Haters gonna hate Lightfoot’s new campaign ad

& Hamline University witlessly feeds the right-wing outrage machine

1-12-2023 (issue No. 70)

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

• Last week’s winning tweet

• No love for Lightfoot’s “haters” commercial

• More grist for the right-wing outrage mill

• News and Views

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

• Mary Schmich — on prayer

• “The Mincing Rascals” preview — a fond farewell to Heather

• Re:Tweets — featuring the winner of the visual tweets poll and this week’s finalists

• Tune of the Week — Della Mae jams in a taxi on a John Prine song.

Last week’s winning tweet

Marl @Marlebean

For as long as that song was, you'd think the Ghost Busters would have mentioned their phone number at least once...

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

Misfire: Lightfoot calls critics of her record on crime ‘haters’ in a new TV ad

“You wouldn’t know it by watching the news or listening to the haters,” says the narrator at the top of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s new campaign commercial. “But on crime,” he says, “Mayor Lightfoot’s got a plan.”

Bronx cheer.

A challenger has a plan. An incumbent has a record.

And Sun-Times columnist Fran Spielman lays out why one doesn’t have to be a “hater” to raise an eyebrow at Lightfoot’s:

Lightfoot promised during her inaugural address to stop the “epidemic of gun violence that devastates families, shatters communities, holds children hostage to fear in their own homes” and leaves their parents wondering “if Chicago is a place where they can continue to live and raise their children.”

But that’s not what she has delivered.

Chicago closed the books on 2022 with at least 723 people murdered, a 13% decrease from 2021, which was the city’s deadliest year in a quarter-century.

But the 723 murders were still more than any other American city, and that number is 40% higher than it was in 2019 when Lightfoot took office and called the violence unacceptable.

The overall number of reported crimes has risen by more than 12% from last year, unnerving residents and sending some businesses packing. …

The 30-second spot continues: Lightfoot has “put more police on the streets.”

The anonymously written police blotter blog CWBChicago points to data posted to websites and begs to differ:

In fact, 21 of Chicago’s 22 police districts have lost cops under Lightfoot’s administration, and reports of major crimes were up in all 22 districts last year compared to 2019, when she took office. Overall, CPD’s force strength has plummeted from 13,302 officers when Lightfoot took office to 11,731 this month, according to the Office of the Inspector General. ... (And) major-crime reports (were) up 41% last year.

“Anyone who says there are simple solutions is lying,” scolds the narrator, setting fire to a straw man. Then he concludes with an outlandish promise, “Lightfoot won’t quit until we’re the safest big city in America.”

Yes, her first term was blighted by the global COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated numerous social pathologies. And yes, she has achievements she can point to.

But the “haters” rhetoric merely reinforces the impression that Lightfoot is thin-skinned and combative, taking personally the frustrations that many Chicagoans feel. City residents loved her four years ago. She won 74% of the vote in her run-off race against Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. That’s better than Richard M. Daley did in all but one of his six successful mayoral races. Many disillusioned former supporters have lost that lovin’ feeling, and calling them names won’t get it back.

Grist for the right-wing outrage mill

I received at least half a dozen emails this week urging me to weigh in on the lengthy New York Times report “A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job.”

The summary: Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor at Hamline University, a small, private university in St. Paul, Minnesota, offered numerous warnings to her global art history students that she would be showing a historically significant 14th-century painting depicting Islam’s founder. The warnings, including a two-minute content advisory prior to displaying the work, were directed at those Muslims who consider images of Muhammad to be offensively sacreligious.

Most Muslims believe that visual representations of Muhammad should not be viewed, even if the Quran does not explicitly prohibit them. The prohibition stems from the belief that an image of Muhammad could lead to worshiping the prophet rather than the god he served. There are, however, a range of beliefs. Some Muslims distinguish between respectful depictions and mocking caricatures, while others do not subscribe to the restriction at all. …

López Prater said that no one in class raised concerns, and there was no disrespectful commentary. (But) after the class ended, (Aram) Wedatalla, a business major and president of the university’s Muslim Student Association, stuck around to voice her discomfort. … Wedatalla declined an interview request, and did not explain why she had not raised concerns before the image was shown. …

Four days after the class, López Prater was summoned to a video meeting with the dean of the college of liberal arts, Marcela Kostihova.

Kostihova compared showing the image to using a racial epithet for Black people, according to López Prater.

