Can you stop atrocities with atrocities?

& a clinically depressed loaf of bread is just the puppet America needs

10-12-2023 (issue No. 109)

This week

• Last week’s winning tweet

• Terror and whataboutism in the Middle East

• The strangest kids’ TV character I’ve ever heard of

• News and Views — On the coverage of the Accenture Tower climber; Mary Lou Retton; Dorothy Hoffner; Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plans to visit the Mexican border; the “Tush Push” and more

• Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go

• Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go

• It’s all passengers for themselves when a plane is late

• Local polling on the migrant issue shows considerable discontent

• “Songs of Good Cheer” update — A behind the scenes video as we gear up for our 25th anniversary show

• Word court is in session: “Beloved” and “Ride-share” in the dock

• Hassle-saving tip for Tribune subscribers

• “The Mincing Rascals” podcast preview

• Re:Tweets — The winning visual tweet and this week’s contest finalists

• Tune of the Week — “All the Pretty Little Horses”

Mary Schmich is off this week.

Last week’s winning tweet

From Gingrich to Hastert, Boehner to Ryan to Kevin McCarthy: Republican Speaker of the House has become the Spinal Tap Drummer of political jobs. — @JohnFugelsang

It pleased me that so many readers got the allusion to the running gag in a 39-year-old movie about spontaneous human combustion.

Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-tweets poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.

Terror and whataboutism in the Middle East

I have never been to Israel or surrounding nations, and I gave up many years ago trying to puzzle through the ancient and seemingly intractable hostilities and grievances in that region. But it’s obvious that peace is further off than ever.

Hamas’ attack on the civilian population of Israel over the weekend — murdering people by the hundreds and taking scores of hostages — was a vile and unconscionable act of terrorism. No matter what may have provoked it and no matter the historical context, the world cannot condone the deliberate slaughter of innocent civilians, particularly children.

President Joe Biden was emphatic on that point in his remarks Tuesday, saying,“There is no justification for terrorism. There is no excuse.”

Then he added, “Like every nation in the world, Israel has the right to respond — indeed has a duty to respond — to these vicious attacks,” even though this response was a similarly indiscriminate bombing of Palestinians in Gaza that also took the lives of hundreds of civilians.

Biden:

We’re surging additional military assistance, including ammunition and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome.

We’re going to make sure that Israel does not run out of these critical assets to defend its cities and its citizens. …

Let there be no doubt: The United States has Israel’s back. We will make sure the Jewish and democratic State of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have. It’s as simple as that. These atrocities have been sickening.

Much of the commentary and debate on this issue involves recitations of wrongs and accusations of cruelty and evil intent on both sides going back decades and coming up to the present. What about what they did? But what about what the other side did?

Good questions and ones that may suggest false equivalencies. But Israel’s current plan to cut off supplies of electricity, food, water, fuel and medicine in Gaza looks very likely to result in horrific suffering of noncombatants who are already living hardscrabble lives under the thumb of the Israelis in what is frequently called an “open-air prison.” An atrocity in response to an atrocity.

Easy to say from 6,000 miles away, I suppose, but fighting terror with terror — tit for tat killing of innocents — just looks like a recipe for endless terror.

Helping Israel defend itself and target the militant terrorists who perpetrated and orchestrated the heinous attack is laudable and necessary. Facilitating yet another humanitarian crisis in the name of furious revenge is morally dubious and not likely to lead to peace but instead to the start of a larger, regional war that will cost thousands more innocent lives.

What do I know? You might ask. Not much, I admit. But what does anyone know about how resolve this situation? Also not much, apparently.

A puppet for our times

This, from Wikipedia, made my day:

Bernd das Brot (English: Bernd the bread) is a puppet character, star mascot and pop cultural icon of the German children's television channel KiKA. … Bernd is a depressed and curmudgeonly loaf of pullman bread speaking in a deep, gloomy baritone. … Bernd sympathizes firstly with himself, and is bad-tempered and fatalistic.

