Dark days at 'The Bright One' as the Sun-Times sheds 20% of its staff

And our annual quip bracket tournament is down to the Tweet Sixteen

3-20-2025 (issue No. 185)

This week:

• The latest on the exodus at the Sun-Times

• Quip Madness and the Tweet Sixteen

• Polls are looking lousy for Democrats, which may be why Sen. Chuck Schumer made the right decision to capitulate to the Republicans

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked

• That’s so Brandon! — Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s maladroit mayor

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

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

• Mary Schmich — On her daily dread level and three good things

• What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week — The return of Jon Hansen!

• Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

• Word court — Seeking readers rulings on “justice-impacted individuals” and “fulsome”

• Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists

• Good Sports — I refuse to bellyache about Michigan’s lousy seed

• Tune of the Week — “Wasteland of the Free” by Iris DeMent, nominated by Steve Chapman

Thoughts about the 20% smaller Sun-Times

In Tuesday’s Chicago Sun-Times, the lively tabloid that has occasionally branded itself as “The Bright One,” sports columnist Rick Telander wrote a reflection headlined, “It's time for Bears to end this silliness and build their stadium in Arlington Heights.” It contained the memorable line, “If dithering is an art form, the Bears are the Picassos of it.”

Well, if column writing is an art form (which it is), then Telander, now in his mid-70s, is one of the Picassos — clever, insightful, funny and often poetic. Consider his kicker Tuesday:

I’ve been to stadiums in Athens, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, Rome — all of which put the Bears’ past stadiums and current Soldier Field to shame. 
Times change.
Roll a joint. 
Buckle up.
Go to Arlington Heights, Bears.
Be pioneers. 
Be splendid.
Build. 

I made a note to myself to highlight this column in Land of Linkin’ today. But later Tuesday came the news that Telander was joining the Sun-Times’ other lead sports columnist, Rick Morrissey, along with many others in taking a buyout.

From David Roeder’s article that posted Tuesday afternoon:

Thirty employees of the Chicago Sun-Times — around one in five on its payroll — have agreed to resign under buyout terms the paper’s nonprofit ownership offered in hopes of stanching persistent financial deficits. …

Those leaving include most of the paper’s editorial board. Editorial Page Editor Lorraine Forte and board members Tom Frisbie and Marlen Garcia are leaving, causing staff speculation that the Sun-Times will no longer post editorials reflecting management’s views of various issues. … Sports columnists Rick Morrissey and Rick Telander accepted buyouts. … Bears beat writer Mark Potash and White Sox beat writer Daryl Van Schouwen will also be departing. Separately, Annie Costabile, who has deepened coverage of women’s sports, has resigned.

Other departures include advice columnist Ismael Perez and assistant features editor Darel Jevens. Longtime columnist Michael Sneed will be leaving the paper after 58 years in journalism. Assistant breaking news editor and former longtime political editor Scott Fornek, public safety and justice editor Dan Haar and deputy editor, politics and government John O’Neill, all involved in assignments and editing of copy, said they are among those exiting the paper. … Of the Sun-Times’ cuts, 23 are within the newsroom. The Sun-Times’ current editorial staff is around 107, counting union and nonunion personnel. … Melissa Bell, CEO of Chicago Public Media … said the exits will save the company $4.2 million annually, a target that satisfies its board. She said that no layoffs are planned.

Since that story posted, film / TV critic and former columnist Richard Roeper, 65, announced that Friday will be his last day.

And Morrissey posted a farewell column:

What will I do? What should I sink my teeth/fangs into? I don’t know. I had thought I might work another year or two, but then the buyouts were offered, and I asked myself if the world really needed another column about the McCaskey family’s congenital awkwardness. Answer: Yes, just not from me.

I consider not knowing what I’m going to do a good thing. I might contribute a column to the Sun-Times down the road. Who knows?

But this is goodbye, for now.

It means I won’t have the McCaskeys, the Rickettses and Jerry Reinsdorf to write about.

And here I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.

A lot of talent is walking out the door — though investigative reporter Tim Novak wanted me to clarify that his recent retirement was not connected to any buyout offer, and that he is maintaining a contractual relationship with the Sun-Times to work on stories and to mentor others in the newsroom.

