murder of Charlie Kirk were insufficiently somber or somehow seen as tasteless or disrespectful.

If you are out there and you are celebrating the political assassination of a man who was exercising his free speech ... you should be held accountable. You should be fired. And that is the beginning and the end of it. Full stop. — Sen. Katie Britt, R-Alabama

When you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out. And, hell, call their employer. — Vice President JD Vance

Those celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk must be thrown out of civil society. If you are aware of anyone … who works at any level of government, works for an entity that gets money from the government (health care, university), or holds a professional license (lawyer, medical professional, teacher) that is publicly celebrating the violence, please contact my office. I will demand their firing, defunding, and license revocation. … These monsters want a fight? Congratulations, they got one. — U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, R-Florida

There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society. We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech. — Attorney General Pam Bondi

“Hate speech” is not expressing strong criticism of or hatred for a particular person or political philosophy. It’s speech that “calls for racial or religious intolerance; and false statements about racial or religious groups, with Holocaust denial being the most common example,” according to a New York Times explainer:

In a 2017 opinion in a decision striking down a federal law banning disparaging trademarks, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. set out the settled view, saying the government had no business “preventing speech expressing ideas that offend.” … Quoting a classic 1929 dissent from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Justice Alito added that “the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’”

Some folks even think there’s no such thing:

Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.

Who said that? Charlie Kirk.

The same Charlie Kirk who was so annoyed by the sight of players, coaches and other officials kneeling during the national anthem in 2020 that he tweeted “Kick them out of the league.”

“Dozens of people from all walks of life, including airline employees, doctors, and college professors, have been fired for alleged disrespect of Saint Kirk,” noted American Prospect.

And while ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel hasn’t yet lost his job — the network has him on indefinite suspension — his story is the most ominous. From the New York Times (gift link):

The abrupt decision by the network, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, assailed Mr. Kimmel and suggested that his regulatory agency might take action against ABC because of remarks the host made on his Monday telecast.

The network did not explain its decision, but the sequence of events on Wednesday amounted to an extraordinary exertion of political pressure on a major broadcast network by the Trump administration. …

In his opening monologue on Monday, Mr. Kimmel addressed the killing of Mr. Kirk by saying: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Conservative activists castigated those comments, saying they mischaracterized the political beliefs of Tyler Robinson, the accused shooter. Prosecutors said Mr. Robinson had written in private messages about Mr. Kirk’s “hatred,” but the authorities have not identified which of Mr. Kirk’s views the suspect found hateful; his mother told prosecutors that her son had recently shifted toward the political left and had become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.”

Mr. Carr, in a Wednesday interview on a right-wing podcast, said that Mr. Kimmel’s remarks were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people” about Mr. Robinson’s beliefs, and that the FCC was “going to have remedies that we can look at.”

Speculation about Robinson’s motives has been rampant, with some suggesting he might have been inspired by the hatred for Kirk voiced by ultra-right agitator and influencer Nick Fuentes to his nearly 1 million Twitter followers. (Saying he’s “just some retarded idiot … a bitch … a fake Christian …. let’s focus all our firepower on Charlie Kirk.”) Many on the right immediately jumped to the conclusion that Robinson was driven to (alleged) murder by extreme left-wing rhetoric, yet I’ve not seen any stories of them being punished for making assertions based on supposition.

There’s no harm in waiting until we know more before pointing fingers and attempting to make this tragic event fit into a broader political narrative.

To summarize the Kimmel story, the head of the FCC threatened the network and its affiliate stations with retribution over a program host expressing an opinion the Trump regime did not like. And the network folded quickly.

The increasingly proctoscular Washington Post didn’t even wait to be threatened before sacking veteran columnist and editor Karen Attiah for her series of posts related to the assassination on BlueSky last week. Only one of her salvos mentioned Kirk — an inaccurate paraphrase of a quote in which Kirk he argued that Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson — all prominent African-American women, “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously” and that they “had to go steal a white person slot.”

Attiah left the false impression that Kirk had said this assessment applied to all Black women.