His favorite expression is “Mist.”, used in much the same way as the English "crap." His other catchphrases are: "I would like to be left alone," "I would like to leave this show," and "My life is hell."

An article in Spiegel International by a visiting Texan offers more:

[Bernd] hates us all and isnt ashamed to admit it. He is the dark night of the German soul anthropomorphized as a bakery item (who epitomizes) the fundamental pessimism felt by many, if not most, Germans about, well, almost everything. … That Germans would take to a character like Bernd and be willing to engage in this form of self-analysis and self-mockery should, in my view, be commended. That the people of the land of Goethe and Schiller would choose as their guide in this spiritual exploration a clinically depressed loaf of bread, is, perhaps, just another improbable element of the German Zeitgeist.

Find him on YouTube and see if you agree that Bernd would be a terrific addition to American children’s TV.

I discovered him via the soon-to-expire Twitter feed of Mimi Smartypants, the pseudonymous Chicago editor whose online diary I’ve long had bookmarked for her wry, stylish and often random observations. The blurb for her 2005 book, “The World According to Mimi Smartypants,” says, “She's witty, urbane, outrageous, an international sensation; she's got a unique, smartypants take on ordinary life and its rampant surreality. And absolutely nothing is sacred or taboo -- not men, marriage, beer, religion, sex, marital aids, or motherhood.”

A few excerpts from her blog:

The Smithsonian pandas are going back to China and GOOD. Get the fuck out of here and don’t come back. Giving us pandas is the worst kind of soft diplomacy and if I were in charge I would refuse. I’d call up the Chinese government and say look, don’t fob off your terrible trash animals on us. It would probably cause an international incident but I do not care. If advisors forced me to accept the pandas I would re-gift them to Belgium or Iran and cause an even worse incident. 

And:

On a walk last week I cut through the college campus near my house and there was a lone goose hanging out near the sidewalk. I gave the goose the finger because that is my standard protocol with geese. I didn’t realize the youth walking behind me had noticed this until I heard “Damn that’s cold. What did he do?” I did not engage the youths but come on: you know what geese do! So many bad things! I hate them (the geese; not the youths) much less than pandas but they are still on the shitlist. 

And:

A weird thing I have done forever: If I am watching an old movie and there is a dog or a cat, I will say (out loud, usually), “That cat’s dead now.” All the people in the movie, both on-screen and behind the scenes, are often also dead, but that doesn’t need to be mentioned.

I am not sad about it, it is just a fact like an interesting pebble, that someone was like “we need a cat for this scene” and a cat was procured and filmed and did not particularly care about any of it, and then the cat returned to its regularly scheduled cat life and, at some point, died. I don’t do this as much with horses or cows, but sometimes. 

Mimi posts about once a month and not always about animals.

News & Views

News: A political activist mounted an unauthorized solo climb of the 42-story Accenture Tower in the West Loop Tuesday.

View: Shame on every news outlet — most of them, actually— that publicized the cause this daredevil was trying to advance. All that does is encourage more fools to divert public resources with dangerous and disruptive acts. And kudos to the Tribune for handling the story in Wednesday’s paper with a vague photo caption:

News: “1984 Olympic champion gymnast Mary Lou Retton remains in intensive care as donations pour in.”

View: There’s nothing at all new about fundraising campaigns to pay medical bills, but it’s sobering (and curious) that someone as famous and admired as Retton, 55, would be uninsured and thus vulnerable to staggering hospital costs as she battles a rare form of pneumonia in the intensive-care unit of a Texas hosptial. The Associated Press reports, “Nearly 5,000 people had donated over $275,000 in the 24 hours since her family launched an online fundraiser on Tuesday,” which is heartwarming but also somewhat depressing when you think of all the less famous people who face medical bankruptcy.

News: North Side resident Dorothy Hoffner dies at 104, a little more than one week after setting the record for world’s oldest skydiver.

