Bring in the shroud

Lightfoot's opacity belies her campaign promise of transparency

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2-10-2022 (issue No. 22)

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s catchy campaign promise to “bring in the light” and usher in a new era of transparency at City Hall is quite rightly being juxtaposed with the darkness of the numerous redactions in documents grudgingly released to the public and the refusal of her administration to turn over material subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

This week in the Tribune already we’ve seen Ray Long’s story, “Chicago Tribune sues city of Chicago over records that were withheld despite attorney general opinions in the paper’s favor,” and Gregory Pratt and Joe Mahr’s story, “Mayor Lori Lightfoot ripped staffer for memo on General Iron’s controversial scrap shredder plan because it could be made public.”

From Long:

The Chicago Tribune has filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago over records on cases involving misconduct allegations that officials have refused to release despite two separate attorney general opinions in the newspaper’s favor. …

The city “thumbed its nose” at the Tribune and the attorney general’s office over records that (reporter Jeremy) Gorner sought in May 2021 about misconduct allegations involving ranking members of the Chicago Fire Department, the lawsuit says. …

Calling the city’s reasoning “inconsistent and insupportable,” the Tribune charged “one of the city’s true motives in refusing to produce documents responsive to the September FOIA is to protect from embarrassment those city employees who have been accused of discrimination or harassment and other city employees who are tasked with investigating, responding and remedying such claims.”

From Pratt and Mahr:

As a chronic polluter sought city permission to set up shop on Chicago’s Southeast Side, recently released emails show there was a stark divide in the administration of Mayor Lori Lightfoot — one the mayor wanted to keep secret from the public. …

Despite campaigning on a promise to “bring in the light” at City Hall, Lightfoot admonished staffers for sending her emails that could later be made public. … The mayor scolded her top environmental adviser for sending her a memo on General Iron (metal recycling), saying the aide’s written recommendations have “no FOIA protections and that just cannot be a thing.”

And let’s not forget these blasts from the not-so-recent past:

• “Members of the Lightfoot transition team’s ‘good governance committee’ published a letter last week criticizing her commitment to transparency and urged her to shine a light on police misconduct. ‘You campaigned on the issues of police accountability and transparency. Now, in a moment where you have an opportunity to take meaningful action on both, we are disappointed to instead see inaction and excuses,’ the letter said. The letter was prompted by Lightfoot’s opposition to a proposal that would require the city to publish a database of closed complaints against Chicago Police officers going back to 1994.” — Block Club Chicago, April 19, 2021

• “In past years, the city would release daily arrest ticket and emergency medical transport information for Lollapalooza. This year, they won’t until the end. Chicago transparency taking another step backward.” — Tribune City Hall reporter Gregory Pratt on Twitter, July 29, 2021

• “Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration improperly redacted the name of an emergency management supervisor who was accused of sexually harassing a woman at work, the Illinois attorney general’s office ruled.” — Tribune, Nov. 5, 2021

• “The Tribune obtained more than 2½ years of Lightfoot’s text messages with aldermen through a series of Freedom of Information Act requests — which her staff failed to comply with until the state attorney general admonished them and the Tribune threatened a lawsuit.” — Tribune, Dec. 10, 2021

• “Lightfoot and her lawyers have yet to release a full inspector general’s report on any high-profile incidents that have occurred during her tenure. … For instance, Lightfoot refused to make public the inspector general’s report on the October 2019 incident that led her to fire police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, one of the defining moments of Lightfoot’s term.” — Tribune, Dec. 22, 2021

• “Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday rejected calls to release the full investigation completed by Chicago’s former inspector general into the botched implosion of a smokestack in Little Village.” —WTTW, Jan. 22, 2022

Look for Lightfoot’s challengers in the general municipal election of Feb. 28, 2023 — a little more than a year from now — to shine lights of their own on this record of secrecy.

Last week’s winning tweet

Scott Kennedy @ScottTKennedy

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.

Scott is also Illinois’ top elections-data nerd. Scroll down to read this week’s nominees or click here to vote in the new poll.

Olympic redemption: Lindsey Jacobellis redefines the meaning of a ‘Lindsey Jacobellis Moment.’

“She will regret it for the rest of her life,” I wrote with some confidence in 2006 after 20-year-old U.S. Olympic snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis hot-dogged her way out of a gold medal.

