Gary Deeb's death is another reminder of the paucity of media criticism in Chicago

& an amplification of a plea to revamp our promiscuous use of 'reform'

6-5-2025 (issue No. 196)

This week:

• A look back at the late Gary Deeb

• Last week’s winning quip

• The General Assembly’s disappointing punt on ‘right to die’ legislation

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked, including another instance where I agree with Donald Trump

• Where is the effort to reopen the public schools Chicago closed a dozen years ago?

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

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

• Those who invoke ‘reform’: Reform thyself

• Cate Plys — On the Mikes, Royko and Miner

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

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

• What’s on ‘The Mincing Rascals’ podcast this week

• Good Sports — Why did the Knicks fire Thibs? And why are the Sky retiring Candace Parker’s jersey number?

• Green Light — A recommendation from reader Bill Minor of “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal,” by Christopher Moore

Gary Deeb, 1945-2025

This week came the news that famously caustic former Chicago media critic and columnist Gary Deeb died May 17 at 79. His informed, but often excessively blistering, dispatches were must-reads when he wrote for the Tribune from 1973 to 1980 and then for the Sun-Times from 1980 to 1983.

In many ways, Deeb was opposite of the measured, cerebral Chicago Reader media critic Michael Miner, who died just 16 days earlier, on May 1 at age 81.

“He was the first newspaper columnist I ever read daily,” wrote former Sun-Times and Tribune columnist Phil Rosenthal in a Facebook post. “My love of the news business was inextricably linked to my mornings reading him as a pre-teen and beyond. In a box somewhere, I have an autographed picture I asked for when I was 12 or 13. He was extraordinarily readable.”

He was. And this was in large part because he was “the wolf-man of the air waves — the sourest, crudest ravager of the medium since Spiro Agnew put away his thesaurus,” in the words of a 1975 Time Magazine profile headlined “The Terror of the Tube.”

The Rotten Tomatoes archive of his withering assessments includes:

• “Diff’rent Strokes” is “a disastrous piece of junk that ought to be wiped out before it spreads.”

• “Little House on the Prairie” is “a meatless sausage of cloying sweetness, padded dialog, and soap-opera background music.”

• Actor Carroll O’Connor’s “flaws stand out like the stench of a cheap cigar.”

Rosenthal offered his own collection of Deebisms:

Donny and Marie Osmond were "twerps." "Dallas" was a "low-rent ... soap opera." Shaun Cassidy was "a slack-jawed wimp," not to be confused with the brother referred to some years later as "slack-jawed no-talent Patrick Cassidy."

A Deeb column on the arrival of Jane Pauley at WMAQ-Ch. 5 attributed to an anonymous sources the suggestion the newcomer from Indianapolis had the IQ of a cantaloupe.

When Robert Blake was cast in a made-for-TV "Of Mice and Men," Deeb noted, parenthetically, that "Blake won't play the feeble-minded character, which is certainly casting against type."

Bob Goldsborough’s obituary for Deed in the Tribune had a few more choice quotes:

In 1973, he wrote that sportscaster Howard Cosell was “vain, pompous, cruel, occasionally stupid, always overbearing, often a buffoon. Worse yet, he is insincere. That last one is the toughest to cure.” A year later, he criticized the “hacking cough, strident voice and insipid ‘crosstalk’” of CBS Morning News coanchor Sally Quinn. In 1975, he wrote that sportscaster Curt Gowdy was “intolerably inept,” while in 1978, he called broadcast journalist Geraldo Rivera a “fatuous punk” who was “capable of weepy melodramatics and the most flagrant affectation.” … And Deeb took numerous jabs at Channel 7 meteorologist John Coleman, calling him “a joyboy weatherman” who was “about as funny as a whoopee cushion. But not nearly as sophisticated.”

In a 2003 column, Michael Miner wrote:

Loathed, feared, applauded and sucked up to, Deeb was nationally notorious. … Then in 1983 he made the career move that nobody has ever understood. He took a job as a critic for the station he’d excoriated most, WLS TV, Ch. 7. (short video highlight reel)

If WLS hired Deeb to shut him up, it worked. His old readers watched appalled as Deeb, the fearless media analyst who’d let the chips fall where they might, shilled for ABC programs. Deeb’s new job not only silenced him, it discredited him. And as the years went by, the on-air time WLS allowed its old nemesis steadily diminished to the point where he all but disappeared.

