10 years after the killing of Trayvon Martin

The 'poetic truth' of this famous tragedy doesn't match the reality of the evidence

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2-24-2022 (issue No. 24)

Saturday marks 10 years since that awful evening in Sanford, Florida., when George Zimmerman, 28, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, 17, an event that touched off nationwide protests and ended up sparking the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement that has had a profound impact on how our country thinks about race and policing.

Martin’s name is frequently invoked along with the names of victims of police violence. And the popular, shorthand understanding is that Zimmerman, an armed and officious neighborhood watch type, got away with chasing and gunning down an innocent child because Martin was Black.

That narrative took hold as the story gripped the nation, with the protests leading to Zimmerman being arrested, charged and ultimately tried on live TV. His acquittal was widely decried and gave further impetus to action for social change.

Yet we still haven’t seen even one major, book-length account of this story that takes a careful look at exactly what happened that night and during Zimmerman’s trial.

Why? Because the common, superficial understanding of the story is wrong, and any objective account of it will undermine the popular “poetic truth” that Martin was the hapless victim of a racist vigilante who hunted him like a dog.

I wrote a number of columns on the case in its aftermath in which I attempted to use the timeline established by police 911 recordings and maps of the subdivision to figure out just how the tragedy probably unfolded.

My conclusion — which I outline at length here — is that Zimmerman, whose mother was Peruvian, did profile Martin based on his age, gender, attire and, yes, race, and assumed, wrongly, that Martin was up to no good as he walked that evening through a light rain from a convenience store to his father’s fiancee’s townhouse in the subdivision.

Zimmerman called 911 — not something a person planning on murder would do — and trotted after Martin in order to try to keep an eye on him for police, despite the advice of a dispatcher not to do so. The timeline belies the narrative of a chase:

7:12:08: Zimmerman tells the police dispatcher, “He ran,” referring to Martin. Shortly after this, sounds on the recording that indicated Zimmerman himself was running or moving quickly cease and his voice evens out.

7:13:14: Zimmerman reports to the police dispatcher that he’s lost sight of the person he’d reported.

 7:13:41: Zimmerman’s phone call with the police ends almost exactly two minutes from the time he got out of his vehicle.

Approximately 7:15:30 to 45, roughly two minutes later: Zimmerman and Martin’s fatal encounter begins, about 80 yards from his vehicle where he’d been standing, about 100 yards from Martin’s father’s fiancee’s house.

This tick-tock makes it clear that Martin, who could have easily made it safely home, doubled back to confront Zimmerman and beat him up, presumably for profiling and following him. The only other scenario that fits the timeline and the location of the shooting is that the pudgy Zimmerman chased the taller, lean Martin round and round before finally catching and shooting him.

Zimmerman’s account — that Martin came back to confront him and was getting the better of him in a fistfight when Zimmerman drew his gun and shot — fits the known facts pretty well. Jurors decided that Zimmerman was in legitimate fear of death or great bodily harm when Martin had him pinned to the ground during that fight, and therefore had the right to use deadly force to defend himself.

In some ways, the arguments by Zimmerman’s defense attorneys in 2013 were similar to the arguments made by Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense attorneys eight years later. In both cases, the jurors’ verdicts reflected the idea that, even though the defendants had behaved in a manner that some found provocative, they didn’t give up their right to self-defense.

Nothing about this analysis suggests that Zimmerman was a good guy or that Martin deserved to be shot and killed. Zimmerman was and has since been a problematic figure and should be nobody’s hero. Martin was just walking back from the store.

It says only that the simple narrative that galvanized a movement and changed America wasn’t what it seemed. It was a stupid fistfight that turned tragic because the person losing it was carrying a gun. If and when the definitive book on this case is written, that will become undeniably clear.

I remain more than willing to entertain arguments to the contrary that are based on relevant facts and evidence about the confrontation.

Last week’s winning tweet

Lindsay @Rollinintheseat

I’m at the age where I recognize more songs playing on the grocery store intercom than I do the radio.

