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2-3-2022 (issue No. 21)
A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found 76% of Americans unhappy with President Joe Biden’s declaration that he plans to appoint a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the seat of retiring Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, and that he should consider all qualified judges for the position.
Pundits and pols have been amplifying this sentiment:
Jonathan Turley — “Biden is now going to create one of the more jarring and incongruous moments in the history of the Supreme Court. When the justices will hear arguments on the use of race in admissions, one member will have been selected initially through an exclusionary criteria of race and sex.”
Andrew Sullivan — “The replacement will be chosen only after the field is radically winnowed by open race and sex discrimination, which have gone from being illegal to being celebrated and practiced by a president of the United States.”
Tucker Carlson — “It’s possible we have all marinated for so long in the casual racism of affirmative action that it seems normal now to reduce human beings to their race.”
Ben Shapiro — “Biden’s determination to name a Black woman is “definitionally affirmative action and race discrimination.”
The National Review — “In a stroke, [Biden] disqualified dozens of liberal and progressive jurists for no reason other than their race and gender.”
Nikki Haley — “Would be nice if Pres Biden chose a Supreme Court nominee who was best qualified without a race/gender litmus test.”
Of course, for many decades, U.S. Supreme Court justices were exclusively white and male, and I didn’t hear conservatives whining about “exclusionary criteria.”
Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump pledged to appoint women to the high court and did so. Those who are pretending to be aggrieved at “litmus tests” didn’t say a peep when Trump unveiled a list of prospective judges that had been fed to him by the Federalist Society.
And overlooked in much of this discussion is George H.W. Bush’s assertion in 1991 that Clarence Thomas was the “best qualified” person in the whole country to sit on the Supreme Court. It was one of the most egregious, transparent, absurd and offensive lies in the history of American politics.
This isn’t a judgment about Thomas’ legacy on the court. It’s about the fact that Thomas was a 43-year-old bureaucrat with just 16 months experience as a judge when Bush nominated him. Everyone — or at least all moderately astute people — knew that Bush had selected him over vastly more experienced jurists because he wanted to appoint an African American to replace retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall — who in 1967 had become the first African American ever to sit on the court.
And I was among those who applauded that instinct — that concept — at the time, while I remained deeply skeptical that Thomas was the right person for the job. And I applaud Biden’s instinct and concept today as well.
It’s beyond high time for a Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court. Biden’s only mistake here has been to declare forthrightly that he’s acting to right that historical wrong instead of simply doing it.
I find myself in agreement with that oleaginous opportunist Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, “Put me in the camp of making sure the (Supreme Court) and other institutions look like America.”
Insofar as it’s possible for nine people to “look like America,” this is a noble goal and being able to help realize it is a “qualification.” Yes, the Constitution is supposed to be neutral and blind to color and gender as well as political philosophy and age, but how one sees the cold words on the page are obviously influenced by a number of factors — personal background and experience being prominent among them.
As for the National Review’s bleating about the de facto disqualification of “dozens” of jurists, what about the fact that judges of a certain age are automatically not under consideration because younger justices are more likely to stay on the bench for many decades (Thomas has passed the 30-year mark) and help cement a president’s legacy.
“We’ve had only one justice over the age of 55 confirmed since 1986,” writes Aaron Blake in the Washington Post. “What are the odds that the supposed best candidate has almost always not been someone older than 55? Excluding older candidates from the search would seem to be some form of age discrimination.”
Consider this a renewal of my call for 18-year terms for U.S. Supreme Court justices. Stagger the terms so that one expires every two years.
The public, for what that will be worth, is sympathetic both to the idea that hiring and admissions ought to help redress the wrongs of the past and to the idea that hiring and admissions should be based purely on merit. Consider these bullet points:
A 2018 survey from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that 72% of U.S. adults oppose giving preference to Black people in hiring and promotion.
A 2019 Pew Research Center survey found that 73% of Americans say colleges and universities should not consider race or ethnicity when making admissions decisions. Yet Pew also found in 2019 that 75% of Americans agree that it’s very or somewhat important for "companies and organizations to promote racial and ethnic diversity in their workplace."
In November 2020, California voters defeated by a 56% to 44% margin a proposal that would have allowed race and gender considerations to be a factor in public employment, education and contracting.
And in 2021, when Gallup asked vaguely about "affirmative action programs for racial minorities,” they found 62% support.