From Judd Legum’s Popular Information:

Attiah …wrote several posts about the hollowness of condemning violence while opposing gun control. "America, especially white America, is not going to do what it needs to get rid of the guns in their country," Attiah wrote. "It will be thoughts and prayers, 'violence has no place' out of a performance of goodness, not out of the resolve to convince their communities to disarm." The Washington Post claimed these posts constituted "gross misconduct," put the safety of her colleagues at risk, and justified her termination.

On her Substack, Attiah posted the “offending” posts and wrote:

I did my journalistic duty, reminding people that despite President Trump’s partisan rushes to judgement, no suspect or motive had been identified in the killing of Charlie Kirk — exercising restraint even as I condemned hatred and violence.

My journalistic and moral values for balance compelled me to condemn violence and murder without engaging in excessive, false mourning … I made clear that not performing over-the-top grief for white men who espouse violence was not the same as endorsing violence against them.

Meanwhile over at Fox News, host Brian Kilmeade said on the air that if the homeless mentally ill declined to accept assistance they should receive an “involuntary lethal injection, or something. ... Just kill ’em.” He wasn’t even suspended — an apology for what he referred to as an “extremely callous remark” was sufficient to put him back on good paper with the network.

This post on Twitter put the situation crisply:

Fuck your feelings. But my feelings are precious. … Free speech is when I can say what I want without consequences. But your words have consequences. You should respect the dead. But I can mock them. Cancel culture is wrong. Except when it's used on people I disagree with. — Haraldur Ingi Thorleifsson

The political right has been bleating about “cancel culture” for years — and not without cause: My fellow lefties have in too many cases been disagreeably enthusiastic in their efforts to ashcan or otherwise muzzle those whose words and deeds deviate from liberal orthodoxy.

But long before the phenomenon even had a name, the right has been enthusiastic in its attempts to ban, burn and marginalize books, music, activists and anything or anyone else they feel has stepped over some cultural or political lines.

Trump himself is an avid canceler having called for the outright firing of, among others: Bill Maher, Chris Matthews, Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, Katy Tur, Karl Rove, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, Paul Krugman, Chuck Todd, Kathleen Sebelius, Donna Brazile, Fox News pollsters and Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter.

You want “cancel culture,” you steaming hypocrites? Try the McCarthy-era blacklists. Try the 2003 country radio boycott of the band then known as the Dixie Chicks for criticizing then President George W. Bush. Try Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell’s 1999 effort to take “The Teletubbies” off public television because he felt the character Tinky-Winky was gay.

Let’s turn to former Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois for a parting thought:

When I was a tea party congressman and right-wing radio talker, I made fun of the snowflakes on the left who couldn’t handle speech that offended them. Well lookie here. Now the free speech wussies, the way too easily triggered/offended snowflakes are all on the MAGA right. Hilarious.

I agree with every word except “hilarious.” We are at a very troubling moment.

Last week’s winning quip

The first wheel was invented in 3500 B.C., and somehow they put that wheel on my shopping cart. — @UncleBob56

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: Trump files a $15 billion defamation suit against The New York Times

View: American media are now on the brink of near total capitulation to Trump, and if The New York Times pays even one penny to Trump to settle this bitter, nonsensical, meritless suit, we are all thoroughly fucked.

The newspaper’s initial reaction to the suit was heartening:

It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists' First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.

ABC and CBS have both already bent the knee to frivolous, meritless suits filed by Trump and paid $16 million settlements to stay in his good graces. But I see the Times as a bulwark. It must call Trump’s bluff and insist upon depositions in which the truth of the many allegations and tales it has reported on Trump are thoroughly explored under oath (though it seems likely a judge will toss this suit out of court with considerable vigor).

Fighting Trump will be expensive. It will be time-consuming. It might even be risky, since Trump has filed his suit in Florida.

But the risk of settling — admitting any wrongdoing whatsoever — is enormous and existential. If the Gray Lady ultimately surrenders, no publication in America will be safe from Trump’s censorious and litigious wrath.