Scroll down to read this week’s nominees or click here to vote in the new poll.

Leonard Goodman takes umbrage at the Picayune Sentinel

My item last week about the current perilous state of affairs at the Chicago Reader drew the ire of Leonard Goodman, co-owner and co-savior of the venerable alternative weekly.

Goodman has been involved in a bitter dispute with Reader Publisher Tracy Baim over a controversial column that he wrote for the paper published last November, “Vaxxing our kids: Why I’m not rushing to get my six-year-old the COVID-19 vaccine.” That dispute has opened a rift that threatens the future of the paper.

I didn’t get into many of the details, but used the story to underscore how unwise it is, as a general practice, to give a column to an owner or significant benefactor of a publication. That arrangement puts editors into untenable positions and, by blurring the lines of authority, threatens to circumvent the normal editorial decision-making process. Goodman disagreed, and I’m going to post much of his rebuttal along with my interjections below:

GOODMAN: You say I am “circumventing the normal editorial decision-making process.” I have been treated like any other columnist for three years. Submitting columns on deadline, accepting all fact checks and edits. My editor was happy to run this piece. She told me pre-publication that she thought it would be controversial but that she also believed many parents struggling with the decision would appreciate getting a different point of view. This has been true. While I have received vicious personal attacks, I have also heard from dozens of grateful parents.

I wrote that the "long tradition of newspaper publishers and owners claiming space for their own views” threatens the normal editing process, which seems self-evident. It was a lousy idea for Goodman, a prominent local defense attorney and member of the ultra-wealthy, philanthropic Crown family, to be writing a column for the paper that he co-owned and helped save.

Not that he was a bad columnist. As he points out, he’s had columns and op-eds published elsewhere. Baim agreed that he was a “great columnist” and wrote “we’ve enjoyed having you” in an email to Goodman on Dec. 15 according to email records Goodman provided.

Those emails do reflect that Reader editors were, indeed, initially pleased with Goodman’s vaccination column, thanked him for taking on a difficult topic and called his research “bulletproof.”

GOODMAN: You say that I objected to a post-publication fact check. That is false.

Just to be clear, I was quoting the Sun-Times article, which in turn was quoting Baim on that point. But the email record also reflects that Goodman was opposed to the idea of the Reader running a lengthy fact check rebuttal that was prompted by critical response to the column both from the public and from Reader staffers.

GOODMAN: It has been three months since the column was published and not one factual error has been identified. If there was an error in the piece, you print a correction. That is done routinely. I even sent in dozens of authorities post-publication supporting the truthfulness of what I wrote.

I have neither the expertise, the interest nor the patience to referee the controversial column itself. But the fact check report prepared by the Reader and provided to me by Goodman does list some 15 points of contention, including the allegation that particular arguments were “untrue” “inaccurate” or “misleading.”

Here’s just one quote from the fact check: “Goodman wrote that the ‘data suggests that kids are at low risk to spread COVID.’ This is inaccurate, and likely stems from studies earlier in the pandemic when kids were less likely to expose and be exposed due to school and day-care closures. Kids in the 5 to 11 age range are among the fastest-growing population of new cases. While some studies suggest that kids spread COVID less readily than adults, others suggest they spread it just as well. The CDC has found correlations between transmission rates in schools and transmission rates in the community.”

GOODMAN: What I objected to was that the publisher wanted to take the column down and publish this statement: “The Reader published Len Goodman's column of November 24, 2021, in violation of its ordinary standards for accuracy. The piece should not have run in its original form.” Then she attempted to replace my column with a new version written by an anonymous editor. The re-write does not correct any facts. It corrects my opinions to satisfy the critics.

As a former columnist myself, my inclination here is to side with the writer. Goodman submitted the column on time, and it underwent normal editing. If I’d ever been subjected to such an editor’s note, I would have taken it as a stinging, insulting rebuke. An unpleasant argument would have ensued. And the idea of a rewritten column under my byline would have infuriated me.