Such sentiments are difficult to reconcile cleanly, which is why this an issue I’m sure we’ll be revisiting here from time to time.
Scroll down to read this week’s nominees or click here to vote in the new poll.
It’s easy to dunk on ‘Chicago not in Chicago,’ but maybe it’s weird enough to work
It seems unlikely that tourists will be considering their options, encounter the unusual new “Chicago Not in Chicago” promotional campaign and say to themselves, “Hell yes, let’s go vacation in the home of the zipper.”
The campaign consists of reminders of all the everyday products and innovations that got their start in Chicago — high-rises, mobile phones, Ferris wheels, house music and more — and are now ubiquitous.
Those achievements are certainly worthy of some civic pride, although none of them are surprising given that this huge town was built by inventive industrialists and quickly became the hub of retailing innovation. But why knowing that makes you more likely to visit here, or move here to live, or bring your business here, remains a mystery to us.
Thinking literally, yes. But advertising campaigns are often more about creating a feeling and making a vague, general impression than they are making a hard sell. And if “Chicago Not in Chicago” can leave people with a warmer, more positive image of the city than they might be getting from news reports, then maybe, just maybe it will do its job.
Whoopi’s whoopsie
ABC has suspended “The View” panelist Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for saying on Monday’s show that, to her, the Nazi Holocaust is “not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”
She explained later that day to Stephen Colbert, “I think of race as being something that I can see. … (The Nazis) had issues with ethnicity. Most of the Nazis were white people and most of the people they were attacking were white people. So to me, I’m thinking, ‘How can you say it’s about race when you’re fighting each other?’”
It’s unclear to me why Goldberg felt it relevant to wander into the linguistic, cultural minefield of race, ethnicity and religion to muse about skin tone, but I don’t think her heart was in the wrong place. Her subsequent apology underscored that:
I said the Holocaust wasn't about race and was instead about man's inhumanity to man. But it is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race. Now, words matter and mine are no exception. I regret my comments, as I said, and I stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people as they know and y'all know, because I've always done that.
Whether she considered Jews to be members of a separate race, she correctly pointed out that the Nazis certainly did, and their effort to systematically annihilate the Jewish people was animated by a very particular and pernicious form of inhumanity.
In his Atlantic newsletter Deep Shtetl, Yair Rosenberg wrote Tuesday:
Jewish identity doesn’t conform to Western categories, despite centuries of attempts by society to shoehorn it in. This makes sense, because Judaism predates Western categories. It’s not quite a religion, because one can be Jewish regardless of observance or specific belief. (Einstein, for example, was proudly Jewish but not religiously observant.) But it’s also not quite a race, because people can convert in! It’s not merely a culture or an ethnicity, because that leaves out all the religious components. And it’s not simply a nationality, because although Jews do have a homeland and many identify as part of a nation, others do not.
One of my initial thoughts on this was that someone with the traditional Jewish last name of Goldberg should have been particularly attuned to the subtleties and chosen her words with better care.
But Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson and has no Jewish family roots or marital ties. In 2011 the Jewish Chronicle quoted her, “I just know I am Jewish. I practice nothing. I don't go to temple, but I do remember the holidays.” The publication added, “She refused to be drawn on the exact origins of the name.”
News & Views
News: Emilio Corripio, the 16-year-old charged in the slaying of 8-year-old Melissa Ortega, was on probation at the time of the shooting. He pleaded delinqent last fall to two armed carjackings.
Views: I’m not sure that locking up offenders is always the smartest way to go, but unsupervised probation for violent teens does not seem prudent. Elsewhere we have the story of an 11-year-old boy charged with armed carjacking in Mount Greenwood as just another reminder to those who piled on me last year for suggesting that a 13-year-old isn’t necessarily a “baby” and an “angel,” that even kids in early adolescence can be quite dangerous.
Meanwhile, Block Club Chicago reports the Corripio’s “defense attorney argued the shooting was instigated by the 29-year-old who was flashing gang signs on the street.” That’s what passes for an excuse to shoot these days.
In the wake of this shocking failure to hold criminals accountable, Chief Cook County Circuit Judge Timothy Evans is defending the juvenile court system. According to Evans, its job “is to try to rehabilitate that juvenile, to stop him or her from doing whatever the negative thing is.” (But) whatever “rehabilitation” supposedly is taking place, it has not deterred misguided teenagers from committing serious crimes.