“It was very clear to me that she had not talked to any art historians,” López Prater said.

A couple of weeks later, the university rescinded its offer (to López Prater) to teach next semester. … (Then) on Nov. 7, David Everett, the vice president for inclusive excellence, sent an email to all university employees, saying that certain actions taken in an online class were “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.” … Hamline’s president, Fayneese S. Miller, co-signed an email that said respect for the Muslim students “should have superseded academic freedom.”

Mark Berkson, chair of Hamline’s Department of Religion, defended López Prater in a Dec. 6 letter published in The Oracle, Hamline’s student-run newspaper.

The image in question is a 14th century painting included in a manuscript commissioned by a Sunni Muslim king in Iran and that it forms part of a cycle of illustrations narrating and commemorating Muhammad’s prophecy that is considered by art historians to be “a global artistic masterpiece.” The professor gave students both written and verbal notifications that the image would be shown. …

In the context of an art history classroom, showing an Islamic representation of the Prophet Muhammad, a painting that was done to honor Muhammad and depict an important historical moment, is not an example of Islamophobia. Labeling it this way is not only inaccurate but also takes our attention off of real examples of bigotry and hate. … Islamophobia is often defined as fear, hatred, hostility or prejudice against Muslims. The intention or motivation behind the act would seem to be essential here. …

(Banning all displays of such art in academia) would mean that these images could never be seen by, or shown to, anybody. In effect, it would require an erasure of an entire genre of Islamic art. Should no student be able to see this art? And what would it mean for a liberal arts institution to deem an entire subject of study prohibited? … Furthermore, if an art historian were to conclude that images of Muhammad are forbidden, they would be privileging the interpretation of some Muslims over others. It is not up to academics to make judgments about which forms of a religion are correct and which artworks must be purged from the historical record.

The editors of the student paper quickly took down the long, scholarly and thoughtful letter, explaining that this contrary opinion was causing “harm” to certain people in the school community.

It is not a publication’s job to challenge or define sensitive experiences or trauma. … It is our responsibility to listen to and carry (stories) in the most supportive, respectful, safe and beneficial way for the story’s stakeholders and our readers.

Tuesday, as the national backlash against the spectacularly misguided earnestness at Hamline continued, the editors reposted the letter with the grouchy concession, “The Oracle is a forum for diverse voices and viewpoints at Hamline University, and its editorial section must live up to that standard.”

For background: In February 2006, I entered into an online dialogue with Ahmed Rehab, then-director of communications for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), to address questions, issues and concerns regarding the violent response to cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad. That dialogue is posted in full here.

IN A SOMEWHAT RELATED STORY, MLive posted a story Monday with the headline “Repeated use of N-word by Michigan college hoops coach prompts player boycott.”

The headline was misleading on several fronts. “Michigan” refers not to the University of Michigan, but Albion, Michigan, home of tiny Albion College, a 1,500-student Division III school about an hour west of Ann Arbor.

And coach Jody May’s “use” of the N-word was not a deployment of it as a racial slur, but a quotation of it in the context of a reminder of how unacceptable it is:

In a Dec. 28 practice, May kicked a Black player out of practice for using the N-word while talking with another player, according to the document. May later told the team what the Black player said, saying the N-word in its entirety to quote the player. … He later apologized to the team, though indicating the player removed from practice was in the wrong.

May, who has been head coach at Albion since 2008, served a three-game suspension, but players now boycotting games say they want him fired. The Detroit News quoted an anonymous player:

For most of the team, it was the first time they had heard a white person use the word in general. It was devastating to hear it come from our head coach who we work hard for everyday to gain his respect and approval. We are emotionally impacted by this event as student athletes and as human beings.

This is unlikely to end well for May who, yes, should have known better than let those toxic syllables pass his lips even when quoting another person in an effort to convey the deeply offensive nature of that word. Witness how Mother McAuley High School fired veteran history teacher Mary DeVoto last year for a similarly academic “use” of the word and how the University of Illinois at Chicago Law School put professor Jason Kilborn through hell for writing an abbreviated form of the word in a final exam.

