Indiana man claims dibs on 'The Chicago Way'

& the Adam Toledo story is back in the news

4-13-2023 (issue No. 83)

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.

This week

• The Chicago Way ™

• Last week’s winning tweet

• Another reason to support journalism

• News and Views — On the Democratic convention, the Adam Toledo case and more

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

• Dump the nickel as well as the penny!

• Play the retro version of Never-Have-I-Ever

• “The Mincing Rascals” preview

• Re:Tweets — Featuring the winner of the last two visual tweets polls and this week’s finalists

• Tune of the Week — A fiddle tune with a timely name and good story behind it

Former Tribune columnist John Kass has applied for a U.S. trademark on “The Chicago Way.”

It’s an expression Kass has long favored in his writing that traces back at least as far as the 1987 movie “The Untouchables,” a film set in Chicago in the 1930s and written by David Mamet based on a 1957 book. In it, the character of Sam Malone (played by Sean Connery) says, “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way.”

Two eyes for an eye, in other words. “The Chicago Way” has morphed over the years into an umbrella term encompassing corruption, insider dealing, unwholesome back-scratching, influence peddling, whatever. And there’s often a small sense of pride, not shame or outrage, in those who use it. Yeah, we don’t exactly follow the rule book here.

It shows up in the titles of college courses, documentaries, books, board games and restaurants. United States Patent and Trademark Office records show that Brown’s Chicken & Pasta tried several times in the early 2000s to get a service mark for “beef, burgers and dogs made the Chicago Way,” and Washington's Patriots in southwest suburban Justice applied in 2009 for trademark on this charming logo for hats, jackets and shirts:

Kass, who left the Tribune when I did in 2021 and now lives in St. John, Indiana, uses “The Chicago Way” as the title of his WGN-AM podcast, and his trademark application (search here) says his claim will be limited to uses in “entertainment and educational services, namely, providing news analysis, news reporting, and commentary in the fields of local, national and world news, current events, and topics of general interest via podcasts, print media, a website and the internet.”

So you can make “Chicago Way” T-shirts or sell “Chicago Way” sandwiches without fear of him hauling you into court.

“Those sorts of uses would likely not cause any confusion,” said Chicago attorney Brian Saucier, who specializes in trademark and copyright law. “The public would be unlikely to think, ‘Oh, that must be from the podcast guy.’”

Saucier said it looks as though the trademark approval is imminent, and that it makes sense as protection against infringement. “If someone were to start a podcast called ‘The Chicagoing Way’ or something, Kass would start with a strong legal presumption in his favor” and an opportunity to collect greater damages in court against those who might try to draft off what he considers his brand. “When you have a trademark, you don’t have to jump through as many hoops to establish an infringement claim,” Saucier said.

I wondered if there had been any attempted infringements that motivated Kass to pay the $225 filing fee, but neither he nor the attorney listed on his application answered my query. I suspect his silence is in part related to my post “The truth about John Kass’ dispute with the Tribune and the Tribune Guild,” but this is no critique: I think he’s smart to try to protect the turf he’s staked out. In fact, I should probably try to trademark “The Picayune Sentinel” since my grandfather, who published the first iteration, failed to do so.

As an aside, I have long supported Kass’ claim to having originated a certain use of the word “dibs.” In 2005, I wrote:

On Jan. 5, 1999, my colleague John Kass became the first person I could find in my search of the local and national news archives to use the term 'dibs' in writing to refer to the practice of saving of on-street parking places with household junk after a snowstorm.

The Online Etymology Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary say that 1932 marks the first recorded use of "dibs" to express an otherwise unearned "claim or option on some object" and that it is an Americanism. (Proponents of parking dibs will take issue with the word “unearned” and claim that the act of shoveling earns a person the right to claim a space.)

Lexicographer Michael Quinion argued on his World Wide Words site that there is "a howling great gap where we might expect historical continuity" in the usage history of "dibs.” So if anyone can fill in that gap with published material that refutes my findings on parking dibs, be in touch.

Meanwhile, I’m glad to see that Kass is on the mend from some recent health setbacks and is writing at his website again. I look forward to many more years of strenuously disagreeing with most of his political views.