She was way out in front in the snowboardcross final in Turin when, on the second to last jump before the finish line, she decided to showboat by performing what’s called a “method grab” of her board, a “hey-look-at-me!” stunt that, while not particularly difficult for someone at her skill level, caused her to lose her balance, fall and wind up in second place.

Screenshot of Lindsey Jacobellis’ ill-fated “method grab” in 2006

I wrote:

Jacobellis … compounded her idiocy by not copping to it. In her first post-wipeout interviews, she said she wasn't styling for the cameras, oh no. She had had to reach down and grab her board for "stability."

No one believed that, so she tried the "I was just having fun with the sport" shrug, as though blowing the first women's gold medal in this very exciting, very promising new Olympic event was all part of its carefree ethos.

Then came the "I just got caught up in the moment and ... oh well" explanation, followed by an expression of how happy she was to have a silver medal. Then came "I don't have any regrets" during her brave face-the-music studio interview with NBC's Bob Costas. …

No regrets? Oh, please. … She lost in prime time in front of a worldwide audience in a way that reminds critics of America what they hate about us. She lost in a way that will probably go down as the dumbest self-inflicted defeat in the history of major sporting events.

I related my own “Lindsey Jacobellis Moment” — an inexplicable decision during a high school basketball game to take a shot with 5 seconds left while my team was trying to kill the clock, followed quickly by a decision to foul the opponent who got the rebound — and readers shared their own mistakes rooted in overconfidence bordering on arrogance.

But Jacobellis, who said if she’d won gold in Turin she probably would have quit the sport, didn’t give up in disgrace. She kept at it. Here’s Yahoo Sports:

As the years wore on, Jacobellis remained at the top of her game … but not quite at the top of her sport. She kept returning to the Olympics, year after year, each time falling short of a medal. Fifth in Vancouver. Seventh in Sochi. Fourth in PyeongChang. Always close enough to see the podium, never close enough after Turin to stand on it.

And here’s Wednesday’s happy ending, via ESPN:

Snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis became the first American gold medalist at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, jumping to an early lead and holding on to win the women's snowboardcross on Wednesday. … Jacobellis, 36, became the oldest snowboarder to medal at the Olympics and earned her second medal in five Olympics. She also became the oldest American woman to win gold at the Winter Games in any sport.

History will now associate her name with physical and emotional resilience, determination, grit and redemption. Those who battle back from humiliation and failure to triumph over long odds will be having their “Lindsey Jacobellis Moment.”

Merciless Mother McAuley High School fouls up a ‘teachable moment’

The distinction has all but evaporated between using the most toxic racial slur in our language — hurling it as an insult or deploying it in a derogatory, contemptuous reference to Black people or a Black person — and quoting it — citing its use by another, offering it as an example of a highly problematic word.

For someone who is not Black to speak this word, even when no Black people are present and in the context of expressing abhorrence for it, is now considered itself an unpardonable act of racism and evidence of a deeply flawed character.

I’m fine with the prohibition. Placing that word beyond the pale crimps no decent person’s expressive capabilities, and avoiding it through the use of euphemisms (“the N-word” and so on) is easy and provides sufficient clarity.*

I’m opposed, however, to the harsh moral judgments issued against those who violate the prohibition with no animus in their hearts, and I’m opposed to the extreme punishments that have been meted out.

The firing of Mary DeVoto, for instance.

In a local story that has made national news, Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side recently fired veteran history teacher DeVoto after she twice said the word to a class while explaining why the NFL team in Washington had to drop its former name, a word historically used as a slur against American Indians. She was attempting to draw a parallel between the two words and said, “So thank God they finally changed the name.”

A mistake on her part? Sure. She should have known that norms regarding this word have changed and that context and intent no longer excuse its mention by people who are not Black.

A firing offense? Well, if it’s the consensus of the Mother McAuley school community that DeVoto (whom many alums remember as Mary Rahman) is no longer fit to teach there because she quoted a racist term, I suppose so. Mother McAuley is a private school and can set its own standards for teacher conduct without input from me or anyone else who thinks firing her is an absurd overreaction and a botched opportunity for an educational moment of healing.

But there is no evidence that school administrators made any effort to consult a broader constituency before giving her the sack.

To defend their hasty decision, administrators said in a statement that in a “subsequent conversation … the same racial slur was communicated in its entirety several times despite clear and formal directives to stop.”