In 1999, Richard Roeper wrote in the Sun-Times: that “Deeb was often about as subtle as a Bob Hope leer at Joey Heatherton and as fair as an Eastern-bloc Olympics judge circa 1976, but he was entertaining as hell.”

Mitch Dudek’s obituary in the Sun-Times noted that, when Deeb became a TV pundit, he “offered up the same sort of puff pieces he once railed against. It was a move that shocked many in the industry to the point that some wondered if it was a ruse and Mr. Deeb was actually going undercover to write an expose.”

He left town with almost no fanfare nearly 30 years ago and returned to his native Buffalo, New York. The Buffalo News reported that Deeb “died of multiple ailments” in Charlotte, North Carolina, “where he had lived for almost the past two decades.”

In a column this week hailing Deeb as “the greatest,” Daily Herald sports media columnist Jim O’Donnell quoted this advice from Deeb to those aspiring to do the job he once did:

Give me insight into the people I'm watching and the people making the decisions about the people I'm watching. Ferret out the redemption-less weasels and hurt the incompetent. Skewer the misplaced. And in those rare cases where you find such clear and compelling vision and talent, spotlight it. Encourage it. Work to constantly force them to raise the bar in their particular medium.

One of Deeb’s brightest moves was hiring Robert Feder, then a young editor at a chain of suburban weeklies, to be his legman when he joined the Sun-Times in 1980. Feder inherited Deeb’s pulpit and occupied it for 25 years, followed by another 14 years as a media/critic columnist for other local outlets. In a 2022 exit interview with the Picayune Sentinel following his retirement announcement, Feder said:

I consciously chose not to emulate Deeb’s aggressive personal style. My apprenticeship with him was invaluable — from learning how to read a ratings book to developing sources. But I like to say that I learned as much from Gary about what not to do as what to do. And I said to myself then that if I were ever in that position, I would definitely choose to do the job differently.

Deeb was famous for his take-no-prisoners style. And it was enormously entertaining to read if he wasn’t writing about you. But every time you burn a bridge, you lose the opportunity for that person or that organization to trust you.

So you have to decide: Is it better to write something that makes you the center of attention? Or is it better to focus on the story? I never wanted to make it about me. I just wanted to get the goods and have the people trust me.

The Tribune obituary quoted Feder in 1984 discussing Deeb’s TV career:

The things he is choosing to cover are the very things he expressed the greatest contempt for when I worked for him: celebrity interviews, sitcom stars, minor cast changes, all the stuff that comes out of Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.

At his height, Deeb was intriguingly toxic and compellingly ruthless. I once called him “loathsome” in print, in part because, very early in my career — when I was a young feature writer trying to balance the demands of churning out a regular column on the radio industry along with feature stories for the Tribune’s Tempo section — he punched down at me, impugning my work ethic.

Given how toxic and ruthless social media have become and how harsh assessments of the work of others is everywhere, it’s not clear that there’s an audience in today’s fragmented media market for such a wrecking ball columnist. But losing him and Miner in the same month is a reminder of the vacuum in local media coverage and analysis.

TV and radio stations, podcasts, online publications, not-for-profit newsrooms, newsletters and, of course, newspapers remain or have become vitally important. It would be better to have a jaundiced eye on them rather than almost no eye at all.

See Cate Plys on Michael Miner below.

Last week’s winning quip

After age 30, an all-nighter is not getting up to pee. — @SundaeDivine

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

The General Assembly’s disappointing punt on ‘right to die’ legislation

The End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act passed the Illinois House on Thursday by a 63-42 vote but then failed to get a vote in the Senate before the end of session deadline Saturday at midnight.

Tribune:

The measure would legalize medical aid in dying, sometimes referred to as physician-assisted suicide or medically-assisted death, allowing mentally competent, terminally ill adults the right to access life-ending prescription medication.