I know I join my former colleagues at the Tribune and current members of the Trib’s newsroom union in hoping that the Sun-Times finds a path to financial stability (it’s currently losing $12 million a year) and that the journalists who are moving on find rewarding and meaningful work.

I was part of a similarly large exodus from the Tribune newsroom nearly three years ago, and the paper is still producing excellent work while those who left with whom I’m still in touch are happy with their decision.

The Sun-Times devoted an entire article Wednesday to Roeper’s multi-faceted career, a career that was unfairly sidetracked in 2018 when the paper rescinded plans to have him resume writing news columns after management learned he had been buying fake Twitter followers to inflate his significance on social media. It was a dumb (and unnecessary) thing for him to do, yeah, but there was no reason for the paper to permanently deny its readers the benefits of Roeper’s full journalistic gifts.

Details of the buyout offer

• For those with one to 4.99 years of service, Chicago Public Media was offering 10 weeks of pay and a $9,000 cash bonus.

• For those with five years of service up to 10.99 years, the offer was 16 weeks of pay and a $10,000 cash bonus.

• For those with 11 years of service up to 19.99 years, the offer was 20 weeks of pay and a $12,500 cash bonus.

• For those with 20 years of service up to 29.99 years, the offer was 22 weeks of pay and a $12,500 cash bonus.

• For those with 30 or more years of service, the offer was 24 weeks of pay and a $12,500 cash bonus.

Madness (the good kind!) continues

Last Thursday, I posted the Round of 64 in my annual Quip Madness bracket tournament, and Tuesday I posted the first set of finalists in the simultaneous click tournament to choose the funniest visual joke on social media from the last 12 months. I also posted the Round of 32 in Quip Madness.

We’re now down to the final eight brackets — the Tweet 16 as I’ve branded this round — and here are the contestants, seeded by their percentage victories in the last round in parentheses. Click here to vote as you read them.

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I’m sorry, but you can’t *always* be experiencing a higher volume of calls than average. That’s not how averages work. — @Kit_Yates_Maths (66%)

vs.

Always answer the door wearing a coat. If you’re pleased to see them, tell them you’ve just got home. If you don’t want them in, say you were just on your way out. — @BigBearF1 (51%)

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Me: Why is it so hard to build a bear-proof trashcan? Park Ranger: Because there is considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest people. — @cliffetters (64%)

vs.

I asked my wife what women really want and she said , “attentive lovers.” Or maybe it was "a tent of lovers." I wasn't really listening. — @KenJennings (52%)

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In the UK we celebrate Thanksgiving as the day we managed to ship all our paranoid religious fundamentalists off to another continent. — @wildethingy (63%)

vs.

“Can I get two boxes of Sudafed?” “Sorry, by law you can only buy one at a time.” “Okay then just the one box of Sudafed and these 7 guns.” — @TheNardvark (52%)

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My wife asked me if she had any ‘annoying’ habits and then got all offended during the PowerPoint presentation. — @BattyMclain (61%)

vs.

Who started calling the Tesla Cybertrucks “Deploreans?” I owe you a drink. — @franklinleonar (53%)

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If you enjoy interacting with people who have strong opinions and minimal life experiences, may I recommend parenthood? — @MedusaOusa (59%)

vs.

When I say “I hate drama,” I mean I hate being involved in drama. Other people’s drama? Big fan. — @chabcharu (53%)

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Podcasts are like babies. They're too easy to create and not everyone should have one. — @marknorm (58%)

vs.

“Oh. Wow. Oh. Jeez. We didn’t think everyone was gonna bring a bag!” -airlines — @DanWilbur (54%)

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I taught my kids about democracy tonight by having them vote on which movie to watch and pizza to order. I then picked the movie and pizza because I'm the one with the money. — @Dadsaysjokes (58%)

vs.

I would have renamed the Gulf of Mexico “Sea Señor.” — @BobGolen (55%)

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I told my dad I ran out of alcohol and didn't have any money to buy any for the weekend. So he gave me the huge bottle of vodka from the cupboard that I’d replaced with water when I was 16. Life really does come back to bite you in the ass. — @Lizbeth_Ellen (58%)

vs.

