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Dec. 20, 2022
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.
What are the known unknowns of 2023?
In accordance with tradition, Thursday’s issue of the Picayune Sentinel will feature a call for predictions for the year ahead. I will generate a click survey that will ask readers to register their best guesses about a variety of news — where will the price of Bitcoin be? Who will win the race for Chicago mayor? that kind of thing.
But also in line with tradition I want your input on the questions I should ask. They must be multiple choice and have answers that will be measurably either right or wrong 12 months from now (in other words, nothing vague like “will we feel better about COVID?” or “Will Russia be winning the war in Ukraine?”
Best to submit directly via email before Wednesday at noon.
Notes and comments from readers —lightly edited —- along with my responses
Some of these messages are in reference to items in last week’s issues of the Picayune Sentinel.
Ted M. — Yes, it would be nice for former Sun-Times columnist John Fountain and executive editor Jennifer Kho to bury the hatchet in their dispute over her editing of one of his columns.
But on what terms? Fountain could return to good graces if he agrees to write within the boundaries set by the Sun-Times, which have to do not with content but with style. I’m sure they are reasonable. All other writers abide by those rules; why not Fountain? Outside of publication in the Sun-Times, he could write any way he pleases. There is no newspaper in America that tolerates one upstart disregarding its guidelines. Decide, John. Rules are rules. Supervisors are there to enforce them.
I’m certain there are content boundaries as well as stylistic boundaries at the Sun-Times. Fountain is no upstart. He’s a veteran journalist in town who wrote a column for the Sun-Times for 13 years, and he’s known (and had been honored) for pushing stylistic boundaries in his column. For instance, he would occasionally drop into his prose internal rhymes reminiscent of rap lyrics:
America — the violent. America — wed to the gun. America — proud defender of the Second Amendment at the expense of her daughters and sons.
America where school children are massacred, slain. America where bullets inside classrooms rain. Where mothers wail in pain. Where mass shootings occur again and again and again. America where allegiance to the assault rifle reigns.
The structure of the rejected column was unconventional, yes, but well inside the capacious boundaries of column-style storytelling. I once wrote an entire column in which I used the structure and rhyming patterns of an Edgar Allan Poe poem to tell the story of a suburban controversy.
Don McLeese (University of Iowa journalism professor, former music columnist for the Sun-Times) — The whole mess makes the columnist sound kind of full of himself, while you'd think an executive editor would have too much on her plate to deal with line edits on how quickly a column gets to its point. … Which leaves me wondering what exactly is going on, besides the disrespect for his own voice and perspective a Black columnist feel he has been shown. Nobody looks particularly good here, especially the Sun-Times.
The conversation under McLeese’s Facebook post making this point is worth reading, as is the thread under my Facebook post. I tend to hold with those who see this as a clash of egos between people who didn’t know each other well enough or have a strong enough relationship to productively manage such a clash.
Lynne T. — I was sympathetic to Mr. Fountain's position but I objected to this passage in his response to you: I resent Kho's matriarchal condescension.” Matriarchal?! If Kho has a problem with Black men, as Fountain alleges, it also appears he has a problem with women.*
Jake H. If I were editing Fountain's largely persuasive rejoinder, I would nix the odd word choice "matriarchal," which, unless I'm missing something, suggests resentment of a woman boss, as well as the implicit charge -- which doesn't ring true on the facts and allegations we have -- that he was singled out for a Kho-ing because he's black. And If I were editing Kho's response, I would suggest a rewrite that doesn't sound like bullshit.
S. C. — I suspect the problem is that Kho found the original column to be unbearably maudlin and self-absorbed, as I did, and felt compelled to dial it down, which is the opposite of what Fountain wanted to achieve. If I were her, particularly after his latest response, I might consider myself lucky to be rid of him. He does some good stuff, but he obviously has a very large and fragile ego even by the standards of columnists. He might be happier on Substack.
K.M — Kho’s edits on Fountain’s column flattened the prose, wrung out the heart of the column and turned it into a shallow, uninteresting, sequence of words that no one would be interested in reading.
Phil — The edits Kho made are so heavy I can't help but think she was playing "there's-a-new-sheriff-in-town" with Fountain's piece. Some of the copy-tightening is justifiable, but the wholesale reordering of paragraphs seems capricious.
Joanie W..— I particularly liked the quote John Fountain says he has posted to his cubicle: “Never Internalize Their Disrespect.” That concept is critical for members of all minority groups that are vilified and marginalized in our culture if we are to thrive. And it’s difficult. When kids are little, they pick up and learn the structure and values and beliefs of the culture in which they grow up, including that culture’s deeply ingrained feelings toward its minority groups. To learn not to accept deeply ingrained parts of the culture in which one grows up is hard. And when you realize that you have to do that, it requires you, on some level, always to be an outsider, to be a member of the community who is, in very important ways, not a member.
Rick W. — What was your experience with the editing of your column? Is Kho as much of an outlier as she seems? Are you enjoying not being edited now?
In my 36 years as a columnist at the Tribune I never had an editor presume to rewrite a column and present it to me as a better way, though I’m sure some of them were occasionally tempted. Many times, however, I had collaborative discussions, nearly always collegial, about where to place certain information within a column, how best to begin a column and what taste and probity demanded be removed from a column.
So I would consider Kho’s work on Fountain’s column to be well out of the ordinary.
Usually the suggestions of my editors were sound. They made my arguments or my stories stronger and more compelling. Occasionally, editors saved me from really stupid mistakes. Every once in a while my editor and I disagreed and we compromised or else the editor gave in with a weary “well, it’s your column.”
I do pay a professional copy editor to proof the main issue of the Picayune Sentinel and she catches numerous errors every week, most of them small. My wife Johanna reads each issue over before I post looking for more significant infelicities, and often makes suggestions.