(Should it ever pass), Illinois would join about 10 other states, among them Oregon, California, Colorado and Hawaii, as well as Washington, D.C., in allowing medical aid in dying.

I realize there are slippery-slope arguments against legalized euthanasia and that safeguards must be in place to be sure that those experiencing temporary severe depression or pressure from family members don’t impulsively or reluctantly take their own lives.

But aside from that, I want for all people what I will want for myself — freedom, bodily autonomy and agency; the opportunity to leave this world, as we all must, peacefully and with dignity. I don’t want to be told that someone else’s religious notions about the sanctity of life compel me to suffer horizontally until I mercifully and naturally expire.

If hanging on until nature finally takes you down is your jam, fine! Do so. End your days however you wish. But let me make my own decision and not have to resort to unauthorized home remedies or even prove to anyone that I’m “terminally ill.” We’re all terminal, after all.

Neil Steinberg of the Sun-Times put it well this week:

You might have a fully lucid parent dying in agony. And they, and you, and all that is moral and decent, might cry out for a way to shorten this pointless suffering. So should the Catholic Church be able to step into your parent’s sick room, consult the Bible and dictate care? I don’t think so. … The idea that a person might be done with suffering, a cool decision based on, oh for instance, the terminal cancer ravaging them, violates the medieval ethics of the church, which works both ends of the spectrum: prodding women who don’t want babies to have them, and people who don’t want to continue to live to continue suffering. It’s cruel.

We have debated this issue long enough. Where do you stand?

News & Views

News: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials lured immigrants to what were ostensibly routine check-in appointments with the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) Wednesday, then arrested at least 10 of them.

View: I can’t improve on the public letter that my congresswoman, Democratic U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez of Chicago, said in her open letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’ and acting ICE director Todd Lyons:

Using text messages to call people into ISAP facilities to arrest the exact immigrants who are demonstrating their commitment to the rule of law by complying with ICE’s instructions runs counter to every claim the Trump Administration has made — but is consistent with reporting that your actual intent is maximizing arrests. The message your actions send to noncitizens facing removal is that the Trump Administration does not care if you are complying with the law because they do not respect the rule of law. They do not care if you have constitutional rights because they do not respect the Constitution.

News: Elon Musk turns on Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill.’

View: Too little, too late. I still ain’t buying a Tesla.

Tuesday, Musk tweeted:

I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.

He followed up with a tweet Wednesday:

Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL

It’s too little because Musk’s pique — like the pique of some Republican senators — is mostly a call for more spending cuts rather than an objection to extended tax breaks for those in the upper income brackets. Anything that might in the end soften or impede this bill is a good thing, I guess, but the opposition to the MOP bill (“Massive, Outrageous, Pork-filled”) on the left still has little traction.

News: Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto will spend $650 million to build a 22,000-seat soccer stadium in “The 78.”

View: This would be a win-win for the Fire, which now plays in Soldier Field and usually fills only a third of the stands, and Chicagoans like me who don’t give a rusty damn about soccer but who are likely to benefit from the development in this long vacant parcel of land along the South Branch of the Chicago River.

An enthusiastic Tribune editorial said that the development stands to “remove what for too long has been dead land and thus a psychological barrier that has been a detriment to expanding the economic promise of the South Loop further into a part of the city that we see crucial to Chicago’s future.”

Agreed. But kudos to Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times who noted in her opening paragraph on Mansueto’s plan that “tens of millions of public dollars would be needed to ready the long-dormant site for development.”

Mansueto’s willingness to bankroll stadium construction makes him an outlier among Chicago sports moguls who in the past have routinely looked for public handouts and property tax breaks.

Still, a formidable city subsidy would be needed to cover major infrastructure costs at the long-dormant site. … There are railroad tracks that need to be moved and a crumbling seawall that needs to be rebuilt. Water, sewer and power lines need to be installed, and parking garages and surface lots need to be built. So does the last leg of the Riverwalk between Lake Street and Ida B. Wells Drive that had an initial price tag of $140 million.

The contrast with ultra-wealthy owners who want cities to build arenas and stadiums for them could hardly be more stark. Now maybe the White Sox will come up with the cash to build their own field on the same property.

