A conversation with Marilyn Lemak
8-25 2022 (issue No. 50)
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.
This week
News and Views — on monuments, a controversial political ad and more
Ask Me Anything — a call for questions
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
ChicagoNow update — Tribune Publishing maintains silence on “unconscionable” move
The Weekly Schmich — Mary revistits the social lessons she learned in school
Tune of the Week: The steppy “Under the Summer Moonlight”
Marilyn Lemak: ‘I do think about my kids every single day.’
DuPage County Judge George J. Bakalis’ wish came true.
When sentencing then-44-year-old Marilyn Lemak to life in prison without the possibility of parole in May 2002 for the crime of murdering her three young children, he told her he hoped that “every day as you look at the (prison) walls, the floor, the ceiling, the bars, you will see the faces of these young children and hear these young voices asking you, `Why, Mom? We loved you, Mom. Why did you do this to us?'"
“I do think about my kids every single day in some way or another,” Lemak told me last week, speaking by phone from Logan Correctional Center roughly halfway between Springfield and Bloomington/Normal in the first published interview she has granted to Chicago-area journalist. “Time has made it — well, easier is not the word — but I can now talk about it without turning into a blubbering, sobbing mess.”
The “Why?” question has hung over this gut-wrenching story since March 4, 1999, when Lemak, a surgical nurse, methodically drugged and suffocated her children Nicholas, 7, Emily, 6, and Thomas, 3, in their picturesque Victorian home in Naperville. She then took a fistful of pills, slashed her wrists with a box cutter, stabbed a photograph of her estranged husband in the heart, bled onto her old wedding dress and lay down hoping to die.
“I was thinking, ‘He doesn't want me,’” she said, referring to her now-ex-husband, a physician who had moved out of the house and started dating another woman as the marriage had fallen apart. “‘He doesn't want (the children). This is a good thing. We're going to be in a better place, and he can move on. Everybody's going to be happy. Everybody. He's going to be happy. I'm going to be happy. The kids are going to be happy. Everybody's going to be happy.’
“I wasn't thinking that it was going to hurt anybody, as crazy as that sounds. And I know it sounds crazy. I know it. How can somebody think that? But that's where I was.
“I’ve heard so many people say, ‘Well, I've been depressed, and I would never kill anybody. I would never kill my kids.’ And the only thing I can think to say in response is that you have probably never experienced the depths of hopelessness and helplessness that I was feeling at the time.”
She awoke hours later and called 911: “I did it,” she told the operator. “My husband didn’t want us anymore.”
The overwhelmingly awful story of the pretty, wealthy, well-educated professional who methodically murdered her children made headlines around the world. What the hell happened there?
She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. When covering part of her trial in late 2001, I wrote:
What words would we use to describe the mental state of a woman — a reportedly attentive, engaged and kind mother who'd didn't even believe in spanking — who one day drugged her children and killed them with her bare hands? …
We'd say she'd lost her mind, gone crazy, come unhinged. We'd say she had snapped, fallen out of her tree and gone around the bend. … Deranged, loony, bonkers, cracked, touched. (But) these are not terms of law. You don't find them in the statutes or hear them in court. They are terms of common sense. She was whacked. Cuckoo. Meshuga. Mad as a March hare.
And whether it all adds up to the legal definition of "insane" is the question of the moment in a trial that's shaping up as a month-long semantic argument.
On one side, the prosecutors who want to execute Lemak say no, she was not "insane," she was just really angry because her husband was getting on with his life as their divorce proceeded.
On the other side, defense attorneys who want to put Lemak in a mental institution for treatment and possible release someday say yes, she was legally insane because mental illness had left her without "substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of her conduct."
Both positions seem, well, daft. … OK, she was out of her head. But it's almost impossible to believe she didn't know the act was terribly wrong. The law tries to look into the tangled thicket of the human mind and see black and white where sense and experience see infinite shades of gray. We see this pitiful, frail, bespectacled woman sitting silently at the defense table in jail fatigues (a bit of stagecraft by the defense), her lethal, veiny hands holding a cup of water and her entire body shaking slightly but constantly to the rhythm of her ever-swinging crossed leg, and we know only that she is neither innocent nor wholly evil.