News: Former Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar dies at 79

View: I voiced some policy differences with the Republican Edgar when he was governor from 1991 to 1999, but they seem very mild in retrospect. He was what some refer to as “an indoor Republican” or a “knife-and-fork Republican” — a socially moderate, fiscally conservative politician who basically abstained from the culture wars and exuded a pragmatic decency. He was one of those reasonable people in the expression “reasonable people can disagree.”

I still know and hear from others on the political right these days, but hardly any are elected officials. Elected Republicans these days are almost all either in Donald Trump’s thrall or pretending to be in his thrall due to the intolerance in the MAGA base for dissenting with Dear Leader.

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you, Jim Edgar.

News: Illinois Republicans move to impeach Gov. JB Pritzker over his ‘hateful rhetoric’

View: My eyes hurt from rolling so hard. The Republican Party is led by a man — President Donald Trump — who refers to his political opponents as “evil,” “vermin,” “thugs” and “sick people,” and he characterizes them as “enemies” and “lunatics” who need to have the hell beaten out of them.

The impeachment resolution filed by Rep. Adam Niemerg, R-Dietrich, argues that Pritzker “has engaged in conduct that, under the totality of the circumstances, constitutes inciting violence and that is incompatible with the duties of his office.” Jan. 6, 2021, anyone?

His bill of particulars includes this passage from Pritzker’s State of the State speech earlier this year:

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. ... 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.

And the governor’s contention in an April speech in New Hampshire that “Republicans cannot know a moment of peace." Niemerg omits the next sentence in which Pritzker clarified: “They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox and then punish them at the ballot box."

Pritzker has, weirdly, branded as “completely false” the claim that he has called Republicans “Nazis.” A more accurate contention would be “technically false,” in that, yes, there’s no record I can find of him directly calling Republicans Nazis, but the implication that what’s happening in America in the mid-2020s has ominous echoes of what happened in Germany in the 1930s is heavy. And defensible.

Rather than a too-cute-by-half denial, Pritzker ought to lean into the analogy and point out all the ways that the Trump regime is working off a familiar authoritarian playbook — one used not only in Nazi Germany but also other dictatorships in modern history.

News: Hannah Einbinder wins the Emmy for best supporting actress in a comedy series.

View: Such nonsense. The character played by Einbinder, who is wonderful in “Hacks” on HBOMax, is every bit equal in importance as her co-star Jean Smart, who took home the award for best actress in a comedy series. To refer to Einbinder’s role as “supporting” is a silly contrivance.

Charlie Kirk in his own words

Live your life in such a way that, when you die, people directly quoting you doesn’t sound like a personal attack on your character. — The Volatile Mermaid on BlueSky

With that in mind, here are some Kirk quotes:

• Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson, they’re coming out, and they're saying, “I'm only here because of affirmative action.” Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person slot to go be taken somewhat seriously. (source)

• If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder: Is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action? (source)

• If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail out (the man who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband). (source)

• I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage. (source)

• The Democrat Party supports everything that God hates. … Right now this state is a Christian state, and I want to see that continue. (source)

• When Blacks in America did not have the same rights they have today, they were less murderous, there was less break-ins. Why is that? (source)

• Remember what BLM stands for: “Burn, Loot and Murder.” (source)

• Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor (Swift). You’re not in charge. … You've got to change your name. (source)

• We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately. (source)

• Joe Biden is a bumbling, dementia-filled, Alzheimer's, corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America. (source)

• We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s. (source)

• (The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.) was awful. He's not a good person. (source)

• There's a direct connection to inflation and the trans issue … They're the same in this aspect — when you believe that men can become women, why wouldn't you also believe that you could print wealth? If you believe that someone can change their gender, why wouldn't you also believe that money is wealth? (source)

• The one issue that I think is so against our senses, so against the natural laws and, dare I say, a throbbing middle finger to God is the transgender thing happening in America right now. … You hear that (Lia) Thomas, you’re an abomination to God. (source)

• Kamala Harris seeks to kidnap your child via the trans agenda. (source)

• If you're not an American, that's fine. Go back to your place of origin. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to harm you. I'm not going to imprison you. Just go back. Hasta la vista. But we have a culture to protect. We have a country to love. (source)

• Jewish donors have been the No. 1 funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits. This is a beast created by secular Jews. (source)

To be clear, none of these and other provocative statements (to use a gentle adjective) justifies physically harming Kirk, let alone murdering him. We must fight words with words and only with words. Last week’s assassination was awful and frightening. Full stop.