News: The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case related to objections to Illinois’ vote-by-mail procedure.

View: This is no big deal. Yet. The high court is looking only at the question of whether the plaintiffs, led by U.S. Rep. Michael Bost, R-Carbondale, have standing to challenge the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive up to two weeks after the date for in-person voting so long as they are postmarked by that day.

Should the justices rule that Bost, et al., have standing to sue and then side with the contention that a ballot “is not a legal vote unless it is received by Election Day,” it would be bad news for voters. To be certain your mail-in ballot arrives by Election Day, you would want to drop it in the box four or five days in advance, and a lot can happen at the very ends of campaigns. Many of us who vote early volunteer to take that risk, but those who for one reason or another can’t make it to the polling place and must vote absentee would be forced into that choice.

That said, two weeks is an awfully long window, even for ballots mailed from overseas, and the potential period of uncertainty can end up sowing further distrust in the electoral process.

The National Conference of State Legislatures table shows that most states require mail-in ballots to arrive by Election Day. And of the 14 states plus the District of Columbia that allow a grace period for mail-in voters, Illinois is unusually generous in allowing for 14 days.

• Alaska — “Must be received within 10 days if postmarked on or before Election Day.”

• California — “Must be received no later than 7 days after Election Day.”

• District of Columbia — “Must be received within 10 days of the election if postmarked on or before Election Day.”

• Maryland — “Must be received within 10 days after the election by 10 a.m. if postmarked on or before Election Day.”

• Massachusetts — “Must be received by 5 p.m. on the third day after the election if postmarked on or before Election Day.”

• Mississippi — “Must be received within five business days of the election if postmarked on or before Election Day.”

• Nevada — “Must be received by 5 p.m. on the fourth day following the election if postmarked by Election Day. Ballots with unclear postmarks received by the third day following the election are deemed to have been postmarked on or before Election Day.”

• New Jersey — “Must be received within 144 hours (six days) of the close of the polls if postmarked on or before Election Day. Mail-delivered ballots without postmarks that arrive within 48 hours of the close of the polls will be considered valid.”

• New York — “Must be received within 7 days of the election if postmarked by Election Day.”

• Ohio — “Must be received within 4 days of the election if postmarked by the day before Election Day.”

• Oregon — “Must be received within 7 days of the election if postmarked on or before Election Day.”

• Texas — “Must be received by 5 p.m. on the day after the election if postmarked on or before Election Day.”

• Virginia — “Must be received before noon on the third day after the election if postmarked by Election Day.”

• Washington — “Must be received no later than the day before certification, which is 21 days after a general election and 14 days after a primary if postmarked on or before Election Day.”

• West Virginia — “Must be received before the canvass (which begins on the fifth day after the election) if postmarked on or before Election Day.”

News: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s photographer has been fired over allegations that he carried a gun in a city car.

View: The city is experiencing major budget woes, and the mayor’s been employing a photographer on the taxpayer’s dime? How does this improve the lives of residents? Yes, it’s a small expenditure and undoubtedly one made by many high public officials going back. But its only purpose is to help glorify the mayor.

Also, assuming photographer Terence Crayton was properly licensed to carry his gun, what’s the big deal here?

News: President Trump calls for a scrapping of the debt limit

View: It makes me uneasy to agree with Trump on anything, but damn, he’s right in this social media post:

The Debt Limit should be entirely scrapped to prevent an Economic catastrophe. It is too devastating to be put in the hands of political people that may want to use it despite the horrendous effect it could have on our Country and, indirectly, even the World.

At the risk of being the 1,000th pedant to point this out, raising the debt limit neither authorizes new spending nor increases our national debt by a single dime. It simply allows us to pay the bills Congress has already racked up.

There’s a wholly different lever to limit future spending. It’s called the legislative budget process, and, for reference, it’s outlined in your U.S. Constitution, if anyone still pays attention to that.

The debt limit is not in your Constitution. It’s based on a 1917 law that was designed to make it easier but not blank-check-forever easy for Congress to fund the military during World War I without having to authorize every last bond issue.