Lemak, now 64, told me last week she has almost no memory of her trial and of the months prior to it she spent in the DuPage County Jail. “I was a zombie,” she said. “I don’t even know what kind of meds they had me on, but they kept giving me pills and more pills, and I was also drawing into myself. I sometimes think I remember fragments here and there, but I'm not really sure if it's something that I remember or something that somebody told me.”
She said she does recall feeling profound disappointment that Judge Bakalis didn’t sentence her to die after a jury rejected her insanity defense and that she remained suicidal during her first years in prison.
“I was constantly thinking, how can I kill myself? What can I do that’s going to work this time?” she said. “And I did some stuff to myself. I gathered up lots of ibuprofen and lots of Tylenol to try to overdose. Then I turned into a cutter.”
Nevertheless, she said, in 2005 she persuaded doctors to take her totally off the psychoactive medications they’d once said she’d be on for the rest of her life.
Reporters — including me — would write to her periodically to ask for an interview, but she said she threw all such requests into the trash because she didn’t want to bring the story back to light and unearth all the pain associated with it for others as well as herself.
Lemak finally agreed in August 2011 to an on-camera interview with French filmmakers preparing a documentary on women who harm their children. She said she wanted to speak out about the role severe depression can play in dreadful acts of violence and that she naively believed that the footage would be seen only in France.
But portions and outtakes of that interview became the basis for Chicago-area news stories. And the local coverage gave former DuPage County State’s Attorney Joe Birkett the chance to publicly reiterate the view that Lemak had not been legally insane when she killed Nicholas, Emily and Thomas.
“She never had a break from reality,” said Birkett, who is now an Illinois Appellate Court judge. “She knew what she was doing. She had a full appreciation of her conduct. It was a combination of depression, revenge and guilt over what she had done to her marriage even before she had killed her children."
That explanation did not satisfy her, Lemak told me. She was still haunted by the question Judge Bakalis had put into the mouths of her dead children: “Why?”
Janet Lagerloef, a freelance writer from Sugar Grove, helped point Lemak in another direction. She was among those who had been writing unanswered letters to Lemak, in part, she told me, because her battle with depression “as a mother who had experienced her own dark years,” led her to believe this was not a simple story of an angry wife taking revenge.
I met her for the first time in January of 2012. She said she was finally speaking out only because she hoped it would save lives. She made me promise not to sensationalize her children in any way. We shook on it. Depression was her only explanation for what she did.
Lagerloef, who is finishing up a book on the case, began helping Lemak look into the role that the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drug Zoloft (sertraline chloride) might have played in her grotesquely distorted thinking in the days leading up to the murders.
The doctor treating her for depression as her marriage was dissolving had started her on 50 milligrams daily of Zoloft in June 1998, but gradually increased the dosage to 200 milligrams a day starting less than two months before she killed her children and attempted to kill herself.
The possible role that drug played in those actions forms the basis of the petition for executive clemency Lemak submitted last year to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board in which she asked to be paroled. Here is a quote from that petition as filed by her attorneys Andy Vickery and Jed Stone:
For more than 20 years, I have been a model prisoner. I'm completely rehabilitated and certainly my release for time served or unsupervised parole would pose no threat to society as a whole or to any person. … At the time of my offense, I was under the influence of 200 milligrams of an antidepressant drug called Zoloft. At that time there was nothing on the label of that medication to warn … that this drug could trigger mania or psychosis and / or that it could precipitate irrational, out of character violence toward myself or my children. (Since 2005) a specific patient medication guide about these risks must accompany each prescription of this drug. …
A separate Black Box warning is now distributed to the prescribing physicians alerting them to the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors and advising them to closely monitor all antidepressant treated patients in clinical worsening and for emergence of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. … At the time of my offense in 1999, and my trial in November of 2001, Illinois Law did not permit my attorneys to raise involuntary intoxication as a defense to a crime of this nature. The statute which provides for this defense only applied if someone tricked you into taking a drug. It did not apply to a situation like mine, (where) the drug was prescribed by a medical doctor.