I was on a sofa next to my wife who was eating a snack and typing on her phone, I heard my phone ping in the kitchen where it was charging, so I went to check it, The text was from my wife. She’d written, "Bring me a drink on your way back.” — @dadgivesjokes (58%)

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Cast your votes here

It’s with a heavy heart I note that my personal favorite quip from the past year — “If you send me all of your old home movies on VHS tape, I will transfer them to a landfill and free you from the prison of your past,” by @citizenkawala, narrowly failed to advance.

If you have not yet voted in the first round of the visual tweets poll, please click here and do so.

Surveys say: Uh-oh!

From “Dems’ own polling shows massive brand problem ahead of 2026” in Politico:

Nearly two months into the second Donald Trump administration, a majority of voters in battleground House districts still believe Democrats in Congress are “more focused on helping other people than people like me,” according to an internal poll (of 1,500 voters polled Feb. 21 to Feb. 25) conducted by the Democratic group Navigator Research. Among independents, just 27 percent believe Democrats are focused on helping them. … Just 44 percent of those polled said they think Democrats respect work, while even fewer — 39 percent — said the party values work. Only 42 percent said Democrats share their values. A majority, meanwhile — 56 percent — said Democrats are not looking out for working people. Only 39 percent believe Democrats have the right priorities. …

The poll found a whopping 69 percent of voters said Democrats were “too focused on being politically correct.” … Just 38 percent of voters believe that Democrats’ policies prioritize the middle and working class.

Here’s another, taken Feb. 16 to Feb. 17, also by a Democratic polling firm. Politico summarizes:

A plurality of (1,383) voters — 40 percent — said the Democratic Party doesn’t have any strategy whatsoever for responding to Trump. … Another 24 percent said Democrats have a game plan, but it’s a bad one. A paltry 10 percent said that the party has a solid technique for dealing with Trump.

More recently, NBC News surveyed 1,000 voters from March 7-11 and found:

Just over a quarter of registered voters (27%) say they have positive views of the party, which is the party’s lowest positive rating in NBC News polling dating back to 1990. Just 7% say those views are “very” positive. … A majority of voters (55%) say they have negative views of the party, including 38% who say those views are “very” negative. … The drop in the party’s image is driven in part by independent voters, with just 11% saying they have positive views. …

The new low of positive feelings about the Democratic Party is still a few points higher than the Republican Party’s lowest-ever rating, from October 2013, when just 22% said they viewed the party positively amid a government shutdown.

And a CNN Poll of 1,206 voters polled March 6-9 found:

Among the American public overall, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating stands at just 29% — a record low in CNN’s polling dating back to 1992. … Democratic-aligned adults say, 52% to 48%, that the leadership of the Democratic Party is currently taking the party in the wrong direction. …

The Republican Party’s (favorability rating currently stands at 36% … (with) 79% of Republicans and Republican leaners currently take a positive view of the GOP.

As “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart put it, Democratic “approval is only seven points ahead of where it turns red and goes into low-power mode.” Though on the other hand, Brandon Johnson can only dream of such approval ratings.

Though the NBC News poll found that President Donald Trump’s job approval number of 47% matches his all-time high in the network’s polling, it’s still considerably worse than how his predecessors were polling at this early point in their terms.

NBC screen grab of Steve Kornacki

Remember, also, that these polls were in the field before Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and nine other members of the Senate Democratic caucus — including Illinois’ own Sen. Dick Durbin — voted for a Republican federal spending bill they and many Democrats found highly objectionable instead of forcing a government shutdown.

“The GOP-written stopgap cuts some $12 billion in domestic funding while adding money for migrant deportations and some other programs Democrats oppose,” explained Politico. “It also contains no language that would stop the Trump administration from continuing to hold back congressionally approved spending.”

About that capitulation …

Schumer explained himself in a lengthy interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times:

It was a very, very difficult decision between two bad options, a partisan Republican C.R. [continuing resolution] and a shutdown that Musk and Trump wanted. For me, the shutdown of the government would just be devastating and far worse than the Republican C.R.

Let me explain: A shutdown would shut down all government agencies, and it would solely be up to Trump and DOGE and Musk what to open again, because they could determine what was essential. So their goal of decimating the whole federal government, of cutting agency after agency after agency, would occur under a shutdown.