Congress has raised it more that 100 times, usually with little fanfare or objection, because wiser heads have realized that a more accurate name for it would be “the default ceiling.” And, even getting close to hitting it “threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits,” as Ronald Reagan argued nearly 40 years ago. “Interest rates would skyrocket. Instability would occur in financial markets, and the federal deficit would soar.”

Maintaining U.S. credit is not a Democratic value or a Republican value. Paying the bills is not a liberal priority or a conservative priority.

That the actual function of the debt limit is so poorly understood by the public has allowed cynical pols to hold it hostage to try to gain leverage in broader debates. The fact that members of both parties have used this form of extortion in the past makes it more, not less, despicable.

At best, all the debt limit does is make the markets jittery and provide an opportunity for contemptible, hypocritical grandstanding that distracts from serious negotiations about taxes and spending. At worst it crashes the economy.

No president, Democrat or Republican, should ever again have to negotiate with Congress with such a threat over his or her head. No American should ever again have to worry that a stubborn, destructive caucus might be able to bring ruin upon them.

Where is the effort to reopen the public schools Chicago closed a dozen years ago?

An aside in Laura Washington’s column in Wednesday’s Tribune noted that “Chicago has yet to recover from (former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s) decision to close nearly 50 Chicago schools.”

It was 12 years ago last month that the school board OK’d Emanuel’s controversial and still-debated decision, yet unless I’ve missed it, neither of Emanuel’s successors — Lori Lightfoot and Brandon Johnson — nor their school boards nor the Chicago Teachers Union has made any serious proposals to reopen even one of the schools. This is in contrast to how Johnson has begun reopening some of the mental health clinics that Emanuel closed. The affected schools were vastly underenrolled then and would likely be even more underenrolled now.

Should opening up formerly shuttered schools be an initiative? If not, what would help Chicago recover from the negative impacts of that decision?

Numerous pro-and-con retrospectives came out on in 2023 around the time of the 10th anniversary of the closures, including:

• “After 10 years, Chicago school closings have left big holes, and promises unkept” (WBEZ)

• “Chicago Closed 50 Schools 10 Years Ago. What’s Happened Since Then?” (Block Club Chicago)

• “A decade after Rahm Emanuel closed nearly 50 schools, CPS faces a drastically different landscape” (The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research)

• “Revisiting the Impact of Chicago’s Mass School Closings 10 Years Later in Austin, Garfield Park” (WTTW-Ch. 11)

• “The truth about the 2013 school closures the Chicago Teachers Union doesn’t want you to hear” (Paul Vallas)

Land of Linkin’

• What do you think of the proposed Retail Delivery Climate Impact Fee — informally known as the “pizza tax” — of $1.50 on each delivery of goods to your home? I took a look at the question in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus.

• “Devil’s Bargain: How the slave trade built and sustained New Orleans” is a fascinating bit of history by former Chicago Tribune/New Orleans Times-Picayune journalist Ben Estes.

• In “It’s Time for Chicago to End the Legal Gravy Train for Private Law Firms,” Andy Shaw blasts as “white collar patronage" Chicago’s “chronic reliance on high-priced private law firms, instead of its large, well-funded legal department, to defend lawsuits against the Chicago Police Department — particularly civil rights cases involving misconduct, brutality, and wrongful convictions.”

• In “Donald Trump’s campaign of intimidation echoes the worst of our past,” Steve Chapman writes, “Trump’s administration is hardly equivalent to what prevailed in the old South. But what it is doing raises ominous parallels: the contempt for the rule of law, the pardoning of violent insurrectionists, the attacks on civil rights protections, the celebration of cruelty and, of course, the relentless effort to scare people into submission. It’s no coincidence that many of the states where Trump is most popular are the states that enforced white supremacy with the greatest ferocity.”

• This week’s NewsWheel puzzle in the Picayune Plus was quite timely!

• The online publication Business Insider is cutting 100 jobs (21% of its workforce) after reportedly losing half its audience in the last five years. “We are going all-in on AI,” wrote Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng in a note to staff. “In the past year, we've launched multiple AI-driven products to better serve our audience.”