The petition cites the Illinois Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in People v. Hari in which the court ordered a new trial for a man who’d shot his wife and killed a man she was dating. At the time, the killer was taking 25 milligrams of Zoloft while also drinking alcohol and ingesting Tylenol PM.
“We do not decide here whether (the) defendant is relieved of culpability due to the alleged side effects caused by the ingestion of Zoloft,” said the unanimous opinion of the court. “Rather … we find that the jury should have been given an involuntary intoxication instruction, we reverse and remand for a new trial.”
Lemak agreed to an interview with me — her first with anyone but Lagerloef in 11 years — as part of an effort to draw attention to her bid for clemency. Attorney Jed Stone of Waukegan sat in on the 54 minute call but did not attempt to guide or correct Lemak, who spoke in a gentle, matter-of-fact voice.
DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin’s office filed a response in opposition to Lemak’s petition, categorizing her actions as “rageful” and saying prosecutors “do not accept” that “Zoloft made her kill her children.”
(Lemak) contends that she was unable to mount a defense of involuntary intoxication due to the state of the law at the time she murdered her children. Because she was taking Zoloft, prescribed by her doctor to help treat her depression, (she) suggests she was not legally responsible for killing her children. By means of her petition she asks the governor to determine that any such defense would have been successful.
She believes she has legal avenues available to her to raise such a challenge to her convictions. A successful challenge would result in the opportunity for a new trial. But (Lemak) would “much prefer executive clemency from the board and governor in the form of commutation to time served.” The people urged that this statement itself demonstrates that (she) is not an appropriate candidate for clemency — no miscarriage of justice can have occurred if there remains an avenue in the justice system for (her) to bring her claims and obtain relief. …
Executive clemency is a fail-safe to be used where all other avenues within the system have failed. … Petitioner states that she has “paid a heavy price” for her “part in” her actions of killing her three children. She cites her “loss of freedom for the past 20-plus years” and the “deterioration of many friendships and family relationships.” She notes her remorse and that she has taken “full responsibility for her part" in her actions.
But the “heavy price” she has paid is incomparable to the opportunities that she took from her children to grow up, have their own children (and) make a difference in the world. Or the price paid by their father and other family members (who were not able) to see them grow up.
Lemak’s attorneys haven’t yet filed for a new trial, hoping that Gov. J.B. Pritzker will see his way to releasing her after the November election.
Lemak told me that if she is released — or even if she never is — she intends to work to publicize the potential dangers of SSRI medications. For now, she said, she’s leading a very routine life in prison, helping to paint walls, assisting instructors putting together course packets, inventorying instructional books and otherwise trying to fill the long days by being useful.
“I'm not trying to make excuses for myself,” she told me. “I'm not trying to say, ’Oh, it wasn't me, it was just the medication.’ But I am trying to understand what happened. How did this happen?”
She was not in her right mind when she committed an act that was horrifying beyond words. That seems obvious. How and why she got to that state and how much if any mercy she deserves 23 years later is less obvious, and a question that I know from long experience will prompt harsh and angry reactions along with probing philosophical queries and even expressions of sympathy.
The state keeps Marilyn Lemak locked up not to prevent her from committing more crimes — her record was spotless before March 1999, and she’s been a well-behaved prisoner. The state keeps her locked up to underscore society’s revulsion at what she did and to punish her in the belief that there is no way she could sufficiently punish herself, no matter the reason she spiraled into murderous madness.
We can’t grapple with the question of justice until we grapple seriously with Judge Bakalis’ question: “Why?