Land of Linkin’

• Politico: “‘The whole thing is screwed up’: Farmers in deep-red Pennsylvania struggle to find workers.” Gee, who could have seen that coming? See also, “Pro-Trump Chicago Restaurateur Heads To Washington To Urge President To Slow Deportations.”

• The Guardian: “US Justice Department removes study finding far-right extremists commit ‘far more’ violence.”

• Fox Business: “Grocery prices spike to highest in three years.” How’s that makey-greaty stuff working out for you?

• Mehdi Hassan: “Hypocritical Conservatives Are Using Charlie Kirk's Horrific Murder to Cynically Smear the Left —Have they forgotten all the Trump supporters who have killed, attacked, and threatened both prominent Democrats and opponents of this president in recent years? I haven't – and I have a list of them.”

• Michael Klonsky: “The New Pirates of the Caribbean.” “UN human rights experts have condemned recent U.S. military strikes on Venezuelan vessels, calling them ‘extrajudicial executions’ and a violation of international law.” See also Jeff Tiedrich’s post, “Elderly psychopath blows up another boat.”

• Associated Press: “Many sports fans are unhappy with how much it costs to watch their games, a new poll finds.”

• This is a very targeted link/recommendation: “Running Around Town: An Ann Arbor Memoir” is a delightful paperback collection of essays by my high school basketball teammate (and former Ann Arbor city attorney) Stephen Postema. It will jangle the memories of anyone who came of age in Ann Arbor in the 1960s and ’70s and remembers such places as the Treasure Mart, Middle Earth, Discount Records and the old, musty Blue Front. Postema is a great, self-effacing storyteller.

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:

■ The Daily Beast: “Trump, 79, Battles Jet Lag With Late Night Rage-Post Spree.”

■ The Reader and Unraveled: Agents’ “initial narrative of events was quickly disproven by videos captured by witnesses.”

■ The Bulwark: Stephen Miller—“the most powerful guy in Trump’s ear”—has “a plan for how to respond to the death of Charlie Kirk. You’re not going to like it.”

■ Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz recalls the day in 2019 she sat down with Kirk, “looking for answers. It didn’t go as I had planned.”

■ Reviewing Kirk’s last moments, Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten sees him “resorting to misdirection to avoid being caught in a lie.”

■ 5 rumors about Kirk, fact-checked: Surprise! Snopes says they’re all true.

■ Newsday’s apologized for a Pulitzer-nominated conservative artist’s Kirk cartoon, which you can see here.

■ Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, offers 10 ways to use your free speech without losing your job.

■ Columnist Christopher Armitage looks back to Chicago’s Black Panthers for three anti-autocracy tactics.

■ “Super gross … to see all these glowing obits for (Chicago broadcaster) Bruce DuMont”: Reader Manning Peterson was disappointed Friday’s Chicago Public Square failed to “mention that his Oak Park ‘housemate’ (and—after prison—husband) was arrested and convicted for child pornography. … Everyone in Chicago media knows about it, but no one mentions it?”

■ Your Chicago Public Square columnist’s final appearance on DuMont’s show, in 2020, wasn’t a lot of fun.

■ “If the Emmys can’t muster any excitement about television, why should anyone else?” Tribune critic Nina Metz delivers a searing review of Sunday’s Emmys broadcast. (Gift link, paid for by Square supporters.)
■ Critic Bill Carter: “The Emmys have a John Oliver problem.”