Two days from now in a shutdown, they could say, well, food stamps for kids is not essential. It’s gone. All veterans offices in rural areas are gone. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. They’re not essential. We’re cutting them back. So it’d be horrible.

The damage they can do under a shutdown is much worse than any other damage that they could do. … There is no off ramp. One of the Republican senators told us: We go to a shutdown, it’s going to be there for six months, nine months, a year. And by then, their goal of destroying the federal government would be gone.

And finally, one final point here, and that is that right now under the C.R., you can go to court and contest an executive order to shut something down. Under a shutdown, the executive branch has sole power. So, in conclusion, I knew this would be an unpopular decision. I knew that. I know politics. But I felt so strongly as a leader that I couldn’t let this happen because weeks and months from now, things would be far worse than they even are today, that I had to do what I had to do.

Local author and pundit Mark Jacob offered one of many harsh assessments from the left at “Stop the Presses.”

Even amid a Republican assault on our democracy, these Democrats crave bipartisanship. Their desire for “decorum” makes them losers in a battle against right-wingers who care nothing about norms. Republicans fight dirty – such as packing the Supreme Court – yet Schumer & Co. won’t take off their velvet gloves. To MAGA, they’re useful idiots. To democracy defenders, they’re useless or worse.

Ezra Levin, co-executive director of the liberal grassroots Indivisible Project, issued a scathing statement calling for Schumer to step down from his leadership position:

The passage of this dangerous Republican funding bill is a travesty. … After weeks of constituents demanding that Democrats use this rare, precious point of leverage on the government funding bill, Schumer did the opposite. He led the charge to wave the white flag of surrender. … With our democracy on the line, he let us, the country, and the Democratic Party down.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told reporters: “There is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal. And this is not just about progressive Democrats. This is across the board. The entire party.”

And here is Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid:

The public was primed to blame (Republicans) for a shutdown. Trump and Musk’s governance had been chaotic and unpopular. And the CR itself was a gift-wrapped attack line: “Republicans are threatening to shut down the government unless they get a blank check for Musk’s takeover.”

Instead of forcing Republicans to own their extremism, Schumer gave away one of the only pieces of leverage Democrats had before 2026.

This wasn’t about whether a shutdown was risk-free—no fight ever is. It was about whether Democrats were willing to impose a cost on their opponents for governing through blackmail. Instead, Schumer made the kind of move that tells Republicans they can keep pushing. … Schumer’s failure wasn’t just tactical—it was a failure to grasp the stakes. If Democrats want to be the party of transformation, they cannot keep positioning themselves as caretakers of a collapsing system. Otherwise, the next time Republicans set another fire, Democrats will once again be debating whether they should even try to put it out.

I resonate strongly with this urge to fight like hell against Trump’s wrecking ball agenda, but centrist pundit Matt Yglesias made some valid points in “Sixteen thoughts on an averted shutdown: A bitter pill that Schumer is correct to swallow.”

Lots of people are engaging in cheap position taking in favor of a “no” vote on cloture, but neither House Democrats nor the people voting “no” in the Senate nor the people getting mad on Twitter have an actual strategy for getting what the base wants out of this, which is some kind of act of Congress saying that Trump and Musk need to conduct the government differently.

The fact is, Democrats lost the election in November. They lost the White House. The lost the House. They lost the Senate.

It drives me crazy that the very same progressives who shit on Democrats for not being able to stop bad things Republicans do after they lose elections spend all the time before elections shitting on the idea of being more pragmatic and moderate and winning more seats. If there were four more House Democrats, none of whom supported any policy changes in a progressive direction whatsoever, that would still give Democrats a majority and the ability to block all kinds of GOP fuckery. That’s true on DOGE, it’s true on Medicaid and SNAP for billions of poor kids. It’s actually a really big deal. If you want to stop Republicans from doing bad things, you need to win races. You need to back moderates in red-leaning districts and encourage party leaders to take popular positions and win.

I’ve long argued against lawmakers of one party having the power to shut down the government since such a shutdown “threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket. Instability would occur in financial markets, and the federal deficit would soar.”

That’s Ronald Reagan from 1987 when Democrats were trying to extract concessions from him on one of 18 occasions during his two terms when Congress had to raise the debt limit.