• Credit to Chicago Public media for owning up big-time to the fake books scandal at its newspaper. “Special section with fake book list plagued with additional errors, Sun-Times review finds” and “Lessons (and an apology) from the Sun-Times CEO on that AI-generated book list” went a great distance in putting this embarrassing incident behind the organization.

• Reader Conor Mac highly recommends Season Seven of “Chameleon,” a seven-part podcast series that explores the plot to assassinate Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Look for that story to be in the news again soon as President Donald Trump reportedly considers pardoning those convicted in the case.

• Joshua Peck takes a deep dive into the Alabama incident in 1933 that likely prompted Harper Lee to write her 1960 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

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:

■ Message Box columnist Dan Pfeiffer: Although “it’s probably wise to ignore most of the sewage that spills out of Elon Musk’s pickled brain … here’s why Musk’s opposition … matters.”

■ Cultural critic Bob Lefsetz: “Musk is providing cover for Republican congresspeople to go against Trump. … This is just the beginning”…

■ … and so it is that MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she agrees with Musk that everyone who voted for that legislation—including herself—should be ashamed.

■ 5 “hidden horrors”: Ex-Illinois Democratic Rep. Marie Newman focuses on some of the lesser-known impacts of that budget bill— the House-approved version of which you can read here.

■ LateNighter’s Jed Rosenzweig rounds up 20 late-night jokes about Musk’s White House exit.

■ Supremely pissed: CNN reports that Trump’s been complaining privately for at least a year about his most recent appointee to the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett.

■ People’s Parity Project chief—and Harvard Law graduate (and your Square columnist’s daughter-in-law)—Molly Coleman, writing for Teen Vogue: “We don’t have to accept judicial supremacy. In fact, many of America’s most admired leaders have rejected it.”

■ The Daily Beast: “Trump rages at claim he launched Harvard war because he didn’t get in.”

■ “The White House is telling Republican-led states that they can let women die”: Abortion, Every Day columnist Jessica Valenti flags the Trump administration’s decision to stop directing hospitals to provide emergency abortions for women facing pregnancy crises.

■ The Electronic Frontier Foundation recaps 404 Media’s reporting: “She got an abortion. So a Texas cop used 83,000 cameras to track her down.”

■ “School boards ride in limousines and students lack the basics”: A Tribune editorial calls out a suburban district spending bigly on board member perks as students struggle.

■ Flashback, 40 years this month: The gone-but-not-forgotten WXRT News team wins an award for reporting that exposed undocumented expenses by Chicago’s school board members.

■ Replace cable—cheap: Consumer Reports explains how to assemble a compelling assortment of TV content, complete with local broadcasts—for about $25/month.

■ 404 Media: “The IRS tax filing software TurboTax is trying to kill just got open sourced.”

■ “Am I missing a major source of news?” A reader seeking to broaden his information diet asks where Square gets its news. An answer in brief: Dozens and dozens of email newsletters—including email and app news alerts—nationally and in Chicago. And a secret weapon: Sill—although its usefulness is a function of how many smart people one follows on Bluesky.

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

Those who invoke ‘reform’: Reform thyself

If my former Tribune colleague Liam Ford would like to join me in heading up the Reform ‘Reform’ coalition, I’m all in.

Recently, Ford posted this on social media:

I responded approvingly with a link to my 2014 column decrying the “use and abuse” of this dreaded word:

It’s loaded. It’s prejudicial. It’s presumptuous.

“Tort reform,” for example, puts a terminological blessing on the idea of diminishing the awards in lawsuits, just as “immigration reform” signals support for proposed modifications in laws dealing with people the United States illegally. …

David Minthorn, co-editor of The Associated Press Stylebook and the usage expert behind the news service’s online “Ask the Editor” feature, notes that “reform” is “a term to be used carefully in news reporting.”

In an email response to my query, Minthorn said, “In occasional reminders on usage, we’ve said there are accurate alternatives to reform in describing legislation or other proposed changes, including revision, overhaul and revamp.”

The old Chicago Tribune stylebook (we now use The AP for everything but local issues) sounded a similar note: “Reform — Use with caution, as it tends to be biased in favor of the so-called reformers. Often there will be an opposing view. Sometimes a more neutral word, such as … change, is more accurate.”