News: A tsunami of analysis and second-guessing follows the Bears’ selection of a new head coach and general manager.
View: I wonder if anyone would notice if we dusted off the pontifications published and uttered in the past decade when Marc Trestman, John Fox and Matt Nagy were hired to coach the Bears and simply changed all the names to “Matt Eberflus.”
The whole thing is a crapshoot. All of it. … The long line of fired NFL GMs and coaches indicates that the crapshoot is not in the favor of the one rolling the dice. … The question is how much you believe in luck.
News: The team formerly known as the Washington Redskins has chosen “Commanders” as its new team name.
View: This was a misfire, as WTTW-Ch. 11 reporter Heather Cherone quickly saw :
“Commanders” in Margaret Atwood’s famous novel and the popular Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale” are the men who sexually enslave women.
News: Chicago police filed felony hate crime charges against a man suspected of spray-painting swastikas on synagogues and schools and committing other acts of antisemitic vandalism in the West Rogers Park / West Ridge neighborhood.
View: Some people feel that the statutes should not include “hate crimes” as a category. Vandalism is vandalism, the thinking goes. Battery is battery. Murder is murder.
To them I pose this question: Do you see a difference between someone spray-painting a smiley face on a synagogue and someone spray-painting a swastika? Are they the same offense — defacing private property — deserving of the same punishment?
I say no. The swastika is not just vandalism but an implicit threat to an entire community of people. If you say yes, what’s your argument?
While you still can, form a Wordle pod!
Even those of us who play Wordle every day find it annoying when people post their scores on social media. A good score may mean you were very clever or just that you were very lucky, depending on the word you chose to open with. It’s impossible to compare your performance with anyone else’s if you chose to start with different words.
So I recommend forming a text group of people who agree to start the puzzle every day with the same word, and then comparing your scores with one another instead of broadcasting them. We have a small family group — The Wordle Coalition — and we rotate nominating the starting word of the day, often one related to current events. After everyone has reported their scores, we reveal the words we used to get to the solution (or failed to get to the solution, as happened to me last week).
News this week that The New York Times has bought out the inventor of Wordle suggests that it may one day become a subscriber-only product (the paper says it will remain free for now) so you should probably jump on this idea.
Our starting word of the day Wednesday was “STORM,” in honor of the looming winter blast, which made it ridiculously easy to discover “MOIST” as the solution.
If you don’t like this idea and simply want to beat the game every day, a list of “ideal” opening words I’ve seen promoted online includes adieu, anime, arise, atone, irate, later, media, notes, parse, raise, ratio, resin and trace.
Speaking of Kilborn, I conducted an extensive interview with him live on WCPT-AM Monday afternoon during a guest-hosting stint in which I also interviewed mortician Elizabeth Fournier about human composting, writer Mary Schmich about life after the Tribune and freelance journalist Mark Guarino about the Kyle Rittenhouse and Jussie Smollett trials, both of which he covered. The audio is archived here.
Like Chicago-area writer Parker Molloy, when I hear “Newsweek,” I think of the responsible, respected digest of yore. My parents subscribed for years. But in a lengthy Substack post, Molloy provides a great deal of evidence to support her contention that, under new ownership, it’s become “a right-wing nightmare.”
Megan McArdle mulls crypto in “Maybe the volatility of cryptocurrencies is a feature, not a bug.” I’m “wondering if crypto isn’t ultimately some sort of collectible hobby, like Beanie Babies or Hummel figurines. … (Yet) after a decade of doomsaying, the crypto market has resolutely refused to go away. Bitcoin might have lost much of its value over the past couple months, but it’s still worth $36,000 apiece, more than 300 times its price when I first expressed skepticism.”
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 most recent 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.
Mary Schmich: Sifting through the bottomless past
My former colleague Mary Schmich posts column-like thoughts most Tuesdays on Facebook. Here is this week’s offering:
My brother Joe, the family archivist, sent me a couple photos yesterday of a tattered matchbook. On one side of the matchbook was a photo of my father in his late twenties. On the other was a drawing of an old German-style building and the words “Eitel’s Old Heidelberg 14 W. Randolph St.”
Joe, who lives in Oregon, had Googled around and discovered that Old Heidelberg was in Chicago. He wanted to know if I knew it.
I did not.