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

Media notes

Bruce DuMont, 1944-2025

I recommend Bob Goldsborough’s thorough obituary in the Tribune (gift link) of the local broadcasting legend, who died Sept. 10 at age 81. I appeared occasionally on DuMont’s “Beyond the Beltway” talk show in the 1990s and early 2000s, and he was always a cordial and well-informed host. I grew disenchanted with the increasingly conservative slant of the show — it became particularly noticeable during the Bill Clinton sex scandal — though I appreciated DuMont’s efforts to include voices from the other side. Also, since the show was recorded on Sunday evenings and required familiarity with what was said on the network chat programs that morning, preparing to appear came to feel like work. Still, I appreciated DuMont’s commitment to exchanges of ideas — and to preserving the history of broadcast communications — and am saddened by his passing.

Raising Kane

Former Tribune housing beat reporter Lizzie Kane’s byline appeared last Thursday morning on a freelance story at the Chicago Sun-Times, not long after she resigned from the Tribune in a dispute with management.

Charlie Madigan is coming out of retirement

Retired Tribune veteran correspondent and pundit Charlie Madigan, 76, announced last month he was stepping away from opining online. But now he’s back, announcing Tuesday: “I am not stopping as long as (Trump) is president.”

Disclosure: My wife is on temporary assignment as a news editor at WBEZ.

Gottsverdori!

I’m often asked how my parents are doing now that they’re in their mid-90s. The answer is as mixed as it was when I last wrote about their situation in mid-2021 (gift link). My mother’s dementia has left her unable to say more than a few words. She seems to recognize me and my father, and frequently gives this smile to us and her round-the-clock caregivers in the home in Ann Arbor where they’ve live since 1978:

The grief involved in losing her to this terrible condition has been incremental. There has been no one moment when I’ve felt the pain of all that has been lost, though old photos and letters can be particularly poignant. The sweet, caring, brilliant woman they recall is, for all practical purposes, gone. Has it been easier, losing her by degrees instead of quickly?

Speaking of letters, I now start each day transcribing one or two of the handwritten missives she sent to my father when he was away at college in the months before they were married. She was nearly 22, and a hopeless romantic:

Our love, my darling, creates a world all our own. This it could never do were it not for the unending and always changing qualities of our love. Were it not complete in itself it would never endure. Our love has endured and will continue to do so as long as we share and grow together. Our world is a world never to be shared completely with those other than of our making.

We may know of the time our love became a realization​, but when it actually began and how it began, perhaps even we may never know. This knowledge is unimportant for the actuality is ever​ present​, even when we are apart. What our love has done and can do for us will give the power to carry us through life as one. Our love can and will give us the strength to work together as one for our happiness and the happiness of those who will one day share this love.

Nearly 72 years later, those words have proven prophetic. She and my father have carried through life as one.

She is no longer able to sing with us around the kitchen table, as she did four years ago when fragments of lyrics would come to her. Now she just listens.

Dad is slowing down physically — a typical constellation of health issues has limited his mobility and impeded his motor skills. But he’s still sharp as ever conversationally, and his ability to remember the lyrics of the songs we have sung together over the years is at least as good as mine.

An example: Out of the blue during a recent visit, I remembered how he used to sing “Jan Hinnerk” to my sister and me in the 1960s. It’s a goofy German folk song, sung here in translation by Richard Dyer-Bennet from a 1956 recording. It tells the tale of a craftsman who could make talking dolls of various nationalities.

I started singing it with him and remembered that the English doll in the song said, “Damn your eyes!” the German doll said, “Hoch der Kaiser,” and the French doll said, “Vive l'amour,” but I could not remember what the Dutch doll said.

Yet when we came to that verse, “Gottsverdori!” came easily to Dad though he hadn’t sung “Jan Hinnerk” for 60 years. The word is evidently pidgin slang in the Netherlands for an expression that takes the Lord’s name in vain.

So that’s how he’s doing, Godzijdank.