That column — which contained a confession that I’d been a repeat offender in the past — had been prompted by a social media post by the same Liam Ford.

I have since tried to be scrupulous in avoiding the word, just has I have been scrupulous in recent years about referring to the Republican Party as the “GOP,” short for “Grand Old Party.” There is nothing the least bit “grand” about a party that has sold its soul to an amoral authoritarian half-wit. Plus, it’s consistent with the way churlish Republicans refer to “the Democrat Party” because, they say there is nothing “democratic” about the party’s positions.

I’ll take suggestions for a shorthand way to refer to the Republican Party.

Cate Plys: Memories of Mikes

Chicago journalist and historian Cate Plys — a member of the “Mincing Rascals” podcast team — goes deep in her Substack “Roseland, Chicago: 1972.” Here’s a sampler:

Watch your step! Anywhere you wander around Chicago, historical rabbit holes open at your feet leading to amazing places, crazy stories, and fabulous people.

Michael Miner, media critic for the Chicago Reader for over 30 years, was one of those fabulous people. A Sun-Times reporter from 1970-1978, he knew the ins and outs of people, politics and newspapers in this town. So, for instance, Miner could pick apart a spat between Mike Royko, Mayor Jane Byrne, her husband (former Daily News reporter) Jay McMullen, her chief of staff (former Trib reporter) Bill Griffin, and long-time star Sun-Times gossip columnist Mike Sneed, then working for the Trib and married to Griffin. Throw in Walter Jacobson for good measure.

But Miner could also philosophize with the best of them, becoming, as former Reader editor Mike Lenehan told Reader reporter Steve Bogira, “the conscience of Chicago journalism.”

Miner’s death last month was a deep loss for his family and friends, but also an incalculable blow to Chicago journalism, which must stagger on somehow without him. I wrote one post specifically for Miner —chasing down the first Mike Royko column he ever read, a column that never stopped inspiring him even though he was never able to find it again. You can read that here.

Quotables

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

I'm sick of people calling everything in crypto a Ponzi scheme. Some crypto projects are pump and dump schemes, while others are pyramid schemes. Others are just standard issue fraud. Still others are just little men skimming off the top. Stop glossing over the diversity in the industry. — Pat Dennis

In the current year, Harvard had 7,000 foreign students. That means that an equivalent number of our brightest children were denied the opportunity to study at Harvard. And, since it is unlikely that all those foreign students will remain in the U.S. after graduation, many of those best educated minds will contribute nothing to our nation. — David Swanson

Based on the observation related to tariff threats: “Trump Always Chickens Out”

Quips

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest:

The new nominees for Quip of the Week:

• Dance like no one is watching. Because they aren't. They're looking at their phones. — @jackboot.bsky.social

• I post the following as a review for every product I buy on Amazon: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." — @jakevig.bsky.social

• If alcohol damages your short term memory. Imagine what alcohol can do. — @frostiebbyx

• To all the people who said I wouldn't accomplish anything because I procrastinate too much ... Just you wait. — @ThePunnyWorld

• I’m not the person I thought I was when I cut that cupcake in half. — @traciebreaux

• On nothing but vibes, I’m convinced that keeping the end pieces bookending the loaf’s remaining slices seals in their freshness. — @batkaren.bsky.social

• Me, in May: Child labor is always wrong. Me, two hours into my kids' summer vacation: There are interesting arguments on both sides. — @mauraquint.bsky.social

• I stopped in a temporary tattoo booth to get a tattoo. When the tattoo wouldn't wash off, I went back to complain. But the booth wasn't there. — @BobGolen

• For the last time, I’m not operating a hot dog cart. This cart is for my personal hot dogs. — @MoMohler

• It's enraging that the people I agree with are acting in good faith, whereas everyone I disagree with holds their views only because they’re self-interested, venal and corrupt. — @wildethingy

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Why the new name for this feature? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.”

Minced Words

Cate Plys and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We discussed/debated late-arriving mail-in ballots, right-to-die legislation and the always difficult issue of trans girls in sports.