In the end, I suspect that, given the low polling numbers for the Democratic Party, voters would be inclined to blame the left for the consequences of a shutdown and that Trump and his DOGEbags would take the opportunity to wreak even worse damage than they are wreaking now. That might have redounded well at the ballot box in 2026 for the Dems, but much of that additional damage would be hard to undo. And I suspect that Schumer, after some infuriating dithering, recognized that.

Given the lousy options they had, he and the Senate Democrats who voted with him chose the least lousy.

News & Views

News: U.S. deports a kidney transplant specialist with a valid visa who was an assistant professor at Brown University.

View: The lack of thought and vision that’s going into this frenzied attack on foreigners is disconcerting. Dr. Rasha Alawieh is Lebanese and was ousted because she attended the funeral for slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah while on a visit home.

The crackdowns on freedom of the thoughts and expressions of those who aren’t on board with the MAGA agenda should be gravely alarming to anyone who believes in the First Amendment. What’s happening to Mahmoud Khalil, for instance is, as John Oliver put it, “a fucking disgrace.”

News: Apple TV announces a fourth season of “Ted Lasso.”

View: Oh no! I wish they’d leave well enough alone. The third season of this little gem ended perfectly with a May 2023 episode titled “So Long, Farewell.” Ted leaves England to return to Kansas, his son and, perhaps, his estranged wife. Roy Kent takes over as head coach of AFC Richmond. Coach Beard marries Jane. And so on. They should give this reboot the boot.

News: Protesters are boycotting Tesla, picketing Tesla dealerships, vandalizing Tesla cars, showrooms and charging stations, and harassing Tesla owners to express their profound unhappiness with Tesla owner Elon Musk.

View: Yes to boycotting Tesla and to picketing dealerships. No to vandalism and to harassment of Tesla owners — even the idjits who bought those hideous Cybertrucks.

Many people bought Teslas before Elon Musk became a malignant political force and was just an awkward visionary so basically anodyne that he was invited to host “Saturday Night Live” in 2021. They liked the idea of a company that was on the forefront of creating electric vehicles that might someday drive themselves, not the idea of putting money into the pocket of a sociopathic kook who is cheerfully slashing government programs upon which lives and health depend.

Buying a Tesla today is shameful. Owning one may well not be. Leave the cars and their drivers alone.

Tesla stock performance into Wednesday, when the price was $234.99

The Guardian reports:

Sales of new vehicles have declined around the world, with February sales in Australia down about 72% compared with the same month in 2024; in Germany sales were down 76% for the same period … As protests have grown, the White House has rallied round Musk. Last week Donald Trump claimed the boycott was “illegal.”

Trump’s impulse to outlaw or declare illegal anything that goes against his agenda is deeply troubling.

News: Alden Global Capital orders the more than 60 daily newspapers it controls to run on their front pages a Chicago Tribune editorial supporting copyright infringement claims against AI companies that vacuum up newspaper content and repurpose it without compensation and, often, without credit.

View: The argument is persuasive but, I fear, futile. AI’s ability to digest, synthesize and generate information seems likely to get exponentially better (see “Italian newspaper says it has published world’s first AI-generated edition”), and the ability of regulations and statutes to protect written material from its ravenous maw will get weaker as the programs get faster and more nimble.

The argument feels a bit like the movie industry’s angry efforts in the late 1960s and early 1970s to block the spread of “pay TV,” and then its feckless fight against home video recorders in the 1980s. All we can hope is that the ultimately victory of technology will somehow make things better.

That’s So Brandon!

Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s mayor

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s request of city contractors that they lop 3% off their invoices to help the city save money is not going over very well.

From a Tribune editorial:

Shared sacrifice in times of fiscal stress is a reasonable expectation. But this sacrifice is completely one-sided. One major component of how city government provides services — contractors — is being asked to tighten its belt while the far larger and more expensive part — union-represented city employees — is being asked to do nothing of the sort.

These vendors employ people, too, just as the city government does. Apparently, those workers are of less concern to Mayor Brandon Johnson and his progressive allies on the City Council than the workers represented by the public-sector unions that bankroll their campaigns. The unfairness is obvious, which makes this money-saving strategy indefensible. …

The city does indeed have an obligation to taxpayers to pursue all avenues to get its fiscal house in order without resorting to more taxes on an already overtaxed citizenry. Of course, given that the Johnson administration refused suggestions from some aldermen to impose unpaid furloughs on city workers or to reduce head count, the city isn’t pursuing all such avenues.