The statement seems aimed at portraying DeVoto as an unrepentant racist who compulsively spouts slurs despite no record of such behavior in 41 years at the school. DeVoto said she used the term again “in my meeting with the principal when I was asked by the principal to explain what had occurred.”

There’s more than a little irony in the fact that a student in the class, ostensibly outraged and wounded at hearing a mention of the word, released onto social media an unbleeped audio clip of the moment from the classroom so that thousands of people could be exposed to the word.

More from the school:

As an educational institution, we recognize mistakes happen to each one of us, and we make every effort, regardless of the popularity of such decisions, to embrace the opportunity to learn from such teachable moments. To embrace mistakes means we must learn not to repeat such behaviors, to demonstrate clear remorse and to be able to rebuild trust that has been lost.

Pretty sentiments, but they ring hollow given that DeVoto, a mother of two biracial daughters and one Indian daughter, has expressed remorse and a desire to make amends and rebuild trust with her students. If I were in the parent or alumni donor community, I would ask for a survey of stakeholders to seek a consensus disposition of the matter.

To frame and dismiss this idea as merely a gauge of “popularity” is obtuse. If the administration’s decision to fire DeVoto — rather than, say, impose a lesser sanction and put her on language probation — is seen as a hasty capitulation to perceived orthodoxy, it will leave a residue of bitterness and resentment that will be a stain more on the legacy of the school than on the former teacher. It will create more discord than harmony.

And if I were part of the school community, I would sign the Change.org petition asking for DeVoto’s reinstatement that has more than 4,800 signatures at this writing, in hopes that Mother McAuley will reverse the administration’s position the way Benet Academy in Lisle last fall reversed the school’s deeply unpopular decision not to hire a lacrosse coach because she was in a same-sex marriage.

See, I actually believe that good people make mistakes and can learn from them. I believe in escalating corrective discipline and second chances as ways to repair damage. I believe in forgiveness and redemption.

I don’t believe in destroying people’s professional lives for transgressions that meant no harm. I don’t believe in paying mere lip service to educational platitudes when the moment calls for deeper action. I don’t believe in self-righteous overreactions.

*Redactions of the word don’t always suffice, of course, as the story of UIC Law School professor Jason Kilborn illustrates.

News & Views

News: Lawyers for Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson are going with the “frazzled” defense.

Views: You know how you get really busy with work and family obligations and you forget about a dodgy “loan” from a bank and then, whoops!, you commit tax fraud? Yeah, me neither, but that seems to be the main line of defense Patrick Daley Thompson’s attorneys are using in the ongoing federal trial of the 11th Ward alderman, who is a grandson of former Mayor Richard J. Daley and a nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley.

We can all relate to feeling “disorganized,” “frazzled” and “sloppy,” words defense attorney Chris Gair used to describe his client during opening statements Tuesday. And perhaps jurors will see themselves in Gair’s portrayal of “a guy who’s got piles of paper all over his office. On the chairs, on the floor, you name it. And he’s a big procrastinator.”

Sounds like a desperate defense against solid evidence of wrongdoing to me, but we’ll see.

News: The Republican National Committee censures Illinois U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Wyoming U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican members of the commission investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol for “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

Views: The censure resolution was epic malpractice. The plain wording of the document leaves the impression that the RNC considered the violent incursion that included the beating of police officers and destruction of government property to be mere “political discourse,” despite officials’ attempts to clean it up later by explaining that the “legitimate” reference was only to peaceful questioning of vote tallies in certain states.

Don’t take my word for how bad it was. Here’s the conservative National Review:

This is both morally repellent and politically self-destructive. … This will, quite predictably and not wholly unreasonably, be read as an argument that the action of the mob was nothing but “legitimate political discourse” and that nobody should be prosecuted. It will be used against hundreds of elected Republicans who were not consulted in its drafting and do not endorse its sentiment. … The RNC bought the entire party a bounty of bad headlines and easy attack ads. It did so for no good purpose, and its action will only encourage those who see riots as legitimate political discourse. A mistake, and worse, a shame.

Republican U.S. Senate leader Mitch McConnell laid down a sensible marker in response:

“We saw it happen. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”

The question for every single GOP candidate for every single office this fall has got to be “Do you agree with Sen. McConnell’s statement?” Attempts to dodge the question with such evasive verbiage as “Joe Biden is the president and I’m focused on what I want to accomplish in the job and the inadequacy of my opponent” must be met with airhorns, raspberries and the repetition of the question until the candidate answers it.