I will again quote the Feb. 11, 2022, column by African American linguist and New York Times contributor John McWhorter, “The New N-Word Standard Isn’t Progress:”

It is a strange kind of antiracism that requires all of us to make believe that Black people cannot understand the simple distinction between an epithet and a citation of one. … The assumption that Black people are necessarily as insulted by the mention as by the use implies a considerable fragility on our part. An implication that I reject and resent. If all someone has to do to ruin your day is say a word — even in the process of decrying it — your claim on being a strong person becomes shaky. … I am mystified by how comfortable so many of us are in giving white people this power over us. …

I simply cannot believe that so many bright, confident people are meaningfully injured by hearing someone refer to a slur. … Hypersensitivity for its own sake is self-destructive. It exerts a drag on the momentum of engaging in actual political activism.

A reason that I keep circling back to these “cancellation” stories in ways that don’t offer comfort to my more progressive friends is that I’m persuaded that wildly punitive overreactions to minor and correctable lapses in judgment or taste that don’t reflect malign intent do far more harm than good to the cause of tolerance and building coalitions for genuine respect. It pushes away actual and potential allies and, as McWhorter says, “it exerts a drag on the momentum of engaging in actual political activism.”

USC School of Social Work will no longer use the word “field” in the expressions “going into the field for research” or “field work” because it “could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant … (and) may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.”

The memo said, “Our goal is not just to change language but to honor and acknowledge inclusion and reject white supremacy, anti-immigrant and anti-blackness ideologies. … This is the bedrock of our values and principles and we all need to hold each other accountable to do better in this regard.”

Stanford posts, then pulls a ‘Harmful Language’ list

TheStanford Daily student newspaper reports:

Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) website was taken down (Jan. 4) after what the University described as “intense recent feedback” that the list was “counter to inclusivity.” … An effort co-sponsored by the Stanford CIO Council and the People of Color in Technology (POC-IT) affinity group, the EHLI was published in May with the intent of identifying and suggesting alternatives to discriminatory terms used in IT. … The list was met with widespread backlash in December, with criticism kicking into high gear after The Wall Street Journal published an article signed by its editorial board ridiculing entries in the list such as “American,” “master” and “blind study.” The website was hidden from public view on Dec. 19.

Other terms deemed problematic included “chief,” “guru,” “tribe,” “landlord,” “abort,” “peanut gallery,” “straight” as a term of sexual orientation, “user,” “victim,” “brown bag,” “cakewalk,” “white paper,” “prisoner,” “submit,” “beating a dead horse,” “hip hip hooray!” “trigger warning,” “circle the wagons" and “long time, no see.”

“Field work” did not, somehow, make the list.

A number of these words and expressions seemed all but intended to provoke not just eyerolls but anger and frustration among those who think liberal language policing has gone too far. It’s an alienating to downright dubious proposition that one should not refer to a bring-your-own midday meal meeting as “brown bag lunch” because the term is “historically associated with the ‘brown paper bag test’ that certain Black sororities and fraternities used to judge skin color. Those whose skin color was darker than the brown bag were not allowed to join.”

Yet these items obscured the fact that the sames list identified a number of terms decent people should avoid, such as “Oriental,” “crippled,” “committed suicide,” “spaz,” “ballsy,” “Indian giver,” “retarded” and “gyp.”

Several news outlets and publications joined the WSJ in condemning the initiative. Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro called the guide “ridiculous” and an example of “leftist absurdity.” 

USA Today columnist Ingrid Jacques wrote that the index demonstrates how “political correctness gone wild” and that “their list will only serve to chill speech and free and open discussions.”

Stanford chief information officer Steve Gallagher released a statement last week:

The primary motivation of this initiative was always to promote a more inclusive and welcoming environment where individuals from all backgrounds feel they belong. The feedback that this work was broadly viewed as counter to inclusivity means we missed the intended mark. It is for this reason that we have taken down the EHLI site.

I hope but don’t expect that the sites that mocked Stanford for posting the list will at least acknowledge the reconsideration. Do better, everyone.

News & Views

News: Gov. JB Pritzker signs an “assault weapons” ban into law

View: There will certainly be symbolic value if this legislative attempt at reducing gun violence survives court challenges. Studies suggest that outlawing military-style rifles and high-capacity magazines will cut the number of mass-shooting deaths, but that “their effects on the overall murder rate are probably minimal at best” because the vast majority of gun deaths still involve handguns.

Enacting and enforcing such a law will be a glimmer of hope that legislatures can do more to attempt to minimize gun violence than just wringing their hands and bleating about mental health problems.