But the proposed rewrite — which was only suggested, not “attempted” — did in fact preserve the thrust of Goodman’s opinion while adding context that weakened some of his factual claims. But both the original and rewritten columns begin with this passage:

As a father of a young child, I am pressured to get my daughter vaccinated for COVID-19. And like many Americans, I have concerns about giving my six-year-old a new vaccine that was not tested on humans until last year, and that has been approved only for “emergency use” in kids. The feverish hype by government officials, mainstream media outlets, and Big Pharma, and the systematic demonization and censorship of public figures who raise questions about the campaign, provide further cause for concern.

And end with this:

We have been kept in the dark about vaccine safety and efficacy by our government and its partners in Big Pharma, who tell us they have looked at the science and it supports vaccinating our children against a virus that presents them with only the most minuscule risk of serious illness. As a parent, I will demand more answers before simply taking their word.

GOODMAN: I may not be a professional journalist but I do understand the difference between censorship and error-correcting. I also understand that editorial control happens before you publish. Not after you publish and an angry mob demands the piece be taken down and that the columnist be fired.

The reason the word “censorship” comes up is that Goodman’s representatives on the Reader’s board of directors invoked it in a December 17 resolution urging that the transition of the paper to nonprofit status be contingent upon the adoption of a mission statement that says the Reader is "a forum for free speech and welcomes all opinions, especially controversial ones, and abhors censorship of any kind."

The casual use of the term "censorship" to describe editing decisions by newspaper editors is dismaying, and the idea that a publication should declare itself welcoming to "all opinions" is nothing short of bizarre. The board used similar wording in a Jan. 27 resolution that also called for Baim to be fired if she didn’t offer her resignation.

GOODMAN: I also find it odd that you object to a co-owner publishing an opinion piece once a month, fully disclosing his position. But you apparently don’t have a problem with the nightly news doing health segments sponsored by Pfizer, or pro-war segments sponsored by Raytheon, or inviting retired generals to advocate for war without revealing they are on the board of Raytheon or General Dynamics.

I do have problems with sponsored news content and other conflicts of interest in the media.

GOODMAN: Also, while you can say I am dabbling as an opinion columnist, almost all my Reader columns have been picked up by other journals. The vaccination column was also published at Scheerpost, where I am not a co-owner or investor. The publisher did not disable comments the way the Reader did. If you go on that site, you will see more than 100 comments and a robust debate about my column.

In a follow-up note, I wrote to Goodman that I stand by the contention that it's a really bad idea to have a co-owner or publisher write a column because of the way it inevitably distorts the normal power relationship. Had Tribune editors ever wanted to take down, renounce or even rewrite one of my columns, my dispute with them would have been as writer to editors, not as boss to underlings.  (UPDATE: The Reader did not disable comments on Goodman’s essay — all comments at the paper were disabled in the summer of 2021 because “social media long ago uprooted comments sections as the dominant forum for public commentary and conversation with writers.” Many other publications eliminated comments because they were so frequently toxic.)

GOODMAN: I have no power over the management of the Reader. Maybe you’re right that I wouldn’t have a column if I weren’t co-owner. But my columns have drawn a lot of readers. If they sucked, they would have fired me a long time ago.

This gets to the heart of the matter.

In a Tribune op-ed on the controversy published this week, Chicago journalist Jamie Kalven wrote that, at the Reader, “the long-standing practice has been to publish a monthly column by Goodman. As I understand it, this was not a condition of his financial support but an arrangement that developed over time.”

In another email to me, Goodman wrote, “There was no agreement that I would write a regular column. It just kind of happened.”

Really!

Kalven and Goodman seem to believe that, of all the writers in Chicago who might have been qualified and available to write a column for the Reader, it “developed” or “just kind of happened” that the editors chose a major funder to write that column. Such a coincidence.