View: We all have to go sometime, and remaining as vital, peppy and courageous as Hoffner to a very ripe old age seems like the best exit from this vale as a person could hope for. Note that there seems to be no indication that her jump from an airplane earlier this month played any role in her death, which was discovered Monday morning.

News: Mayor Brandon Johnson plans to go to the Mexican border “to assess the situation” firsthand.

View: “The situation” at the border is not going to shed any light on what needs to be done in Chicago, and this trip looks like an “I care” photo-op rather than an important fact-finding mission. Johnson should stay here and focus on where his tent camps are going to go — anybody? hello? — and how the city will deal with the raft of challenges that thousands of new, impoverished residents present.

When reporters asked him about the timing of the trip, Johnson gave an answer both unresponsive and weird:

"We still have public safety that we have to address. We still have the unhoused that we have to address. I still have a budget that I have to address. And I'm doing all of that with a Black wife, raising three Black children on the West Side of the city of Chicago. I am going to the border as soon as possible."

News: “City settlement deal demands silence from whistleblowers fired by Chicago Treasurer Conyears-Ervin“

View: Public money should never be used to purchase anyone’s silence. This highly unusual arrangement is a disgrace and Mayor Brandon Johnson should revoke it immediately and forcefully.

News: Calls grow to ban ‘The Tush Push’ in football

View: Ban it! Football ain’t rugby. The controversial short-yardage play —all but perfected by the Philadelphia Eagles — involves two players lining up just behind and on either side of the quarterback and pushing him forward into the line, sometimes with their hands on his hindquarters.

It’s usually used on fourth down with a yard or so to go for a first down, and was effective 37 times out of 41 for the Eagles last season. (Because of the Philadelphia connection, the play is sometimes referred to as “The Brotherly Shove.”)

But it’s not in the spirit of the game to have ball carriers propelled forward by teammates, and the NFL’s rules committee is reportedly considering putting a stop to it for next season. Do you agree?

Land of Linkin’

• “Newsrooms on the Run: What happens to journalism when journalists work and meet remotely instead of together?” by former Tribune critic Mark Caro.

• The comments under Gov. JB Pritzker’s anodyne “Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!” tweet are mostly very depressing. “Today, we proudly honor and celebrate the rich heritage, culture, and wisdom of Indigenous communities in Illinois and across our nation,” he wrote. “No we fucking don’t!” raged the Columbus Day diehards.

• Rick Kogan’s remembrance of Dick Butkus in the Tribune was masterful.

• “What Is The Creepiest Place in Chicago? Here’s What Block Club Readers Have To Say”

• In “The additional tragedy of a wrongful conviction” in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, I revisited the now 40-year-old murder of Jeanine Nicarico to reflect on how the cynically botched prosecutions and appeals in that case victimized her survivors over and over again.

• I should have had this link last week, but better late than never: “Just 9 instances of the almost unimaginable cruelty inflicted by Christopher Columbus and his crew during their time in the Caribbean.” I remain baffled why the Italian American community clings to this particular legacy. It’s an insult bordering on an ethnic slur to equate the character of the avaricious, brutal, genocidal Columbus with the character of today’s Italian Americans.

• The announcement by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the F. stands for “Freakin’ Nutjob” — that he plans to run for president prompted an analysis in Politico that concluded this development “probably helps Biden in the end. … Polls consistently show Kennedy is more popular with Republicans than Democrats.”

• Slate’s Dan Kois reports on the latest development in toilet paper perforation.

• Think you might like contra dancing, but you’re not so keen on traditional fiddle music? Check out this video of Rick Mohr’s “Tag and Zag” dance done to Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House.” It’s not exactly techno-contra, but close.

• I remained stunned by the Sun-Times story about people who pay up to $180 for a tattoo based on a randomly chosen design. You’d have to pay me to wear a randomly chosen hat for a day.