News & Views
News: Chicago Monuments Project Advisory Committee recommends the permanent removal of the city’s three statues honoring Christopher Columbus, along with 10 other tributes on public land
View: Plant Columbus statuary on private property and let’s be done with this endless wrangle.
We can continue to debate whether Christopher Columbus was a brave, resourceful explorer who played a huge role in linking Europe to North America, or whether he was a depraved tyrant who oversaw the torture, enslavement and mass eradication of the indigenous people he encountered in the so-called New World. We’re never going to agree. Columbus is always going to remain an extremely problematic historical figure, and no amount of table pounding by Italian Americans who claim him as a symbol of pride will change that.
I happen to think it ought to be an insult bordering on an ethnic slur to equate the character of the avaricious, genocidal Columbus with the character of today’s Italian Americans. It’s beyond strange that a group so understandably touchy and offended at Hollywood’s linkage of Italians to organized crime would rush to the rhetorical ramparts to celebrate a man who, for example, shipped some 500 native people back to Spain to be sold into slavery (nearly half died along the way) and who amputated the hands of those who didn’t render enough gold to him.
The Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, which protested the statues’ removal, wants them put back by Columbus Day and protected at city expense — complete with motion detectors, 24-hour armed guards and surrounded by Plexiglas. (Sun-Times)
Yeah, no. Not a dime of taxpayer money should go to guarding monuments to a man whom many of us feel has been overpraised for decades.
A Tribune editorial Wednesday mocked the idea of relegating the Columbus statues to private spaces:
If Mayor Lori Lightfoot were to follow the recent recommendations of the Chicago Monuments Project Advisory Committee and excise Christopher Columbus permanently from Grant Park, logic dictates that she should then immediately rename Columbus Drive. After all, a prominent city street is etched in the public consciousness far more than a statue. People traverse a drive, work on it, walk down it, watch it pop up on their phone. That’s a much bigger deal.
Lightfoot could then declare that the city apologize for its participation in the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 and vow never to mention it again. She might proclaim that no city dollars shall henceforth be spent in Columbus, Ohio, until those good citizens see their way toward renaming their city. Same for Columbus, Indiana.
The statues, insisted the editorial writer, “are works of art.”
That’s obtuse. Cloud Gate — “the Bean” — is a work of art. The Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza is art. Honorary statues, no matter how exquisitely and skillfully crafted, are objects of veneration, symbols with far more power than the names of streets, cities, parks and so on. Be honest. You don’t think of Christopher Columbus when someone mentions Columbus Drive or Columbus, Ohio, just like you don’t think of the man Dan Ryan — if you even know who he was — when driving on I-94 south of downtown.
Statues are different. They exalt. They praise.
Chicago has a variety of statues representing historical figures. None of them were perfect, all being human. … Few would stand up to a purity test.
Yes, granted, virtually every historical figure of any vintage was racist, sexist,and homophobic by today’s standards. Even Abraham Lincoln, who once said, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races” and other things that would get him canceled today, fails that test.
Yes, it’s difficult intellectual work to sort out those flawed luminaries who were “of their time,” but whose contributions were overall beneficial from those whose misdeeds were of such magnitude that they belong in history’s rogues’ gallery. And it’s work that the monuments commission tried to do in good faith.
Some of these calls are pretty easy to my mind.
For example, the bust of Melville Fuller in the fieldhouse at Chicago’s Fuller Park (on West 45th Street near the Dan Ryan Expressway) really ought to go. Fuller was an “attorney for the South Park Board of Commissioners from 1882 to 1886 (who) made several decisions that were instrumental to Chicago’s parks,” yes, but he was also chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court when it handed down the odious 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that enshrined legal racial segregation in America for more than the next half century.
Just a man of his time? The lone dissenter in the case, Justice John Marshall Harlan — who I’m sure was not himself a perfect man — wrote:
In view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.
Other cases are harder. And the debates over many historical figures can be sincere and vigorous, not to mention tedious and irresolvable. My preference would be to have as few monuments as possible to people and as many monuments as possible to concepts — freedom, justice, civil rights, aviation, agriculture, whatever.