In contrast, Publisher Baim told me in an email that after Goodman came to the Reader’s rescue, she and her editorial team “were told multiple times by Goodman’s board surrogate that the column was part of the deal with his ownership stake in the Reader. In fact, when it did not run in the first months after we took over, we were reminded again about the need to have the column run.”

I confirmed this with another top editor at the paper.

You can decide which version makes the most sense.

The most revealing sentence in the collected emails appeared in a note Goodman sent to Baim on Dec. 13 when they were wrangling over if and how to publish the result of the fact check that the Reader had commissioned: "I am not going to let you replace accurate info with lies just to appease angry people who don’t like what I say in my op-ed," Goodman wrote.

Independent of whether Goodman was right or wrong to characterize the counterpoints as “lies,” the phrase “I’m not going to let you” jumps out. It’s not a demand or assertion that a staff columnist or a contributing columnist could ever make to a publisher or editor. It is a demand or assertion of a boss. And it illustrates the power imbalance that Goodman continues to say he doesn’t see and that Baim frequently made note of in her exchanges with him.

Those exchanges edged very close to a sensible resolution:

On Dec. 12, Goodman wrote to Baim that he agreed to "publish your fact checker’s … critique (and then) publish my rebuttal to the fact checker’s critique."

Baim offered a very similar option in an email to Goodman three days later: "We do the process of an editor's note above the original column, then the fact check, then your rebuttal." She did add that she thought that option "is just not very good. It will continue to beat a dead horse,” but she did put it on the table.

Yet bad feelings and tensions were so high that the deal never happened. Baim surrendered and agreed to leave the column posted online as is. But the pro-Goodman forces on the board of directors, howling about “censorship,” got into such a lather about this controversy that they are still holding up the transition to a nonprofit and seeking Baim’s ouster over an editorial decision about one column that, agree with it or not, was hers to make and was never acted upon.

I’ve long valued the Reader and hope it continues to publish. I am generally aligned with Leonard Goodman’s liberal politics and, like many journalists in Chicago, I’m a big admirer of Tracy Baim’s contributions to community and alternative journalism. I want them to resolve this.

In one of the emails, Goodman, who is no longer writing Reader columns, wrote to Baim, “If you care about the Reader, you will be doing great harm to its reputation by bending to the demands of an angry mob."

Removing the column from the web after it had been edited, approved, posted and published — one of the alternatives considered — would have been a lousy move, though within the purview of the editorial team.

But publishing rebuttal material related to a controversial column is just good journalism, not bending to anyone. And if Goodman cares about the Reader, he will order an end to this nonsense and work with Baim to generate a fact check rebuttal followed by his own fact check response, then work with her to bolster the future of the paper.

More than just the reputation of the Reader is at stake.

News & Views

Yes, I am aware that the Russian attacks on Ukraine are part of a story so potentially consequential that none of these items remotely compares. Nevertheless ….

News: Gov. J.B. Pritzker endorsed Anna Valencia in the Democratic secretary of state primary.

View: It was big news last week when retiring Secretary of State Jesse White added his endorsement of Valencia to the endorsements of Illinois’ U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth. White is popular and well regarded, a proven vote getter. His nod made it much less likely that well-funded former State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias would coast to victory in the June 28 primary.

Pritzker’s imprimatur, however, threatens to upend the race altogether. Not only is he a billionaire with the ability to more than match Giannoulias dollar for dollar, but also other donations and endorsements are sure to follow his lead. Valencia has now got to be considered the favorite over Giannoulias and a third contender, Ald. David Moore, 17th.

News: A ticket to Michael Jordan’s first NBA game in 1984 will reportedly be the most expensive ticket ever sold at auction.

View: I certainly understand the lure of memorabilia. A foul ball you caught at a game. A stub from a fantastic concert. An autograph from a favorite player. But I don’t understand its lure when divorced from one’s own memories and experiences.