But I Googled around and learned that though Old Heidelberg is long gone, the building apparently remains. In 2019, Dennis Rodkin did a piece for WBEZ recounting its history, noting that in John Hughes’ 1991 movie “Curly Sue,” Jim Belushi’s character hung out there. It was built by two German brothers, the Eitels, in a time when one in five Chicagoans were of German descent. In the 1960s, it became Ronny’s Steak House. By 2019, it was an Argo Tea.
I found myself transfixed and perplexed by this matchbook, a relic of a time when cigarettes were stylish, ubiquitous and relentlessly marketed. Still, custom matchbooks in a restaurant? How did that happen? Did they make them on the spot? Did you order and have them mailed to you?
And I was transfixed by the photo of my dad, in the way most of us are fascinated by photos of our parents when they were young. Look at those bright eyes. Those good teeth. That guy who wasn’t yet changed by money woes and eight kids and too much alcohol, though I’m guessing that it’s around the third drink that a customer at Old Heidelberg would order a matchbook with his face on the front. Or maybe they were free?
“Where did you get this?” I asked Joe.
“Just another overlooked keepsake in a bottomless box,” he said. “Each time I sort through it hunting for one thing, I discover another.”
Every reporter understands that principle. And it sums up the quest to understand who and what came before you. The box of the past is bottomless, the surprises are endless. That's what makes it exhausting and fun and impossible. — Mary Schmich
What’s Mary been reading and watching over the last few months? I asked her when she was my guest on WCPT Monday afternoon, and here’s her answer:
“David Copperfield” and “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens
“Middlemarch” by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
“Buddenbrooks” by Thomas Mann
“The Way We Live Now” by Anthony Trollope
“The Righteous Gemstones” series on HBO
“White Lotus” on HBO
“Succession” on HBO
“Never Have I Ever” on Netflix
Minced Words
This week, “The Mincing Rascals” panel discussed the weather, hate crimes, Whoopi Goldberg, unvaccinated city workers, the race for governor, Chicago’s latest tourism slogan, the Washington Commanders and our streaming recommendations.
Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. Or if you’re still not into this new-fangled podcast thing, you can now listen to an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. Saturday nights on WGN-AM 720.
Re: Tweets
This week’s nominees for Tweet of the Week:
So we're all supposed to "prepare for blizzard conditions" just because the scientific establishment and the media say so? And anyone who says it will be sunny and 70 is canceled? All's I'm saying is, lots of money is changing hands in snow shovel industry. Do your own meteorology. — @jameshamblin
Working at any office now is like “Ok we’re transitioning to Salarya, but payroll is still in Bullfrog—did you see my Noosecock post? Submit your timecard on Fireplayce then jizz me on Smackdog . Do NOT upload to Crackerz without Yammer approval. — @gossipbabies
My “Nobody can deny that I am a jolly good fellow” shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. — @ThatEileenEnby
If COVID deniers hate social distancing so much, why do they keep going six feet under? — @MaddSinclair
“Thank you for calling Empire Carpets. How may I direct your call?” “To a bail bondsman. You’re the only number I have memorized”. — @RickAaron
Sending important customer service emails from a no-reply email address is a great way to let your customers know that your customer service sucks. — @ScottTKennedy
Give a man a fish and chances are you won't be asked to be in charge of buying a gift "from all of us" anymore. — @Tmoney68
Executive: I’m just worried the name “Hippos” doesn’t convey how hungry they are. Game Designer: how about “Hungry Hippos”? Executive: Better. but not strong enough. Game Designer: “Hungry Hungry Hungry Hippos”? Executive:: Haha, don’t—let’s not get crazy. But we’re close… We’re very close. —@TheAndrewNadeau
This guy keeps telling his two-year-old, “Hey, stop it!” I don’t think he knows how toddlers work. — @FatherWithTwins
Me: Yes, I’m sexually active. The dentist: I didn’t ask. — @IsabelSteckel
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Meanwhile, I posted this response to a Fox News tweet:
Most of the comments about my response were favorable, but one suggested, “Add ‘asshole’ to your bio,” and another said, “Can any of you morons tell me what good the jab does? Get it and you can't contract or spread COVID? Wrong. Get the jab and you don't have to wear mask? Wrong. Get the jab and you are less likely to have severe reactions to COVID?Wrong. Yet you still feel superior. Morons.”
I do, in fact, feel superior to — or at least far better informed than — those who don’t know that vaccines are proven to reduce the risk that those who contract COVID-19 will end up in the hospital or dead. And I feel superior to those who knock down straw man arguments, as though any serious health expert ever promised that the COVID-1 vaccines would be 100% effective (no vaccines are) or would instantly obviate the need to wear masks.