• Block Club Chicago reported Oct. 3 that “Little Free Libraries’ On City Property May Soon Require Permits.” Then the Tribune editorialized against the idea on Sunday and the Sun-Times followed suit in a Monday editorial. For the record, Picayune Sentinel readers learned about this silly proposal three weeks ago, on Sept. 21.

• The Picayune Sentinel preview: Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. I talk 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.

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:

■ Former Chicago City Council member and ex-Sun-Times CEO Edwin Eisendrath calls the ousting of Speaker Kevin McCarthy the clearest warning yet of a rising autocracy.

■ The Conversation: Lego’s dilemma is an environmental wake-up call.

■ Popular Information: “Target says it’s closing nine stores due to theft. The crime data tells a different story.”

■ USA Today revisits the question, “Can I get a COVID booster and flu shot at the same time?”

■ Author, broadcaster and podcaster John St. Augustine put down a pissed-off postal patron: “I will pay you a buck a minute to just stand there and keep quiet.” (Facebook link).

You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.

It’s all passengers for themselves when a plane is late

Our flight into Chicago Saturday evening landed on time but experienced a 45-minute delay getting to the gate because of unanticipated congestion around the terminal. We weren’t particularly concerned since we were at our “final destination,” to use airline lingo.

But a number of other passengers were anxious to desperate to make their connecting flights. So the attendant got on the intercom as we began rolling toward the gate to ask everyone to stay seated after the plane came to a complete stop so those in a hurry could disembark as quickly as possible.

You know what happened next, right? As soon as the “bong!” sounded, just about everyone stood in the aisles to retrieve their bag from the overhead bins, blocking the aisle for those in genuine hurry.

“I’ve seen this happen hundreds of times,” said a man across the way from us. “No one wants to wait for someone else.”

I’ve only seen it happen a handful of times — I don’t fly that much, really — but I’ve never seen the opposite happen. After about five minutes, when all the self-important, self-involved people were on their way out, the flight attendant made another plea, and those of us still in our seats obliged. Several frantic passengers raced up the aisle.

I guess it’s human nature not to give a shit about the needs of strangers. And yes, there are far worse examples of this here and all over the globe, but still. We trudged off with our faith in humanity diminished.

The political time bomb of the migrant challenge

Capitol Fax blogger Rich Miller had a provocative syndicated column last week that suggested public opinion is not in line with political rhetoric about Chicago’s willingness to embrace asylum-seeking migrants from South and Central America:

The M3 Strategies poll of 659 likely Chicago voters found that pluralities said they opposed “migrants being housed by the city of Chicago” (49% to 46%), while also saying it’s time to end Chicago’s status as a sanctuary city (46% to 39%). The poll’s margin of error was +/-3.82%. This is a Republican pollster, but they very accurately predicted the Chicago mayor’s race results during the first round.

Black and Latino voters really helped drive those poll results, with 49% of Black voters and 57% of Latinos opposing the city’s housing of migrants, and 51% of Black voters and 48% of Latinos saying they want to end the city’s sanctuary system. … Fifty-six percent of Latino and Black voters told the pollster that the migrants made the city less safe. …

Seventy-nine percent of Black respondents told M3 Strategies that the asylum-seeker situation is “negatively affecting current Chicago residents who may be in need.”

I like to note that the sanctuary city designation means only that Chicago police and other officials don’t cooperate with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. This doesn’t matter to the incoming asylum-seekers, who are in the country legally if not permanently, but there is clearly some thought that the designation has a symbolic quality that acts as a magnet for all migrants.

I suspect these number won’t improve as scores of busloads of migrants arrive in the city each week and with no good options where to put them.

Cheer Chat

Another Behind-the-Cheer video. This was our first run-through last weekend of a medley in which we’ll lead the audience in less than two months! We won’t have full-cast rehearsals for a few more weeks.

Yes, it’s just October, and “Songs of Good Cheer” weekend— Dec. 7-10 — seems far off. But tickets tend to go fast. Here is the link.