But as long as we must have statues, busts and bas-relief tributes to people, we should strive to contextualize them by editing the plaques and — as my friend Laurie Nayder suggested —bbringing back the “talking statues” concept that was in vogue six or seven years ago when visitors could use their phones to access short audio presentations. It would be far easier to edit and update those than to quibble endlessly about what ought to be mothballed.
News: Mayor Lori Lightfoot says a new political attack commercial deliberately darkened her skin “To make the scary Black woman even blacker” and called the move “the height of racism and cynicism.”
View: Sounds about right. The commercial was produced by People Who Play By The Rules, a political action committee supporting the candidacy of Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey. Radio host and failed politician Dan Proft, who runs the PAC, called Lightfoot’s charge “an insane assertion” and said that his team “did nothing to her pigmentation. … The video of Lightfoot was pulled from the web from her City Club speech.”
Compare these screen grabs from the two videos, then you tell me:
If you’re tempted to give Proft the benefit of the doubt, consider the claim in the same commercial that Gov. J.B. Pritzker backs the “mandatory release of violent criminals.”
Proft signed off on that lie and on the color balance in the Lightfoot clip, an image that reminded viewers with long memories of how Time magazine darkened O.J. Simpson’s face on a 1994 cover after he was arrested on charges he murdered his ex-wife. Time later apologized to its readers for the distortion.
News: Next Tuesday is the first day that prospective candidates for the mayor in Chicago can begin circulating petitions.
View: The time for dithering and teasing is rapidly coming to a close for those still on the “maybe” list for the Feb. 28 election. Look for Judy Frydland, Brandon Johnson, Pat Quinn, Tom Tunney and others to announce their intentions either way tout suite.
“To make it on to the ballot, candidates need the signatures of at least 12,500 Chicago voters,” wrote Heather Cherone of WTTW-Ch. 11. “Savvy and well-financed candidates will turn in three times that amount to ensure they can withstand a challenge from their rivals.”
Hopefuls will have roughly three months — until Nov. 28 — to submit signatures, and voters are allowed to sign for one mayoral candidate only.
News: When arrested for drunk driving, Paul Pelosi, husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, handed police officers his driver’s license along with a card that identified him as a supporter of a foundation that supports California Highway Patrol employees and their families.
Pelosi got a five-day jail sentence for drunk driving but ought to have been given five months for that sleazy move.
News: University of Illinois Chicago Law professor Jason Kilborn returned to the classroom this week after what amounted to a 21-month suspension for alluding to a racial slur on a student exam.
View: About time. I laid out the entire, appalling story of the crazed overreaction to a routine and tastefully edited test question here, and I offered a platform for dissenting views on the matter here. Kilborn’s suit against UIC is still making its way through the courts, and I’ll keep you updated on that.
News: The Grafton Pub and Grill is Closing After Nearly 20 Years In Lincoln Square
View: Oof! The Grafton, a gathering spot favored by folkies from just a few doors up Lincoln Avenue at the Old Town School of Folk Music, was always generous in allowing space for musicians to jam and to play small concerts in its back room. I’d thought, I’d hoped, that the owners had made it through the pandemic. Ah well. So long and thanks for all the tunes.
AMA alert
In the Sept. 8 issue, I will mark the one-year anniversary of the debut of the Picayune Sentinel with an “Ask Me Anything” feature where I will field questions readers might have about, well, anything.
I don’t promise to answer every question, and you may assume from my reticence what you will.
Land of Linkin’
“The Chicago Sky deserve your attention now — not just in the WNBA Finals. So turn on the game,” writes Tribune Deputy Senior Content Editor Shakeia Taylor. Done! Make room for me on the bandwagon.