The Tribune’s news story notes that “council committees and ward budgets also took a 3% cut and Johnson’s budget team also requested departments cut 3% from their corporate fund expenses,” and added that this is not the first time a mayor has tried to claw back money from private contractors:

Mayor Richard M. Daley worked to negotiate voluntary price reductions from existing contractors, with “modest” success. … Mayor Rahm Emanuel tried again amid his own budget troubles, hiring the firm Accenture to find efficiencies in existing contracts and dangling the threat of terminating contracts for convenience if vendors didn’t play ball.

The Sun-Times story adds:

Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce President Jack Lavin branded the cost-cutting move a mistake that could backfire.

“It sends a message to city vendors that there’s lack of certainty, and what will you get from that? You’ll get maybe less vendors bidding in the future. They’ll add a premium on because of that uncertainty. Fewer companies will bid. And that will cost the city more in the future,” Lavin said.

“The better thing to do is to embrace a shared sacrifice,” Lavin added. “Instead of telling them to cut 3%, say ‘How can we work together to change the scope of the contract to get 3% savings?’”

Land of Linkin’

• A listening recommendation from our occasional podcast columnist, podcast editor (and my wife) Johanna Zorn: “My new favorite podcast is Our Ancestors Were Messy, and imho it should be yours too. That’s because it is pure storytelling joy. The show is a celebration of Black history and culture based on the society pages of Black newspapers from a century ago. These are true stories of courtship and betrayal, love and iconic unions, that have shaped American culture. In each episode, host Nichole Hill and her guests dig into a set of archival stories, exposing all of the messiness of real life with so much wit and insight. Honestly, it’s just what I need right now.”

• “One whole bathroom per person? This is a thing? This is very much a thing.” The Guardian reports on “bathroom divorce,” the latest wrinkle on “sleep divorce.”

• The Free Press: “Mentions of diversity and equity have vanished from the Pritzker Family Foundation’s website amid Trump’s attack on DEI.”

• The Associated Press: “From France comes a call for Trump’s America to return Lady Liberty.” Quoting Raphaël Glucksmann, a French leftist and member of the European Parliament about the famed statue in New York Harbor: “It was our gift to you. But apparently you despise her. So she will be happy here with us … we will take up the torch, here in Europe.”

• “On Kennedy Center Stage, Folk Musicians Nora Brown & Stephanie Coleman Protest Trump’s Takeover.” Coleman has roots in Evanston and is one of America’s most accomplished old-time fiddlers.

• Speaking of accomplished old-time fiddlers, Janie Rothfield will be appearing with her husband, Allan Carr, at a Chicago house concert on Saturday, March 29, at a workshop/jam/concert in Berwyn on Sunday, March 30, and at the Chicago Barn Dance Company’s weekly dance on Monday, March, 31.

• PolitiFact calls bullshit (my word!) on President Donald Trump’s claim that Biden-era pardons aren’t valid because they were signed with an autopen.

• Yes, the Rebecca Black who appears on this year’s Lollapalooza lineup is the same Rebecca Black whose goofy “Friday” video 13 years ago now has 174 million views on YouTube.

• USA Today: “He voted for Trump. Now his wife sits in an ICE detention center.”

• MSN: “Egg Prices Plummet to Nearly Five-Month Low.” The story says, “A recent USDA Egg Market Report noted that egg inventories have increased, contributing to the drop in prices. The report also found that demand has eased slightly following the holiday season, reducing upward pressure on costs, and that there had been no significant outbreaks of bird flu reported so far in March.”

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:

■ Intelligencer is tracking the ways judges are blocking Donald Trump’s agenda.

■ Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern at Slate: “We’ve officially entered the next phase of Trump’s dictatorship era.”

■ Social Security “sabotage”: Popular Information has an internal memo detailing changes that would “debilitate the agency, cause significant processing delays and prevent many Americans from applying for or receiving benefits.”

