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“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.’” --Zorn

I think you can impute just about any motive for the city withholding documents – one that is favorable to the city or not – but any motive tied to corruption will certainly do also: I like to think the city is just historically that way, expressing the ontological nature of its being: If this is the case, it may be permanently intractable.

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Feb 10, 2022Liked by Eric Zorn

A quick comment... I'm a 100% reader, and look forward to reading them , um, "cover to cover". Kind of miss those old times of books, magazines, and newspapers.

Chuck Bagdade

Highwood, IL

cbagdade1@att.net

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Gosh I forgot about the Mad Show. Thx Zorn-now I've got an ear worm-tho a catchy "Up with People" kinda vibe. Watched the video of Ulysses until I got to the character Stephen Dedalius from Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man. It was assigned reading to in a high school english class. Why a teacher of "advanced level" students would think a 15 year old mind could decipher this horrible book is beyond me. It's a miracle I ever picked up another. Outstanding tweets today and really needed some chuckles; voted for all but 2. Real cheese people too. All this city stories make me glad to live in Forgottonia-tho we're not immune

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founding
Feb 10, 2022Liked by Eric Zorn

I agree with your assessment of the situation at McAuley. And I appreciate your consistent coverage of this sort of thing. I will be even more pleased when I see an administration admit error and correct their actions. I would hope and expect that a private school would be more responsive to its current parents, and Ms Devoto is getting broad support from the parents.

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When talking about the pandemic and Gov Pritzker's talk of ending the mask mandate, I found this article interesting. Now mind you, I have been wearing my mask for two years faithfully but after traveling to many other states in last year, many that did not have mask mandates or the strict shut downs, I do have to begin to question if looking back in a few years what the verdict will be?

https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/columns/jim-dey-hard-line-approach-to-virus-didnt-get-job-done/article_ce2cb4bb-4189-5447-bed9-dc425fdb0cc3.html

Hopefully it will open without a subscription...

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Isn't Mother McCauley a Catholic school?

A little grace here would be called for.

Fresh reminder while that though I am still a Christ follower, I am *very* happy not to be a Catholic any more.

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Regarding the Mary DeVoto incident, I don't think she should have been fired. History is often uncomfortable and offensive to students, depending upon their own race and cultural identities. It shouldn't mean that language needs to be altered or censored to make a point. I'm worried that this push to alter language or history to protect the sensitivities of certain cultures is destroying the purpose of education.

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founding

Of course, per page one of the Tribune today, one thing that forced transparency is revealing in the release of Lightfoot's texts is that she doesn't know the difference between "flack" and "flak," though that may change as she gets to encounter more of the latter.

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Don't beat youself up too much over the "open rate". Although I read the Picayune Sentinal in my browser, because I trust you and don't think you will sell my email address, there are some I don't read in a browser. I have set my email client to open the email without rendereing the HTML, and without that the sender does not know whether or when I have read his message. Probably most of the non-openers are not as paranoid as I am, but maybe you can impute a small increase to your sparkling prose.

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