Joel Brodsky, former attorney for noted wife killer Drew Peterson, tweeted at me: “It’s obvious that you’re jealous of a man who isn’t afraid of death. You should be in awe of such bravery, not mocking it, but I guess you feel a bit ‘shriveled’ in comparison to such a man.”
Bravery? I’d call it obstinancy. As for Brodsky, the tone of his tweet was very on brand. In June 2020, the Sun-Times reported that the Hearing Board of the Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission cited his “aggressive tactics and relentless vindictiveness” in recommending that he be stripped of his law license for two years. The story reminded us that U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall fined Brodsky $50,000 in 2018 for his conduct in a case, calling it “unprofessional, contemptuous and antagonistic.”
Speaking of the bottomless past and social media …
Eric Zorn, 1973 yearbook photo. Not pictured: The booger
An old friend posted the other day to our Ann Arbor High Schools Class of `76 Facebook group a mention of “Fun Nights” in junior high. They were occasional, chaperoned student parties in the cafeteria and the gym that always seemed ripe for flirtation and romantic advancement. I hadn’t thought of them in years, but the mention brought to mind an incident I hadn’t thought of in many years that I felt ready, at last, to share with the class:
We were in 9th grade civics with Mr. Van Colen doing some sort of break-out exercise that may have been a mock Senate caucus. Our small group included my good friend Howard Cooper and Mary Hoffmann, on whom I had a huge, unexpressed and evidently unrequited crush. What a chance to impress her, to get to know her, to lay the groundwork for perhaps asking her to dance that evening at Fun Night!
So I tried to take charge of the moment in what I imagined to be the sort of alpha-teen fashion that would be attractive to a girl who was, let's be honest, out of my league.
"What I feel is important here is that we focus on the main issue," I announced.
With equal formality, Howard said, "And what I think is important is that we focus on the booger coming out of Eric's nose."
A quick swipe with my wrist removed the offending, protruding booger, but nothing could remove my embarrassment or mute the sound of Mary's giggle.
I avoided her at Fun Night, of course, and thereafter, assuming that she dated everything in her life as BEB (Before Eric's Booger) and AEB (After Eric's Booger). If anyone is in touch with her, please wish her a happy 49th anniversary this year of Eric's Booger.
Today’s Tune
Tony Barrand died Saturday at age 76 in Hanover, N.H. He was a magnificent singer and scholar, playful, spirited, warm, funny, engaging. I first encountered him and his singing partner John Roberts (not the chief justice!) when they toured through Ann Arbor in the late 1970s and was enchanted by their traditional repertoire and perfect harmonies. Their “Nowell Sing We Clear” albums of traditional British Christmas songs is deeply in the DNA of the “Songs of Good Cheer” program that Mary Schmich and I host every December at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
I was at Holstein’s Pub on Lincoln Avenue in the early 1980s when Roberts and Barrand recorded the live album that includes this song:
Many of their duets were, like this one, basically pub songs (much of their catalog is here), though they had a wonderful repertoire of sea songs as well. If you generally find folk music too earnest for your tastes, then you’re likely to find Roberts and Barrand more to your liking.
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I’m wondering what your thoughts are on Whoopi’s 2–week suspension as “punishment” for her stated misinformed perspective about the holocaust not being about race. Instead of punishing people for their mistakes, I think we should be applauding them for their ownership of them and the learning from them that they embrace. We seem to be such a punitive society at our core rather than a learning, growth oriented one.
Sports fans frequently develop abbreviated versions of a multi-syllabic team names. For example, "Pats" for "Patriots" or "Bucs" for "Bucaneers." I'm wondering if Washington football fans will start referring to their newly named team as "the Commies." The Commodes?
I’m wondering what your thoughts are on Whoopi’s 2–week suspension as “punishment” for her stated misinformed perspective about the holocaust not being about race. Instead of punishing people for their mistakes, I think we should be applauding them for their ownership of them and the learning from them that they embrace. We seem to be such a punitive society at our core rather than a learning, growth oriented one.
Sports fans frequently develop abbreviated versions of a multi-syllabic team names. For example, "Pats" for "Patriots" or "Bucs" for "Bucaneers." I'm wondering if Washington football fans will start referring to their newly named team as "the Commies." The Commodes?