■ “Most of us bought the car before Elon went rogue”: Tesla owners tell the Sun-Times they’re caught in the middle of backlash against and vandalism of their cars to protest CEO Elon Musk’s federal flimflam—a phenomenon that inspired a cartoon from Mattie Lubchansky.

■ Talk about derangement: A Minnesota Republican pushing a bill to designate “Trump Derangement Syndrome” a mental illness category for critics obsessed with Trump has been arrested on charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution.

■ WBEZ’s under investigation from the newly Trump-compliant FCC for airing “underwriting” messages in possible violation of a federal ban on public-broadcasting commercials.

■ Semafor: After first discouraging one of its most visible gay employees from attending an LGBTQ Pride event, National Public Radio backed down.

■ Columnist and media critic Margaret Sullivan rips into “two New York Times headlines that drove me nuts.”

■ “Do one thing”: That’s journalist Dan Sinker’s strategy for dealing with “full-on doom living” in the age of Trump: “It doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be something.”

■ The day things changed: Axios Chicago reviews how the COVID-19 pandemic affected life in Illinois.

■ Five years ago this week, one suburb became the state’s first community to impose a “shelter-in-place” order.

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

Mary Schmich: The daily dread level and three good things

Mary Schmich photo, 2020

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a recent offering:

Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic started, I began keeping a regular to-do list. It was my way of being in control of something in a time when routine was exploded.

Before long, I'd added a new feature to my to-do list: the daily dread level.

I would rate my dread on a scale of 1 to 10, and I found that the simple act of writing it down diminished my dread. That small dose of humor and self-awareness leavened everything.

Pretty soon I realized I needed a third element for the daily tally and so I started writing down three good things.

I was struck by how the three good things were almost always simple: good weather, a good book, a good walk, a good meal, a good night's sleep, a good column idea, a deadline conquered, a talk with a good friend.

And that has not changed.

I'd forgotten all of this, frankly, until I was searching for tax documentation a few days ago and voila--the old legal pads filled with to-dos and dread levels and good things. I remembered how helpful that practice had been. It was a shorthand way of journaling — recording facts and feelings but with less yada yada.

Feel free to share your dread level today Or three good things.

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Here’s one more good thing: All seven episodes of “Division Street Revisited,” the podcast Mary hosted, are now available wherever fine podcasts are served. The series explores and updates the lives of some of the people Studs Terkel interviewed for his landmark 1967 oral history book “Division Street America.”

Minced Words

Marj Halperin, Jon Hansen and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. Hansen is a brand new father and we started with a long discussion of the surrogacy process, moved along to talk about all things Trump, the terrible options facing Democrats and deep cuts at the Sun-Times.

Recommendations:

• Marj — A green light for “Sing Sing,” which will begin streaming Friday on Max.

• Jon — A green light for the Netflix series“American Primeval.”

• Eric — Yellow light for the new novel “Dream State,” an Oprah’s Book Club selection by Eric Puchner.

• John — A green light for season three of “White Lotus” on Max.

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.

Read the background bios of some regular panelists here.

Quotables

A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

It’s no small feat to tank the $29 trillion U.S. economy in just seven weeks, but Donald Trump appears to be on the cusp of pulling it off. Plunging stock markets have lost some $4 trillion, Americans’ retirement accounts are shriveling, the president’s trade war is set to raise prices on everything from cars to avocados, and recession alarms are blinking red. But this week, Trump took action to ease the fears of jittery Americans. He told them to buy Teslas. — Dana Milbank

I believe that CNN and MS-DNC, who literally write 97.6 percent bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party and in my opinion, they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal, what do they do is illegal … And it has to stop, it has to be illegal, it’s influencing judges and it’s really changing law, and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal, and they do it in total coordination with each other. — Donald Trump

AIs want the future to be like the past, and AIs make the future like the past. If the training data is full of human bias, then the predictions will also be full of human bias, and then the outcomes will be full of human bias, and when those outcomes are copraphagically fed back into the training data, you get new, highly concentrated human/machine bias. — Cory Doctorow

“Sleepy Joe” oversaw the biggest stock gains in U.S. history, nine straight quarters of GDP growth and 12 straight months of inflation decline, while “the greatest businessman ever” crashed it all in 45 days. — unknown

They called him “Sleepy Joe” because we could sleep at night. — unknown

Those people aren’t attacking Tesla dealerships. They are tourists showing love. I learned that on Jan. 6, 2021. — unknown

Imagine cheering on people in power who are actively targeting and harming the hungry, the poor, the sick, the elderly, veterans, the disabled, the different, and the stranger, and still somehow expecting people to believe you follow Jesus. — Rev. Benjamin Cremer

Word court

A recent Sun-Times op-ed referred four times to ex-cons as “justice-impacted individuals.” I’ve seen this sanitizing locution before with its passive voice-like suggestion that something was done to such people, and I vote no.