In honor of Independence Day in Ukraine this week, I invite you to revisit Greg Sargent’s “Five vile things Trump did to Zelensky and Ukraine that you forgot about.” The condensed version. Former President Donald Trump: 1. Spread propaganda about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election; 2. Ousted the well-regarded U.S. ambassador to Ukraine; 3. Froze military assistance; 4. Withheld a White House meeting from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; 5. Turned Ukraine policy over to Rudy Giuliani. Conservatives who want to give Trump credit for forestalling the Russian invasion of Ukraine six months ago ought to consider that a big reason Russian leader Vladimir Putin didn’t invade is that he was waiting for Trump to bring the country down for him.
In “Trump Didn’t Bring Down Liz Cheney—Her Conservative White Base Did. Cheney, like her father, spent a lifetime feeding the rage of right-wing Republicans. Now they’ve turned on her,” Elie Mystal of The Nation writes that “Cheney’s political problem is that her white conservative base doesn’t think attacking the Capitol is wrong, so long as it is in service of continued white supremacy and dominance over the rest of the country. The same forces that propelled her into office based on her family’s willingness to hurt the ‘right’ people are now aligned against her because she’s no longer willing to hurt the people her voters think should be hung from a gibbet outside of Congress.”
In “Why Every New Trump Crime Just Makes Republicans Angrier at the FBI,” Jonathan Chait writes in New York that the weirdest thing about Republican fury at the FBI “is that it assumes the more credible party to this dispute is serial lawbreaker and pathological liar Donald Trump rather than the lifelong Republican he appointed to lead the agency. … The FBI has often bent over backward to placate Republicans only to be met with distrust when its results fail to conform to their most paranoid fantasies.”
Need to change your email address for this Substack subscription or any others you have? Full instructions are here.
Here is how to say, “My hovercraft is full of eels” in scores of languages.
The Picayune Sentinel on the air: On Thursdays at 4:30 p.m., WCPT-AM 820 host Joan Esposito and I chat about ideas raised in the new issue. The listen-live link is here.
The Picayune Sentinel preview: Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.
ChicagoThen, an update
In Tuesday’s Picayune Sentinel, I posted an email I sent Monday to Chicago Tribune General Manager P. Anthony “Par” Ridder asking about the abrupt, unceremonious and disrespectful way that Tribune Publishing pulled the plug last week on ChicagoNow, the volunteer blogging platform the paper launched 13 years ago this month.
Ridder didn’t reply to my letter or to a follow-up. To give him or his minions one more chance, I sent him another note asking if maybe he’d want to respond to this Picayune Sentinel comment from former ChicagoNow blogger Christine Wolf:
I can't tell you how disgusted I am by how unprofessionally -- and, frankly, cruelly -- we were treated as writers when this all went down. I still can't believe it happened the way it did. WHO DOES THAT? Who shows such blatant disregard like that?
I know I speak for many of my ChicagoNow colleagues in that I poured my heart into so many of my posts. I can't begin to imagine if I'd lost them all.
What no one's bothered to mention is that we also had draft folders, and I personally had more unpublished drafts than published pieces. All my drafts are gone. I was never offered a chance to review those drafts or save pieces I might want to share later.
Thank you again for bringing attention to this debacle. It's unconscionable, and my heart breaks for all that was lost. It's immeasurable.
No answer for Wolf from Ridder yet, but hope springs eternal. Maybe if more people in the current and former Chicago journalism community gave this issue a signal boost?
On Facebook, WTTW-Ch. 11 reporter Patty Wetli posted:
When Joe Ricketts pulled the plug on DNAinfo, he did the same thing. We reporters had no access to 5 years of our work. We got him to restore the site so we could have clips to show future employers but it was scary to realize how easily digital content could just evaporate on a whim.
When the Ricketts family is making you look bad, Tribune …
Meanwhile, when it comes to speaking up for shabbily treated volunteer workers, the Tribune Editorial Board found its voice last September in “Shame on the Art Institute for summarily canning its volunteer docents.”