This quote about the ticket in the Tribune story sounds daffy to me:

“It literally was at the stadium or the venue on the specific date,” said Michael Osacky, a Chicago sports memorabilia collector who runs BaseballinTheAttic.com. “It wasn’t worn by a player, but it was there. It saw the action.”

No. It didn’t “see” the action. Even if tickets could see, this one was almost certainly tucked into a pocket or a wallet. And it’s nuttier than NFTs that collectors who weren’t even at the game would value this piece of cardboard at even face value ($8.50).

News: Kyle Rittenhouse is raising money to go after media figures who continue to call him a murderer.

View: The Guardian story on Rittenhouse’s budding Media Accountability Project casts doubt on the effort, saying that calling someone a murderer even once they are acquitted is merely an opinion that “most observers agree … is protected under the First Amendment to the US Constitution.”

I wonder about that, though. If I walked out of a store with a candy bar in my hand and produced a receipt when a security guard falsely accused me of shoplifting, I suspect I’d have a libel case against anyone in the media who described me as a shoplifter.

Flashback on the world’s biggest TV in 1990

Thirty-two years ago, I wrote a story for the Tribune about the biggest non-projection TV ever made, the 43-inch Sony PVM-4300, which Abt Electronics, then in Niles, was selling for a cool $40,000 (the equivalent of $86,000 in 2022).

(Salesman Rob Gordon) produced a glossy information brochure. ''The digital frame memory circuit accurately synchronizes the timing pulse of the digital signal processor with the horizontal sync of the input signal,'' it read.

Suffice it to say that your TV set doesn't do this. Not even close. This TV set is to your TV set what your TV set is to an old Popsicle stick in the gutter with ants on it. ...

(But) is any TV set worth $40,000?

“For those who desire the finest in home entertainment systems, I believe it is more than worth it,” said Jim Palumbo, president of Sony Consumer Display Products Co., who is maybe not the guy to ask. He said that the improved-definition system-IDTV-virtually eliminates picture impurities, including something called “dot crawl,” a subtle but unpleasant shimmying. ...

Sony officials say they hope to sell 80 of the sets by the end of 1990. This may make us average mopes, squinting haplessly at the scan lines and crawling dots on our cheapo TV sets, wonder if a $40,000 TV isn't just some gross stunt similar to the world's longest sausage that showed up in the news recently. ...

“But any TV you buy today will be obsolete in 15 years,'' said Rob Gordon philosophically as the screen of the PVM-4300 momentarily went snowy with the clearest, sharpest static you have ever seen. “But this will certainly tide you over until something better comes along.”

In 2007, Abt was again displaying the world’s largest TV, a 103-inch model for $70,000 (the equivalent of $94,200 in 2022). Today, Abt, now in Glenview, sells a 100-inch Sony Bravia TV for $17,000, but other brands of similar size can be had elsewhere for much less.

TVs with 43-inch screens, meanwhile, now generally sell for less than $500 (the equivalent of $232 in 1990).

Land of Linkin’

• Thursday’s Tribune has a strongly worded editorial that touches on the Jason Kilborn case and the Mother McAuley High School mess about which I’ve been writing: “The Kilborn case is, on its face, ridiculous. In arguments about speech, intent must matter. It’s one thing to use an offensive term in ordinary or even pedagogical conversation. It’s another to use such a word to teach students how to deal with its use in a professional situation. Any reasonable person can see this. No healthy society should be banning words based on their abstract linguistic property.” The editorial follows by a week William Lee’s front page story on the Kilborn case.

• Tired of Wordle? Try Quordle, which gives you nine tries to suss out four solutions in a simultaneous game. If you’re still playing Wordle, Scoredle is a site that allows you to review and assess the wisdom of your guesses.

• Speaking of Wordle, in his first column for USA Today, former Tribune pundit Rex Huppke writes that “the puzzle is RIGGED, probably by communists. Also, Big Tech and the lamestream puzzle media are censoring me by refusing to say I actually got the Wordle answer right on the first try. It’s the only logical explanation that doesn’t require me to acknowledge I might have failed at something.”