When Kinzinger floated a similar suggestion on MSNBC, he said, “Trust me, politicians are really good at kind of skirting around that answer. Don’t let them on this one. I think it’s so defining.”

News: The Sun-Times editorializes against the “Chicago Not in Chicago” tourism campaign by writing that the slogan “misses the mark as badly as that failed Cody Parkey field goal attempt that helped the Bears lose in the 2018 NFC playoffs.”

Views: Talk about missing the mark! Parkey’s 43-yard attempt that would have put the Bears ahead of the Philadelphia Eagles 18-16 with 5 seconds remaining in the game is remembered not for badly missing but for barely missing — it hit the goalpost twice before not going through and came to be known as the “double doink.” (Hat tip to Steve Rhodes for pointing this out.)

News: Regarding COVID-19 restrictions, state House Republican leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs accuses Gov. J.B. Pritzker of forcing his “will on the people of Illinois, depriving them of any optimism for their future and the future of this state.”

View: What a drama king! Yes, these last two years have been difficult and in some cases depressing. The mask and vaccine restrictions are good faith efforts to hasten the day when we’re back to normal and prevent the sort of premature optimism that left thousands of people with no futures whatsoever.

If anything, Pritzker may have been too lax. For instance, the Feb. 4 Tribune story, “Gov. J.B. Pritzker mandates COVID-19 vaccine boosters for nursing home and other long-term care workers” had me stunned that it had taken so long to issue such a mandate. We all know how vulnerable the elderly are, and it’s unconscionable that those caring for them haven’t yet been fully immunized.

Land of Linkin’

• I don’t agree with those who disdain “Don’t Look Up” and are angry it was nominated this week for an Academy Award for best picture. But in the final segment of his “The Gist” podcast Tuesday, Mike Pesca makes the best argument I’ve heard against the film.

• Michael Fassnacht, president and CEO of World Business Chicago, explains in a Tribune Op-ed “Why ‘Chicago Not in Chicago’ is the right campaign,” all the naysaying notwithstanding.

• Derek Thompson of The Atlantic explores the phenomenon of waking up in the middle of the night and being unable to get back to sleep in “Can medieval sleeping habits fix America’s insomnia?” He gets off this excellent line: “As every insomniac knows, ‘trying’ to fall asleep is a self-defeating paradox. Insomnia is a beast that feasts on its own self-generated anxiety.”

• In “The shattered hope of a freer China,” Steve Chapman writes, “The Olympics were supposed to be a chance for the Beijing government to impress the world. But the games have brought attention to the very things that have made China a human rights pariah. … When China hosted the 2008 Summer Games, there were still grounds to believe it would soon evolve into a more civilized and humane country. The Olympics are back in Beijing, but that hope is gone.”

• 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. Last Monday’s segment is archived here.

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Meanwhile, a reminder that one of the benefits of being a paid subscriber is access to the comments section and delivery of a shorter, bonus issue most Tuesdays that includes correspondence with readers on the big topics of the day.

Mary Schmich on ‘Ulysses’: The pleasures of slow, hard reading

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

At the beginning of 2022, an old college friend, Chris, who lives in California, proposed that we ring in the new year by agreeing to read “Ulysses” together.

I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding that purportedly great work of literature. But a couple of years ago, Chris came along for the “Moby-Dick” ride when lots of Tribune readers joined me in reading that whale of a book, so I figured I owed her.

I took a deep breath and said “OK!”

I know people who are fanatic lovers of “Ulysses.” I know far more people who couldn’t get past Chapter 3. When I hit Chapter 3, I understood why. Slogging through the quicksand of James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness prose, I thought of the famous poem by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats that begins: “The fascination of what’s difficult has dried the sap out of my veins…”

But a deal is a deal and so I slogged on. I made it to Chapter 4. And hallelujah! I was back on navigable territory, which isn’t to say the book got easy but I began to flow with the stream. The difficulty started to be fun.

Sure, some of the juvenile sexual innuendo made me roll my eyes. And at one point I scribbled on the page, “James Joyce is a show-off." But I kept going.

Chris said she’d heard it was good to get the Great Courses lectures on the book, and so I forked over $19.95 to have a Dartmouth professor—we affectionately call him Professor Huffnpuff—explain to me chapter by chapter what I just read.