Traffic lights:

John — A yellow light for “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” a feature film now in theaters.

Cate — An anticipatory green light for CNN’s live airing Saturday at 6 p.m. of the Broadway stage production of “Good Night, and Good Luck” starring George Clooney as Edward R. Murrow.

Eric — A yellow light for author Shalom Auslander’s 2020 novel “Mother for Dinner,” the wildly inventive, comic, allegorical and, at times, fairly gross tale of a Cannibal-American family trying to hold on to its customs in a world that doesn’t understand them.

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.

Good Sports

The New York Knicks fire head coach Tom Thibodeau, who formerly coached the Chicago Bulls.

The once-hapless Knicks made it to the semifinals this year before losing to a talented Indiana Pacers team, and Thibs is the scapegoat? I can’t feel sorry for the guy — he’s 67 and will be due $30 million based on a three-year contract extension he signed last year — but come on!

Statistics guru Nate Silver has some interesting thoughts in “The Knicks just had their best season in 25 years. Then they fired Tom Thibodeau. Does that make any sense?”

The Sky will retire Candace Parker’s number in a ceremony on August 25.

That’s silly. Parker was an all-time great WNBA player, and she was on the one championship team in Sky history, but she spent only two seasons here after 13 seasons with the Los Angeles Sparks. She then finished her career with a year on the Las Vegas Aces.

The threshold for retiring athletes numbers ought to be quite high, as in “they were so great for our team for so long that it’s hard to imagine anyone ever wearing their number again.”

The Sparks will retire Parker’s number later this month, which seems fitting.

The Rockies hit a smooth patch

After setting the Major League Baseball record for the worst 59-game start — 9-50 — the Colorado Rockies swept the Miami Marlins this week and now stand at 12-50 (.194).

After 62 games, the 2024 White Sox, who went on to lose 121 games — the most in MLB’s modern era (since 1900) — stood at 15-47 (.242), and the 1916 Philadelphia A’s — who finished with the worst winning percentage (.235) in MLB’s modern era (post-1900) — were 17-45 (.274). The Rockies are now tied at this point in the season with the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, whose season record of 20-134 (.123) is the worst in all MLB history, modern and premodern.

Even after their winning streak, the Rockies are on pace to finish 31-131, mercifully obliterating the Sox record from last season.

The 2025 White Sox, at 19-43 (.306), are on pace to lose only 110 games!

Green Light

Green Light features recommendations from me and readers not only of songs — as in the former Tune of the Week post — but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on. Email me your nominations, and please include a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links, perhaps including excerpts from reviews or background articles. For TV shows, please include links to trailers/previews on YouTube and advice on where to stream them. This week’s green light is from reader Bill Minor:

One of the very few books I’ve read twice is “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal,” by Christopher Moore. It’s not for very conservative Christians, but my pastor and I both loved it. It’s crude, vulgar, irreverent, well-researched, hilarious, and surprisingly moving. After the first reading, I almost immediately read it again, this time with pencil in hand so I could highlight passages.

The ideal audience for this is people who have a Christian background but who are not easily offended by vulgarity or outrageous depictions. One example: Biff is in one room with a prostitute while Jesus is listening from the adjoining room with his ear to the wall. This is so Jesus can learn about sin without having to do it. Afterwards, Biff comments to Jesus, “Yes, greater love hath no man than he lay down for his friends.” There are lots of little comments like that that will resonate with people who have Sunday School backgrounds.

Another example: Jesus: “I love all the little children, red and yellow, green and white.” Biff: “Wait, green?” Jesus: “Just fucking with you."

I discovered Christopher Moore when I was browsing in a bookstore to find an edition of “Moby Dick” that I’d want to read. A few feet to the right of Melville was Moore’s book, “The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove,” the story of a sea monster created by nuclear waste dumped into the ocean that comes ashore and tries to mate with a tanker truck, thus causing an explosion during the week when the town psychiatrist had decided to take all of her patients off their meds. Obviously, I had to buy it, and after that I was hooked. I have now read most of Christopher Moore’s books. All are quirky and entertaining, but “Lamb” is especially good.

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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