• Former late-night host Conan O’Brien is often so wickedly funny reading the commercials on his “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast that it’s a bad idea to hit the “skip ahead” button during breaks. Tuesday’s “Oops, All Ads” episode features the best of O’Brien’s rambling, hilarious digressions that at times stray so far from the point that he says sponsors have refused to pay.

• Author Kate Clanchy’s experience with pre-publication “sensitivity readers” is an appalling reflection of the grip that the language police have on certain parts of the publishing industry. “I am enjoined not to quote from ‘My Ántonia’ by Willa Cather, as it is “an old novel”; nor to state that homosexuality has historically been taboo in Nepal, as homophobia comes from colonialism; nor to mention that the Taliban were terrorists. … Nor should I say that more middle-class than working-class children go to university; nor that Fetal Alcohol Syndrome leaves children unable to progress. … All of these things are, for my readers, ‘hurtful’ notions of mine, not unfortunate facts. Writing, they imply, should represent the world as it ought to be, not as it is.”

• Take that, Detroit! Consumer Reports’ new list of the 10 best cars of the year includes eight cars from Japanese manufacturers (two from Nissan, two from Honda, three from Toyota/Lexus and one from Subaru), one car from the Korean automaker Kia and just one car from a U.S. automaker, the electric Ford Mustang Mach-E.

• Rick Telander in the Sun-Times: “If I never see another Winter Olympics as long as I live, I’ll be happy. … What was that just-concluded, two-week-long thing we witnessed from Beijing? A frozen Lifetime Network soap opera featuring abused children and snowboarder bleached-hair. … A propaganda reel extolling the splendors of a Chinese isolationist boot camp? … Maybe the problem for me is I don’t care enough about half-pipes and ski circles, costumes, sequins, makeup, kiss-and-cries or festivals that can be won by medal-champion Norway (pop.: 5.5 million).”

• “Don't Look Now, but Republicans and Democrats Agree on Ukraine,” is another bracing take from Steve Chapman: “Most of the partisan disagreements are petty quibbles over the extent and timing of sanctions. Pretending that Biden is to blame for the invasion is a crude political ploy.”

• The New York Times’ look at Slate’s struggle for identity notes that the price of annual Slate Plus memberships will soon double to $119 a year. I have yet to forgive that publication for screwing over podcast host Mike Pesca. (Though Pesca has revived The Gist on his own and it’s as vital as ever)

• 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: Monday at 11:30 a.m. I’ll be talking 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. I wish I could take credit for it, but the fact that John’s show is now No. 1 in middays according to Robert Feder is probably unrelated.

Mary Schmich on ‘Twosday’

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts column-like thoughts most Tuesdays on Facebook. Here is this week’s offering:

I’d never given any specific thought to Tuesdays until a couple of decades ago when I wrote a column that contained these lines:

“Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.”

I remember picking Tuesday because it seemed the most innocuous, the least celebrated, of days. It wasn’t the start of anything. It wasn’t the end. It wasn’t hump day. It was, yawn, Tuesday.

But I started hearing from people telling me about the meaning of Tuesday. That the Greeks considered it an unlucky day. So did the Spanish. I checked it out. Seemed to be true. When the the 2001 terrorist attacks happened, I immediately thought, “It’s Tuesday.”

I don’t really believe Tuesday is a cursed day, though I do notice when strange things happen on Tuesday. It’s precisely because I still think of Tuesday as a blank slate of a day that when I was pondering whether to leave my Chicago Tribune job I was stopped for a long time by what I dubbed “The Tuesday Morning Problem.”

The problem, as I imagined it, was that if you left your job, you’d feel for a while like you were on vacation. And then one day you’d bolt awake in a panic and think, “What the !@##$ am I going to do with my life?”