I also discovered an online website called The Joyce Project, which annotates the entire novel. In other words, it turns an impenetrable work into a vast network of rabbit holes. Who is Charles Parnell? Click here!

Every third word, it seems, can be annotated, proving, as James Joyce once said, that his novel would keep the professors busy for 100 years.

Down in the online rabbit holes, I’ve learned about mites in cheese. About the real owner of the pub where Leopold Bloom, a central character, dines. About the Irish opposition to British rule. About the social place of Jews in England and Ireland. About the significance of newspapers in 1904 Dublin.

But I knew I still needed help. So I got the audio book. Bingo! Everything started coming together.

This multi-layered approach is working—read it on the page, listen to a lecture, read the annotations. And then, with all that background, I just listen, letting the language wash over me.

I’ve even discovered that “Ulysses” can be a social connector. I was at a coffeehouse a few days ago and spotted a young guy—25 or so—with a copy of “Ulysses” on the table. I stopped at his table, pointed to the book and cried, “Hey, I’m reading that too! Tough going!”

I was wearing my mask, a dirty winter coat with the hood up, hair flying. I imagined he recoiled and thought, “Wacky lady.” But he politely said, “Yes, it’s very challenging” and we chatted for a moment. On his way out, he passed my table and said, “Good luck with the book.”

It felt like a good omen. I’ve made it to page 180 and am confident I’ll make it all the way. If you’re wondering whether to read it, I’ll let this excellent video —

— make the case. It’s six minutes of pure entertainment (2.3 million views!) and worth your time. It may not convince you that “Ulysses” is worth more than six minutes, but you'll enjoy it regardless. — Mary Schmich

Minced Words

This week’s panel: John Williams, Brandon Pope, Jon Hansen, Eric Zorn

The cornucopia of news items prompting legitimate discourse on “The Mincing Rascals” this week includes dibs, the controversy at Mother McAuley High School, mask mandates in schools, the Winter Olympics (and my contention that many events are actually glorified circus stunts), the entry of two prominent Jonathans in the race to succeed U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago and the GOP’s self-own in censuring Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.

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. Saturday on WGN-AM 720.

Re: Tweets

This week’s nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• When I see an Olympic figure skater fall down, I feel represented. — @WilliamAder

• Maybe your grandma covered her furniture in plastic because she was a murderer. You don't know for sure. — @darksidedeb

• Wordle She Wrote. — @Mardigroan

•  If someone said, “Let me tell you my dream,” and it took hours and was total weird trippy nonsense, that would be bad. But then imagine instead they told you the same trippy nonsense but didn’t let you know it was a dream until it was all over. Anyway, spoiler: That’s “The Wizard of Oz.” — @WheelTod

• Two companies that hate each other? Probably Kia and Nokia. — @SkinnerSteven

• You say you’re a night owl? All owls are night owls. You are a regular owl. — @Jest_Iris

• Well well well. If it isn’t those eight pounds I lost last spring. And I see you brought two friends. — @UnFitz

• Netflix just sent me an email to let me know they are “updating” prices. Let’s start calling inflation “updating.” It sounds so much more fun. — @BettyBowers

• Will I understand “Pam and Tommy” if I haven’t seen the original? — @ConanOBrien

• The thing I miss most about being a child is getting praised for cleaning up my own mess. — @wildethingy

Click here to vote in the poll. For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

By the way, one of the benefits of a paid subscription is my Tuesday bonus missive that contains the best of the visual tweets that I have run across. Here’s just one from last Tuesday:

Viktor Winetrout @Cpin42

Has science gone too far?

Today’s Tune

Stephen Sondheim helped write the music and lyrics for “The Mad Show,” a 1960s off-Broadway revue that included the memorable “Hate Song.”

It starts out with sunny determination and uplift:

We’re gonna stamp out hate / That’s our creed

Wipe out violence / Intolerance and greed

We’re gonna start right now / Tomorrow is too late

We’re gonna stamp out hate

But takes on an increasingly violent tone:

We’re gonna to stamp out hate / Lash it with a switch

Amputate its arms and legs / And see how long they twitch

We’ll put its toes on hooks / And dangle them for bait

We’re going to stamp out hate

Fighting hate with hate. Ha! Who would ever think of such a thing?

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