Penalty kick shootouts
Jay G. —Resorting to penalty kicks to determine which team win the World Cup is atrocious. Keep the team vs. team play going until a goal is scored. Dropping team-against team and resorting to one-on-one penalty contests detracts from the 120+ minutes of play (game time + stoppage time + overtime) that went on beforehand. Why play for so long only to cheapen the outcome by resorting to such means? I guess I could understand the use of such deciding elements for regular season matches but for the World Cup? Having a penalty-kick contest decide a major soccer game is similar to having a service-ace contest decide the Wimbledon championship.
Yes, or a field goal kicking contest to break a tie at the end of regulation in a football game, or a home-run derby instead of extra innings in baseball or game of H-O-R-S-E instead of overtime in basketball.
Wikipedia offers an extensive history of the penalty-kick shootout, which includes this passage:
As a way to decide a football match, shoot-outs have been seen variously as a thrilling climax or as an unsatisfactory cop-out.
Paul Doyle describes shoot-outs as "exciting and suspense-filled" and the 2008 UEFA Champions League Final shoot-out as "the perfect way to end a wonderful ... final.” …
The result is often seen as a lottery rather than a test of skill … Others disagree. Mitch Phillips called it "the ultimate test of nerve and technique.” Paul Doyle emphasised the psychological element.
Only a small subset of a footballer's skills is tested by a shoot-out. Ian Thomsen likened deciding the 1994 World Cup using a penalty shoot-out to deciding the Masters golf tournament via a minigolf game.[ The shoot-out is a test of individuals which may be considered inappropriate in a team sport; Sepp Blatter has said "Football is a team sport and penalties is not a team, it is the individual."
Inferior teams are tempted to play for a scoreless draw, calculating that a shoot-out offers their best hope of victory.
Replacing penalty kicks with corner kicks, with both teams on the pitch, would be much more in keeping with actual game play. Wikipedia also notes this under alternatives:
Alternatives include replaying a match that has ended in a draw…. Other suggestions have included using elements of match play such as most shots on goal, most corner kicks awarded, fewest cautions and sendings-off, or having ongoing extra time with teams compelled to remove players at progressive intervals (similar to regular season play in the National Hockey League, where players play 3-on-3 in the extra time). … Another alternative is Attacker Defender Goalkeeper (ADG), which features a series of ten contests, in which an attacker kicks off from 32 yards and has 20 seconds to score a goal against a defender and goalkeeper. At the completion of the ten contests, the team with the most goals is the winner.
Jennifer W — Next year, I would love for family members from out of town to come with me to the Songs of Good Cheer holiday singalong that you and Mary Schmich host at the Old Town School of Folk Music. That requires planning. Do you by any chance know your dates for 2023?
Joe K. — I’m trying to plan on gathering a gaggle for next year's Songs of Good Cheer. Is it possible to get dates now? When do tickets normally go on sale?
Songs of Good Cheer will be held December 7-10, 2023, and tickets usually go on sale in late September. Watch the Picayune Sentinel for details!
Unsolicited product endorsement
My sister has long dealt with psoriasis, and in conversations with her during my visit to Ann Arbor over the weekend she said she’d finally found relief using a cream called RoyceDerm. Like the person who posted this enthusiastic review to Reddit, my sister isn’t sure exactly what’s in the product — the ingredients list looks like pure gibberish — “…Kochia scoparia, Dictamni Cortex, Smilax Glabra Roxb, Solidago Decurrens, Phellodendron amurense Ruprecht….” and so on — but she said at this point she feels so good she doesn’t care.
The compassionate — but ill equipped — box office
Resale tickets to the University of Michigan vs. Lipscomb University men’s basketball game at the Crisler Center in Ann Arbor Saturday were as low as $5, so since we were in town anyway we bought a pair online and headed over just to catch the first half.
But when we got to the gate, Johanna found that the battery on her phone, containing the QR codes for our tickets, had died. The ticket taker happened to be an old high school acquaintance — Lewis Clark, for all you Pioneer alums — and he directed us to the box office where, evidently, they didn’t have a set of wall chargers on hand for just such situations.
As the clock wound down to tip-off and the phone didn’t respond to a portable charger, the guy at the booth took pity on us, printed up a pair of free, cheap-seat ticket and sent us on our way. It was a non-conference game with students out of town and the arena was not even half full despite an announced attendance of 98% of capacity.
Our mistake was in failing to have a redundant system in place — copies of the code on each of our phones. But shouldn’t every box office in American now come equipped with quick charging cables?
And as we carry more information more vital than QR codes on our phones — digital drivers licences, phone-based transit passes and non-cash payment options are increasingly common — it will behoove every business and public facility to offer free charging.
Ya gotta see these tweets!
I often run across tweets that rely on visual humor and so can’t be included in the Tweet of the Week contest (the template I use for that poll does not allow me to include images). Here are a few good ones I’ve come across recently
Vote for your favorite. I’ll share the winner in Thursday’s main edition.
There’s still time to vote in the conventional Tweet of the Week poll!
Thank you for supporting the Picayune Sentinel. To help this publication grow, please consider spreading the word to friends, family, associates, neighbors and agreeable strangers.
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I feel your pain with the tickets to the game.
I have recently begun to get to the airport early enough to get a printed boarding pass for my flights. I found myself too often standing in the boarding line worrying about battery life, brightness on the phone, sleep mode, and notifications popping up at just the wrong time. Paper is actually easier and faster when boarding. I am a frequent flier and early adopter of boarding passes on my phone. No longer.
One more thought on Fountain. I wonder if this is partially due to so many people working remotely. If meetings could have been held in person it might have deescalated the situation.