Anyone with some tread on their tires who’s been fired by email can recognize the protocol. The writer blathers on about your years of dedication to your job, their gratitude for all you have done for all this time, and then hits you with some self-justifying jargon: the need to “update systems,” maybe, or the need to “rebuild” or “better serve” someone or some group. These days, perhaps even in the name of “equity” or “inclusion.”
By then you know what’s coming after all the disingenuous paragraphs: You’re canned, most likely in favor of a newer model.
Just such a weaselly letter was sent out Sept. 3 by Veronica Stein, the Woman’s Board executive director of learning and engagement at the Art Institute of Chicago. … We think this was a callous move in a cruel time in America. We get the appeal of ripping off the Band-Aid, but the resultant optics, not to mention the human cost of supporters feeling devalued, clearly was not fully considered. … (Art Institute President James Rondeau) should meet with them, apologize and find some kind of compromise that does not involve the spectacle of long-serving devotees of a great museum left to feel like they’ve been put out with the gift-store trash.
Boy at these words ready to eat!
Clarification —
“Par Excellence,,” the long-dormant blog I linked to in Tuesday’s issue, was not by Ridder but a parody written in Ridder’s voice. However my point — that it ain’t hard to keep old blog sites live — remains.
Last week’s winning tweet
In addition, there was a bonus all-politics Tweet of the Week survey. That winner:
Scroll down to read this week’s nominees or click here to vote in the new poll. I’ve also added a bonus dad-jokes Tweet of the Week poll for those who are fond of puns and stale humor. (I am!)
Mary Schmich: Social lessons I learned in school
My former colleague Mary Schmich (five back, second row from the right) posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is her most recent offering:
A few years ago I wrote a column about my first day of grade school — about how that was the day I learned that sucking my thumb made me look ridiculous. It was the first of many social lessons I learned in school.
In tribute to back-to-school week, here’s an excerpt from that column:
When you enter school, you enter society. You learn not just readin' and writin' but relatin', how to get ahead and get along. The world becomes your mirror.
Other social lessons I learned in school:
People who raise their hands fastest aren't always the smartest.
There's more than one way to be smart. Sometimes, the smartest way is to be quiet.
If you've got something to say, speak up.
There's always someone smarter. And cuter. And more popular.
Popularity is overrated. The desire to be popular can lead you to do the wrong thing.
You may not be sure what the right thing is until you've done the wrong one. This applies to the math test and the friends you choose.
So the test isn't fair. Study for it anyway.
Better to be alert for the test than to exhaust yourself studying all night. At least that's what I've heard.
No matter how nice you are, there will always be people who don't like you. Sometimes it's because you're so annoyingly nice.
Even the prom queen is worried she's unpopular.
Just because it feels good doesn't mean you should do it.
Sometimes you can make the grade without doing the work, but sometimes isn't always.
Humiliation is as inevitable as a pop quiz. You may pee on the floor during the spelling bee. You may throw up after drinking warm cafeteria milk for lunch. You will survive. It's too humiliating to admit how I know this.
Be nice to the weird kids. And not only because some of them will grow up to be richer and cuter than you..
Spend less time looking in the mirror. All mirrors are slightly warped.
Reasonable compromise is not the same as dangerous conformity. But beware--they can look alike.
Most of the things you learn in school won't sink in until you're out.
Not everything you learn in school is right. But to me, Pluto will always be a planet.
The full version, with the thumb sucking story, is here. — Mary Schmich
Minced Words
Host John Williams welcomed me, Heather Cherone, Brandon Pope and Brandon Pope’s biceps to “The Mincing Rascals” podcast panel this week. Topics included President Joe Biden’s announcement on partial forgiveness of student loans — a topic on which Heather and I are not in total agreement by any means — the monuments controversies in Chicago, the political attack ad that seems to have darkened the face of Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the shape of the race for mayor.
Here is a rush transcript of the show.
Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can now hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.