News: Ex-aide to embattled Ald. Jim Gardiner, 45th, testifies he called critics ‘rats,’ vowed to rid ward of them

View: Blessedly, our house is half a block outside of the ward boundary that defines Gardiner’s fiefdom. Read Jason Meisner’s Tribune article this week to understand why we feel such relief. A not-so-lucky neighbor who lives a bit south of us contacted me to report that Gardiner had knocked on her door asking for her vote: “I asked him about the Block Club Chicago reporting and he actually said ‘cancel culture is real.’ I had to laugh. I asked if he meant that the things we saw on video didn't happen and he just said the same thing.”

News: Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is introducing an amendment to the House rules on Tuesday to allow C-SPAN cameras on the House floor during normal proceedings.

View: It is deeply painful to agree with the odious Gaetz on anything, but this is an excellent idea. Fox News reports, “The amendment would require the speaker of the House to allow C-SPAN to broadcast the floor proceedings of the House, much like during the contentious House speaker vote last week. … Typically, cameras are fixed on the dais.”

The reason for this is that legislative chambers are seldom filled and many thunderous speeches by our Solons are delivered to rows and rows of empty seats. They are intended for the voters back home.

News: The Old Town School of Folk Music is opening a restaurant at the site of the former Grafton Pub

View: Love the Old Town School. Loved the Grafton as a gathering place for students and jammers and occasionally for small performances such as “Songs of Bad Cheer,” a one time Halloween-time hootenanny featuring ballads of murder and death co-hosted by me and Mary Schmich.

I’m jazzed (folked?) about the resurrection of the Grafton, which closed in August after nearly 20 years on North Lincoln Avenue a few doors south of the school.

Land of Linkin’

• A great bad lip reading of the angry interaction among Republican House members last week.

• “An Ohio teacher, who was reading ‘The Sneetches’ to her Grade 3 class, was abruptly cut off by an administrator when a student said, ‘It's almost like what happened back then, how people were treated. Like, disrespected. Like, white people disrespected Black people.’ Read the rest of the story in this Twitter thread.

• I learned a lot from Edward Robert McClelland’s Chicago magazine article, “Following Steve Goodman’s Morning Train to Mattoon.” Why Mattoon and not New Orleans? Read the article and find out!

• “The Reason There’s Been No Cure for Alzheimer’s — Medicine had nothing to offer my father and millions of other Americans. I set out to find out why,” by Joanne Silberner in The Free Press.

• NewsGuard’s “Best and Worst of 2022” — “Throughout the year, NewsGuard tracked thousands of misinformation websites spreading false claims, as well as trusted news sites — some often overlooked — that consistently published accurate, high-quality news.”

• The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s report “Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2023,” finds “publishers are much less confident about their business prospects than this time last year. Less than half (44%) of our sample of editors, CEOs, and digital leaders say they are confident about the year ahead … (but) even those that are optimistic expect to see layoffs and other cost-cutting measures in the next year. … We may also see a further spate of venerable titles switching to an online-only model.”

• Former Tribune metro editor Mark Jacob reveals the 12 dirty little secrets of journalism.

• 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.

Mary Schmich: A few words on the word ‘prayer’

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

Not long ago someone wrote and asked me to send them a column I once wrote about prayer. I racked my brain. Did I write a column on prayer? And then I dimly remembered. And then I Googled and found it.

I have several friends who are going through what I was going through when I wrote this column—dealing with my mother’s decline--and I know a lot of people here on Facebook are going through similar things with someone they love. So sharing these thoughts on prayer—the word and the idea—in case it speaks to you. With random photo of a flower I once took because somehow it fits.

Thank you for your prayers.

Or if the word "prayer" makes you itch, then thank you for your good wishes. Your strong thoughts. Your good vibes.

Whatever you call it, I'm deeply grateful to all of you who have written recently to wish my mother well during her recent medical emergencies and to share your stories of tending to elderly parents or being one.

My mother's hanging in there, getting brighter by the day, and I enjoy thinking it's partly because she felt the encouragement from all those Tribune readers. The day before she went into surgery, I told her she had lots of people in Chicago praying for her.

"Oh, please thank them for me," she said.

I used the word "praying" with her even though it wasn't the word used by everyone who was kind enough to write and it's not a word I use a lot. But my mother prays often, in a very deep way, rich in open-minded religious experience, and I sensed that "prayer" was the word that would best communicate the good will sent toward her.