In going through the trove of old family documents, I found this:

1954 sexist college humor

Quotables

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

Comparison in the thief of joy. — Theodore Roosevelt

We need a future where Americans can partake in politics without fear of having their homes invaded or getting shot while speaking in public. That will require defeating the fascist movement that Kirk devoted his professional life to promoting. And that means doing the distressingly difficult work of persuading Americans to reject demagogues who relentlessly hunt for scapegoats. — Aaron Rupar

I know Charlie Kirk valued debate and free speech because he blocked me for fact-checking his lies on Twitter and then put me on his organization's Professor Watchlist for writing a book he didn't like. — ‪Kevin M. Kruse‬

To document all of his far-right-wing beliefs would take an age, but a short accounting includes his frequently arguing that passing the Civil Rights Act was a “mistake,” stirring up hate for transgender people, whom he once called a “throbbing middle finger to God,” promoting the Great Replacement Theory both at home and abroad, arguing abortion is worse than the Holocaust, and backing Israel’s war on Gaza to the hilt. — Katherine Krueger

I think (President Donald Trump) might be suffering from some dementia. … I think he’s losing it. — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker

I condemn Kirk’s killing, regardless of who pulled the trigger or why. But I will not grant Johnson County honors to a man who made it his life’s mission to denigrate so many of the constituents I have sworn an oath to protect — and who did so much to harm not only the marginalized — but also to degrade the fabric of our body politic. — Jon Green, chair of the Johnson County (Iowa) Board of Supervisors

Northbrook has plenty of Donald Trump fans because it's an affluent, predominantly white community, and part of the Trump appeal is to well-off white folks chafing under the difficulty of their lives: the insult of hearing snatches of Spanish spoken in public; the pain of their children being exposed to ideas other than their own; the discomfort of worrying whether the person in the third stall might have been born a different gender. — Northbook resident Neil Steinberg

I’m a new generation of white person. I'm not living around Blacks. Sorry. I want white kids, and I don't want my white kids bringing home Black people to marry. It's racial for me. Call me racist. “Oh, very Christian of you.” I don't give a fuck. — Nick Fuentes

I’ve never filmed any of you guys when you're using the bathroom, so I don't know what faces you make when you're doing that. — University of Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian when asked about the grimaces that quarterback Arch Manning makes when he throws

Have a seat, get some water, because: I am about to blow your mind. I have heard from a friend with a small child that the child has been taught in daycare to sing the alphabet song thusly. Same tune, same notes, but different: ABCDEFG/ HIJKLMN / OPQ / RST / UVW / XYZ. Yes! Farewell to the slur of LMNOP. On the one hand, we will miss it. On the other, I think this is a good, albeit very disruptive, innovation. It assigns a note to every letter, which makes it easier to understand what is going on with the alphabet and the song. It gives L, M, N, O, P their due rather than cramming them all into one bit. This is truly a turning point in alphabet education! We need to keep track and see if in 20 years everyone under a certain age sings the alphabet this way. — Mimi Smartypants

Cheer chat

Update on preparations for the 27th annual “Songs of Good Cheer,” the winter holiday singalongs Dec. 11-14 at the Old Town School of Folk Music hosted by Mary Schmich and me.

Tickets went on sale Wednesday for Old Town School members and will be on sale to members of the general public Friday at 9 a.m. online — https://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/2025/12-11-2025-songs-of-good-cheer/ — and at 10 a.m. by phone (773-728-6000) or at the box office at 4544 North Lincoln Ave.

There are no bad seats in the Maurer Concert Hall, but there are some really good ones, so score your tickets early!

We had our first formal organizational meeting on Tuesday. It looks as though one of our cast members wants to take the year off to deal with other professional obligations. If that comes to pass, I’ll be announcing the substitute performer when we have the full band in place. We have a remarkably stable cast. Seven of us — Paul and Gail Tyler, Barbie Silverman, Steve Rosen, Mary and I — have been with the show since year one (1999).