Jill Jaworski, Chicago's chief financial officer, this week expressed her hopes of “working out a fulsome budget solution for CPS.”

I vote no on the use of “fulsome” as a $20 synonym for “full” or “complete.” But I also vote no on any use of the word at all, as it has become “skunked” in the view of Vocabulary.com:

A word whose definition or usage is so hotly contested that it never fails to draw attention to itself is called a skunked term …

Fulsome dates to the 1200s, when its components (ful + som) gave it the meaning "abundant, full," says the Online Etymology Dictionary. By the mid-1300s, it had come to mean "plump, well-fed." It morphed again in the 1600s to mean "overgrown, overfed" and "offensive to taste or good manners," a meaning it retains today.

In 1828, Noah Webster listed the only definition of fulsome in his dictionary as "disgusting or offensive," while The Oxford English Dictionary listed "excessively flattering" as the only current definition in 1897 — dating it to 1663 — labeling the others as obsolete.

Yet somewhere along the line, the original neutral meaning came back.

By the 1940s and 1950s, says Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (MWDEU), there was an outcry against using fulsome to mean "abundant." Usage mavens began urging the "disgusting or offensive" use, some mistakenly referring to it as its traditional sense. But language speakers haven't listened.

No matter how you deploy “fulsome,” someone is going to think you are either pretentious or an idiot, and possibly both. Your vote:

Good Sports

Many of my fellow University of Michigan fans have been grousing about the men’s basketball team getting a five seed in the NCAA tournament beginning this week, given that just last week the Wolverines beat three teams that were given higher seeds by the tournament selection committee.

Yeah. That means that their first game — tonight against 12th seeded UC San Diego — will be slightly tougher than the first games played by the teams they just beat. But really. Come on. In the long run, no one really cares who wins their first few games in the 68-team tournament. If your team really is all that, it will beat those other teams regardless of the seeding and make the Final Four. Just win.

Go Blue.

Tune of the Week

I’ve been opening up Tune of the Week nominations in an effort to bring some newer sounds to the mix. I’m asking readers to use the comments area for paid subscribers or to email me to leave nominations along with YouTube links and at least a few sentences explaining why the nominated song is meaningful or delightful to you. The following nomination, from my former colleague Steve Chapman, is by Iris DeMent and is even more timely today than it was when it was released in 1996:

Living in the wasteland of the free
Where the poor have now become the enemy
”Let's blame our troubles on the weak ones”
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

The Duluth Reader quoted DeMent about the song:

I realized that “Wasteland of the Free” could get me killed – and I ain’t ready to go yet. People aren’t used to hearing things like [the ‘We kill for oil’ line] in public…I had to ask myself if I was up for hate mail. … But you know, I think the odd thing is that a lot of people have thought those words. So I guess the main reason I had to put it on there [on the album] is because that’s around-the-kitchen-table talk, and if I have the courage to say it around the kitchen table, and I don’t have the courage to say it out in public, then I’m not as much of a person as I like to think of myself as being.

The New Yorker reported:

When a Republican state senator, John Grant, heard the song on a Tampa community-radio station, WMNF, he led a successful effort to eliminate the station’s funding from the state budget. DeMent did a benefit concert for the station; state funding was later restored. … Back when she released “Wasteland of the Free,” DeMent’s dissenting voice was nearly solitary in country circles. So it came as a welcome jolt last year to see so many newer country and country-adjacent artists leaning in DeMent’s direction.

The late Merle Haggard once declared that DeMent, now 64, was “the best singer I ever heard. … She’s too goddamned good. She’s got too much to say, songs mean too much. They make too much sense.”

Info

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. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise. Browse and search back issues here.

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