Illness and prayer often go together. Even people who don't ordinarily pray in a traditional, denominational way find themselves doing something that looks a lot like prayer when they or someone they care about is ill. People uncomfortable with the word, though, reach for synonyms.

"Tell your mom I'm rooting for her," said a friend.

"Does rooting mean praying?" I asked, knowing that "praying" would feel like a hair shirt on his agnostic mind.

(Cub fans, by the way, know that rooting is, indeed, praying.)

Some readers sent poems in lieu of prayers. One, by Rumi, is called "The Guest House." It begins:

 This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

If one function of prayer is solace, then a poem like that qualifies as prayer.

Here's the Wikipedia definition of prayer:

"The act of attempting to communicate, commonly with a sequence of words, with a deity or spirit for the purpose of worshiping, requesting guidance, requesting assistance, confessing sins, as an act of reparation or to express one's thoughts and emotions. ... Secularly, the term can also be used as an alternative to 'hope.' "

Whether or not we officially pray, most of us have some prayerlike way to express hope and ask for help, some way of reaching outside ourselves, or inside, to summon strength, acceptance, insight, all the qualities that let us endure the difficult, say thanks for the pleasures and root for the well-being of ourselves and others. That act, whatever we call it, involves some connection, some communion, with the unseen.

Many years ago, shortly before my father died, I was standing in the carport, heading for the airport, telling him goodbye.

"Pray for me," he said. He had cancer. "Will you pray for me?"

My mind did an infinitesimally quick, thorough analysis of the word prayer, registered that I didn't pray in the way of my childhood religion, wondered if I had the right to use the word.

And then I said, the only thing there was to say, "Yes."

I never saw him again.

But in my own way, I did pray for him. I was glad he'd asked, and that exchange expanded my notion of the word prayer. Prayer is one way we give ourselves and other people the belief that however things turn out, it will be OK. — Mary Schmich, May 2008.

Minced Words

Mark Guarino and Mark Jacob joined host John Williams and me on this week’s episode of The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We began with a salute to Heather Cherone, longtime Rascal regular, who has stepped away from the podcast now that she is both a WTTW-Ch. 11 “Chicago Tonight” political reporter and a fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. We went on to talk about “Chicago Tonight” moving to 10 p.m. from 7 p.m. and going to 30 minutes from an hour in length, Illinois’ new assault weapons ban, the race for mayor and other topics.

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 in which 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:

via @JoJoFromJerz

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

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

• People like to say to me, “You’re no brain surgeon” as a smug way of saying I’m not all that smart. Simple point of clarification — brain surgery is really not so difficult, just as long as we don’t get all hung up on whether or not the patient survives. — @WheelTod

• I feel bad for kids today who have to read books with such small print. Twenty years ago the print wasn’t that hard to read. — @smiles_and_nods

• Thinking about buying a jar of mayo every Monday and putting it in the work fridge until the whole damn fridge is just mayonnaise. — @OnlyJustABill

• I very much doubt that actual military commandos go into battle without underwear on. — @cluedont

• Me *hijacks plane, kills pilot, turns to friend: "OK. Now fly this thing!" Friend: “I can't fly a plane.” Me: “But you told me you were a master of the skies!” Friend: “No. Master of disguise!” Me: “Then why the heck are you dressed as a pilot? ... Ah OK I get it now.” — @WheelTod

• Another November day of going house to house eating everyone’s leftover lawn pumpkins. Do I like it? No. But does it pay well? No. Nobody asked me to do this. — @ronnui_

• It’s always annoying to be woken up by some guy mowing his lawn. Just go around me, man. — @scrumble_eggs

Vote here in the poll. For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Tune of the Week

I like John Prine’s song “That’s the Way That The World Goes ‘Round,” but I’m dazzled both by the performance of Della Mae here as well as the setting: “a Checker Cab previously used in the hit sensation television series ‘Walker, Texas Ranger.’”

From the band’s website:

Della Mae is a Grammy-nominated, all-women string band made up of founder and fiddle player Kimber Ludiker, lead vocalist/guitarist Celia Woodsmith, guitarist Avril Smith, bassist Vickie Vaughn, and mandolinist Maddie Witler. … Their mission as a band is to showcase top female musicians, and to improve opportunities for women and girls through advocacy, mentorship, programming, and performance.

That's the way that the world goes 'round
You're up one day, the next you're down
It's half an inch of water and you think you're gonna drown
That's the way that the world goes 'round

See more Della Mae videos here.

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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