Quips

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest:

The new nominees for Quip of the Week:

• I never judge. That's the Lord's job. I just pass along the verdict. Glory! — @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social

• If life shuts a door, open it again. It’s a door. That’s how they work. — unknown

• Doctor: Let's start the stress test. Me: OK. Doctor: *turns on the news*. — @midge.bsky.social

• My Tinder bio says that I have a corner office with views of the entire city, drive a $500,000 vehicle and that I'm paid to travel. My dates are always upset when they learn I'm a bus driver. — unknown

• “Not to toot my own horn” is a weird saying. Who else’s horn am I supposed to toot? — ‪@benedictsred.bsky.social

• It's amazing how easily people who don't agree with me have been manipulated by the media. — @wildethingy

• ‪What's your secret to being online all the time without contracting computer madness? For me it's being pure of heart. — @internethippo.bsky.social

• Hello 911? Everyone is kung fu fighting out here. Yes. Yes. You heard me, everyone. No, I’m not drunk. It’s literally everyone. — @buckyisotope.bsky.social

• Boss: "I need that report by noon." Me: "Consider it done." Boss: "Terrific" [2pm] Boss: "Where the heck is that report?" Me: "Huh? I thought we'd agreed to consider it done." — ‪@wheeltod.bsky.social

• Two things I learned yesterday: 1. I’m not too old to sit in a beanbag chair. 2. I’m too old to get out of one. — @sixfootcandy

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Why “quips”? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.” Also, I’m finding good stuff on BlueSky now as well. In fact, I believe today is the first time that a majority of entries came from BlueSky.

Minced Words

Brandon Pope, Marj Halperin and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We began by assessing the performance in office so far of Mayor Brandon Johnson, discussed Gov. JB Pritzker’s effort to draw comparisons between Hitler’s rise and ascendent authoritarianism in the United States, and reactions of the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Traffic lights:

• John: Green light for the famous review of the Grand Forks, North Dakota, Olive Garden restaurant written by Marilyn Hagerty in 2012. Hagerty’s death Tuesday at 99 brought new attention to the piece.

• Eric: Red light for “The Paper,” on Peacock. A spin-off of “The Office,” this show is wildly improbable and utterly cringe. Brandon gives it a yellow light.

• Brandon: Green light for the movie “Love, Brooklyn,” which opened this month in theaters. He reviewed the film in his must-read Substack “The Screening Room.”

• Marj — Green light for “After Life,” a three-season Netflix series starring Ricky Gervais as a small-town newspaper reporter grieving the death of his wife.

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.

Read the background bios of some regular panelists here.

Good Sports

Change the field goal rules?

My college friend and retired New York Times staff writer Bruce Weber posted this to Facebook:

There have been 41 successful field goals (my unofficial count) of 60 yards or longer in NFL history, and obviously they are becoming more common because kickers are getting better; 28 of the 41 have occurred in the last ten years, 19 in the last five. This August, in a preseason game, a kicker converted a 70-yarder. In my opinion, placekickers, with the most specialized skill of any players in the sport, have too much influence over the outcome of games. Yes, I'm partly being influenced here by the fact that the Giants lost this weekend after a 64-yarder tied the score at the end of regulation time. But should a team be rewarded with points if the offense advances only to midfield? And what happens when kickers are routinely making 70-yarders? Or even beyond that? I have two possible suggestions. One: Restrict field goal attempts to a maximum of 49 yards,35 inches. That is, the holder has to place the ball inside opposition territory. Second: Reward a field goal beyond 50 yards with 2 points instead of three, and beyond 60 (or 55) with 1.

I responded in his comment area:

A corollary rule that I have advanced — once a team crosses the 50, they may not punt (even if they lose yardage due to sacks, penalties, etc.). The offense has got to go for it on 4th down.

I don’t care for field goals in general and wouldn’t mind seeing them — and the point-after kick — eliminated altogether. In no other sport I can think of does a specialist with no other skills related to the sport enter the contest to perform a feat of skill — it’s like if a basketball team had a free-throw shooter who entered the game whenever a teammate was fouled just to take the shots. The designated hitter in baseball comes somewhat close, I suppose, but they can’t just enter the game whenever the situation calls for it.

Can we please rethink the ‘tush push’?

The Philadelphia Eagles used the “tush push” play seven times (or maybe just six?) in Sunday’s victory over the Kansas City Chiefs. Seven times would tie the NFL record for number of such attempts in a single game (set by the Eagles).