Re: Tweets
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor and so can’t be included in the classic Tweet of the Week contest where the template for the poll does not allow the use of images. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:
The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:
Slowly, Waldo's wife and Mr. Sandiego started putting the pieces together. — @donni
The generation that sang “we’re not gonna take it” in high school would like you to know that we are, in fact, taking it. — @lloydrang
I’m not difficult. I just want what every woman wants, bodily autonomy, an army of obedient wolves, pockets in every dress and a palace made from the bones of my enemies. — @OhNoSheTwitnt
Yeah, you just keep looking forward to hearing my reply to your email. Let it comfort you on those long winter nights. — @kipconlon
Every day of my adult life I am grateful that I had only limited ways to put my ideas on the internet as a young person. — @jaxwendy
Is there anything more capitalist than a peanut with a top hat, cane, and monocle selling you other peanuts to eat? — various/unknown
Your baby has no idea that you threw him a first-birthday party. All you did was inconvenience your friends — @SethMacFarlane
You're a certified grown up once you think, "That shower squeegee was a game changer." —@bitchisagenius
Everyone says they want a fairytale wedding but when I show up and curse their firstborn, suddenly I’m a jerk. — @Lazy_Inks
New Study Suggests Drinking Coffee Is Good For Your Health. Wait, I Think We Did Good For Your Health Last Time. Bad For Your Health, Then — @MatthewBaldwin
Vote here in the poll. Then fill out the bonus dad-jokes Tweet of the Week poll, quips sure to provoke eyerolls during carpool:
The goldfish was a little sick so I dripped some steroids in her bowl and now everything is hunky dory. — @Contwixt
Just got hospitalized due to a peekaboo accident. They put me in the ICU. — @ThePunnyWorld
A chicken running a marathon wears Ree-bokbokboks — @sonictyrant
Stunned to learn the second highest mountain is not Everer. — @FrescoKit
When Batman finally caught The Penguin, the judge let him out on bail because he wasn't a flight risk. — @GraniteDhuine
Keep your friends close but your M&M’s closer. — @bylinetd
Any sale is a back-to-school sale if you're facing away from a school —@DanMentos
I never finish anything. I have a black belt in partial arts. — @UnFitz
Twister is my favorite party game, hands down. — @JohnLyonTweets
[To the tune of “Hallelujah”] I heard there was a secret rat / A chef had hidden in his hat /But you don’t really care for French food do you? /Ratatouille /Ratatouille. — @TheAndrewNadeau
For instructions and guidelines regarding these polls, click here.
Tune of the Week
In the summer of 2002, I was one of many local media figures invited to fill in for then-WXRT-FM morning news anchor Mary Dixon for one day while she was on maternity leave. Marys for a Day got to chat on the air with then-morning host Lin Brehmer, read newscasts and play one song for the musically sophisticated XRT audience.
I agonized over my musical choice. What to play that didn’t seem like a cliche or feel out of format? Something with some traditional roots that didn’t feel too folky or lame, something high-energy and, I hoped, catchy?
I settled on “Under the Summer Moonlight,” Garnet Rogers’ percussive 1999 tribute to his aunt and uncle wrapped around a Scottish dance tune.
Canadian Garnet Rogers, 67, is the younger brother of the renown folk singer and songwriter Stan Rogers — “Barrett’s Privateers,” “The Mary Ellen Carter” and “Northwest Passage” are his best known songs — who died in a 1983 airplane fire at age 33.
Brehmer played “Under the Summer Moonlight” for me without comment, and I never once heard from anyone who’d been listening and really liked the song. I would not call it my favorite by any means — that changes all the time — but I did think it represented me well.
In comments, tell me what you would play if you got to pick just one song to play for a radio audience; one song that might tell people more about who you are.
Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!
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A truly excellent issue. My favorite line: “When the Ricketts family makes you look bad, Tribune…”
Lemak isn’t the only one to blame mass killings on SSRIs. we have these two experts: https://www.businessinsider.com/mtg-and-tucker-carlson-mass-shootings-ssris-antidepressants-explained-2022-7?amp