Fortunately, my fear of the Tuesday Morning Problem didn’t turn into reality, though the thought did inspire my Tuesday morning Facebook posts. Which leads me to this Tuesday.

It's 2/22/22

Twosday, it’s been dubbed.

“Do you think 2/22/22 has a special meaning?” a friend asked a few days ago. She’d been reading stories that said it did. That it represented a portal into possibility, that it was considered an “angel” moment.

I regret to say that I do not think 2/22/22 has any inherent special meaning, that it’s not more a portal into possibility than Wednesday or Thursday. But patterns are fun. They’re one way we organize the chaos of life. Anything that encourages us to think of the day--any day--as a portal into possibility sounds good to me.

And this date does mean something to me because it’s the birthday of my brother Chris, the gap-toothed kid dancing with his dorky big sister in the photo above. I hope it’s a day that opens new possibilities to him. And to all of you too.

And, really, don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. — Mary Schmich

Minced Words

This week’s “Mincing Rascals” panel is host John Williams, Brandon Pope, Austin Berg, me and Lisa Donovan.

What is J.B Pritzker’s end game in taking the mask-mandate issue to the state Supreme Court? Will his handling of the pandemic be an issue in the November election? Where is the crisis in Ukraine headed? Does it really matter who the Illinois secretary of state is? These and other questions are chopped, sliced and diced in this week’s episode.

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

This week’s nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• “You do you” is the nicest way to call someone an idiot. — @rsf788

• If I pick up two cinder blocks and walk into the cold, cold Atlantic while we are talking, please don’t take it personally. — @SaltyMacTavish

• If that one teacher hadn't encouraged my writing I'd have a much nicer car. —@ozzyunc

• We Dutch are a very serious, pragmatic people. It reminds me of a joke my dad used to tell: “Why are there no famous stand-up comedians from Holland?” “Because the cultural milieu of the Netherlands makes such a career highly unlikely.” — @lloydrang

• We had a friend install a door for us and now every time we see him he asks us “How’s that door holding up?” and this is why you hire strangers to do house repairs. — @cygnusfive

• How you act when “Bohemian Rhapsody” comes on the radio is the real you. — @LaLa_Lyds

• What haunts me is that I am just not smart enough for so many people to be this much stupider than I am. — @KateHarding

• ·In a moment of crisis, America used to circle the wagons. Now, it has a circular firing squad. — @BettyBowers

• When I let someone in traffic and they don't wave, I picture myself using their guest soaps. — @a_simpl_man

• Just tell people you have a podcast. Nobody’s going to check. — @PonchoRebound

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Today’s Tune

I’m writing this from Savannah. Like last year at this time, Johanna and I have moved our operations to this lovely, warm coastal city in southern Georgia for a couple of weeks, and like last year we drove down. We enjoy long car trips together, and it’s far less expensive than flying and renting a car for the regional sightseeing we plan to do.

Anyway … to avoid traffic around Atlanta we once again drove through (and stayed overnight in) Knoxville. And I cannot think of Knoxville without thinking of “Knoxville Girl,” one of the most gory, gratuitously violent murder ballads in the American folk canon, if not the most gory, gratuitously violent murder ballad in the American folk canon.

It begins sweetly enough: The first-person singer meets “a little girl in Knoxville” and begins courting her. Then they go “to take a little walk, about a mile from town,” at which point … well:

Associating this psychotic crime with Knoxville is unfair. Writer Paul Slade’s deep dive into the history of the song traces its roots to the 17th century British murder ballad “The Bloody Miller” and a very similar, equally gruesome contemporaneous song titled “The Berkshire Tragedy,” in which the victim is “an Oxford lass.” It’s also related to “Wexford Girl,” another song from England, and the X sound evidently inspired singers to swap in Knoxville when the song crossed the pond.

The slayer of the Knoxville Girl is named Willie, as is the killer in fully a third of the murder ballads I analyzed for a 2001 column on the genre. This caused me some alarm recently when my niece began dating a man named Willie. But so far, so good.

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