Before this season, the league narrowly voted to continue to allow the play, in which running backs line up behind the quarterback and shove him forward on short-yardage plays. As I’ve said before, football ain’t rugby, and pushing a ball carrier forward isn’t in the spirit of the game. My hope and prediction is that the league will ban the play starting next season.

Up the Irish!

As a Michigan alum, I’m not a fan of Notre Dame football, and I’m pleased that the Irish have lost their first two games of the season. But their demotion from sixth in the preseason AP rankings to 24th in the current rankings is beyond absurd given that the team’s two losses were by three points to a very good Miami (Florida) team (currently ranked fourth) and by one point to Texas A&M (currently ranked 10th).

These ratings are not standings, as such, but ostensibly the voters’ best guesses as to which teams would beat which other teams at neutral sites. And even I admit there is no way that Notre Dame wouldn’t beat many, if not most, of the teams now ranked ahead of them.

I’m very sure — not happy about it, but very sure — that the Irish will finish in the top 10 and make the postseason playoff. In the rest of the year, they play just one currently ranked team — No. 25 USC at home on Oct. 18 — and a 10-2 record seems likely.

Their insufferable fans* should take comfort in remembering the 1988 Michigan Wolverines, which started the season ranked ninth, lost their first two games — to Notre Dame by two points and Miami by one point — and fell to 19th place in the AP rankings. They went undefeated (with one tie) after that, beat No. 5 USC in the Rose Bowl and finished the year ranked fourth.

*I will stipulate that Michigan fans are also insufferable.

Channeling my feelings about golf

I saw this posted to Facebook under the heading “No one cares what your score was. Ever.”

I had the most miserable round I've played in years yesterday. Dropped three straight into the water on my 90-yard approach on the third hole. Had a 10 on two separate holes on my way to a 109.

I didn't get mad. I enjoyed the day with my playing partners. Because I realized that no one — not my wife, not my playing partners, not my best friends — no one cares about my golf score. I can shoot a 72 or a 120, and my life would not change an iota in either case. Get out there. Enjoy the game. Savor the great drives and flushed iron shots. Let the mistakes roll off your back. Have fun, because if you're not, you're spending a lot of money and mental anguish for no reason at all.

Ten years ago, I wrote this:

I choose to be a mediocre golfer.

I could hit straighter drives, crisper chips and truer putts. I could regularly shoot 3 or 4 over par for nine holes. But that would require professional instruction and, most important, practice — hours at the range and on and around the putting greens, turning those swing thoughts into reflexes. And I’ve chosen not to do that.

I’ve made the decision that I’d rather not spend the time and money to get better. The frequency with which I hit errant shots isn’t confounding, it’s inevitable.

In this light, every shot of mine that sails out of bounds, drops in the water or skitters pathetically along the grass in front of me isn’t a failure so much as it is a consequence.

Green Light

Green Light features recommendations from me and readers not only of songs — as in the former Tune of the Week post — but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on. Email me your nominations, and please include a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links, perhaps including excerpts from reviews or background articles. For TV shows, please include links to trailers/previews on YouTube and advice on where to stream them.

Ted B. recommends the book "Outclassed: How The Left Lost The Working Class and How To Win Them Back" by Joan C. Williams:

It's loaded with helpful data and pertinent points about the "Brahmin Left" vs. the populist right, and non-college vs. college-educated. There are a few spots where I disagree with Williams, but I found it to be generally an excellent read. Whereas the "Abundance" book is good for policy, Williams covers psychology, status, dignity, perceived condescension, etc. It also talks about things that can be changed immediately, whereas much of the policy ideas advances in “Abundance” will take some time to implement.

Along those lines, Marc Martinez recommends “How Democrats Forgot To Be Normal, with Joan Williams,” an episode of “Capitalisn't,” a podcast hosted by author and journalist Bethany McLean and finance professor Luigi Zingales from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Williams has done a great job diagnosing the Democrats’ loss of their traditional base, and has good ideas for regaining the political initiative without abandoning the progressive agenda.

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.

Contact

You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:

I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.

Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.

If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.

Social media

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn

• Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn

• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5

Help?

If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.

Thanks for reading!