Word watch: Delete ‘beloved’ and ‘ride-share’

An Associated Press article Monday about a killing in Vermont described the victim as a “beloved retired dean of education.” A Tribune report Sunday about the disturbing twist and turns in a local homicide case described the victim as a “beloved only child.” Here are a few more AP headlines —

And a pair from the Tribune:

All due respect and sympathies to the victims and their survivors, but since when have death-notice adjectives been OK in news stories? Given that all deceased people are presumptively beloved by someone and reporters are not in any position to evaluate just how deserving a stranger to them might be of that descriptor, editors should make liberal use of the “delete” key.

On a brighter but still earnest note, can we please stop calling Lyft and Uber “ride-sharing” services? The passenger and driver aren’t “sharing” a ride. The passenger is paying the driver for transportation to a destination where the driver would not otherwise go. In that respect, they are “ride-hailing” services, like taxis.

All that said, as is my custom, I will put this to the discerning members of the PS Word Jury:

Hassle-saving tip for Tribune subscribers

A frustrated, determined Tribune subscriber wrote recently to say he was so fed up with the policy that made Sunday home-delivery subscribers call customer service every six months to opt out of paying $10 a month for “premium issues” such as the NFL preview or the holiday gift guide that he simply wanted to cancel his subscription.

The operator said something to the effect of, “Oh, no, sir, I can opt you out permanently if that’s the case.”

So I tried it. I called 312-546-7900 and insisted on getting the same deal — I didn’t even threaten to cancel. The operator agreed. I was permanently opted out of paying for “premium issues” to which I don’t want to subscribe. Try it and let me know if it works!

Minced Words

Austin Berg, Jon Hansen and I joined host John Williams for this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals.” We discussed the crisis in the Middle East, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s budget proposal and his proposed trip to the border, the movement to remove Chicago’s sanctuary city designation, the Republicans’ harum-scarum effort to name a new House speaker and — an issue where I was clearly in the minority — the decision of most media outlets to publicize the political cause promoted by the outlaw Accenture Tower climber.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

Re: Tweets

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• Sometimes, for fun, I like to mouth words to my husband when he's wearing earbuds. When he stops to ask me what I said, I just say, “Forget it!” and storm off. — @sixfootcandy

• The goodwill the world has shown Elton John pretending "Benny and the Jets" is a good song is unparalleled in celebrity history. It should be a yardstick in the industry. "Yeah, but is he just ‘Benny and the Jets’ popular?" — @YourComicMuse

• Use a coaster tiny dancer. — @Mardigroan

• My biggest concern is that we are maybe one catastrophe away from another round of famous people butchering "Imagine." — @cliftonaduncan

• If anyone wants to pop over and help me figure out why my house is so nippy, my door is always open. — @whoelsebutalf

• Me: Our kids are finally at an age where we can sleep in on weekends. Youth sports: Let me stop you right there. — @mommajessiec

• When police let you off with a warning, they should wag their finger while they're giving it to you. — @camerobradford

• My 9-year-old on “Shark Tank:” “It’s a shirt, but look, it’s also a napkin!” — @daddygofish

• The thing people don’t get about Boston is that yes, it’s wildly expensive. Yes, it’s freezing. And yes, it’s difficult to navigate and the people are unfriendly. But the food? Also not good. — @clhubes

• Machines can never produce true art because they can never be horny, the first step in making any piece of art. — @Rajandelman

More Elton John jokes than you’ll find in most humor polls, give me that much.

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Tune of the Week

Ever since I used to sing my kids to sleep, I’ve been a fan of lullabyes. Now that they’re grown, I don’t get much of a chance to sing them anymore, but here, for old time’s sake, is my absolute favorite rendition of “All the Pretty Little Horses”:

Tricia Spencer and Howard Rains sing it a bit faster than you might be used to, but it therefore has a groove that more lugubrious renditions lack. I’ll take suggestions for other lullabyes!

 Hush-you-bye, don't you cry
 Go to sleep little baby
 When you wake, you shall have
 All the pretty little horses

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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