Last week’s winning tweet

I would embed the tweet rather than show an image of it. But Twitter is now evidently at war with Substack, another one of Elon Musk’s nutty moves that may, in the end, spell the end for my polls.

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

Another reason to support journalism

This extraordinary four-part series by Megan Crepeau and Joe Mahr is an example of the sort of vital, thorough investigative reporting that is neither quick nor cheap to produce. Before you read the series (start here), check out “How we reported on Cook County court delays.”

Using the programming language R, Mahr wrote code that calculated the length of individual cases from arrest to the ultimate outcome, which can include conviction, acquittal, a plea agreement or a dropped case. He found delays were increasing for all types of felony cases, both before and during the COVID pandemic, and the problem was even worse for murders. Some murder cases were lasting more than a decade. …

The reporting team … obtained data from the Cook County sheriff’s office about how long detainees were spending in jail, and compared that to data from Los Angeles County and New York City. It turned out that people accused of murder in Chicago waited notably longer, on average, for their trials than those in Los Angeles or New York, two bigger cities. …

Reporters then used data from the state prison system on people serving time for murder to see how long their court cases took. …

To get more information, reporters obtained dozens of costly transcripts of the give-and-take between lawyers and judges at court hearings. They also observed more than 1,000 hearings for themselves, showing up at the courthouse or tuning in via Zoom, as well as interviewing players in the court system and reviewing five decades’ worth of research papers.

My favorite detail so far: One case stuck in the system “is so old that its evidence includes the alleged use of a Blockbuster Video card.”

News & Views

News: The 2024 Democratic Convention will be held in Chicago

View: Well, fine! Though politicians and bureaucrats often grossly inflate the projected economic benefits from such event, a 2017 Cleveland State University study concluded:

(The 2016 Republican National . Convention in Cleveland) generated an economic impact of 1,348 jobs, $52.4 million in labor income, $84.8 million in value added, $142.2 million in output, and $16.9 million in taxes for the region. Sales tax in Cuyahoga County saw an increase of over a million dollars. Many businesses saw huge boosts in sales prior to and during the event week.

Though as Neil Steinberg points out, “Chicago hosts about a dozen trade shows that have a larger economic impact on the city. It isn’t like this is another Sweets and Snacks Expo.”

Plus they have become a massive bore, predictable, extended and tedious commercials for the major political parties at which little to no actual news is made. Unless you count drama generated by street protesters, the last truly interesting national political convention occurred six years before I was born. And I’m an old man!

It was 1952, right here in Chicago, when Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee came into the Democratic convention with a lead in delegates, but was overtaken by Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson in the third round of balloting, thus winning Stevenson the right to lose to Republican Dwight Eisenhower 442 to 89 in the Electoral College vote that November.

News: The police officer who shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo two years ago is facing dismissal proceedings.

View: I’m not about to prejudge whether Officer Eric Stillman “used unnecessary deadly force, failed to follow his training on foot pursuits and was slow to activate his body-worn camera,” as interim Police Superintendent Eric Carter alleged in charges filed with the Chicago Police Board.

I was critical in a column shortly after the incident of those who jumped to conclusions and made assumptions about this tragedy before knowing the facts — and got dogpiled on social media for it — so I’ll wait to hear all the evidence about departmental policy and the guidance on foot pursuits and body cameras before saying whether I think Stillman should be fired.

Adam Toledo was carrying a handgun that police believed had recently been fired as he fled from officers down a Little Village alley at 2:38 a.m. Stillman gave chase. In a split second, the boy discarded his weapon behind a fence and wheeled around with his hands up. Stillman fired a single, fatal shot, evidently thinking he was acting in self-defense.

It was a horrible mistake at best — one that State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office decided was not a crime — but was it understandable, even forgivable under the totality of the circumstances? Should officers simply allow armed people suspected of illegally discharging firearms to run away?

Police Board President Ghian Foreman, who has indicated his support for firing Stillman, said the parties and the public will benefit from a full evidentiary hearing on this matter.” With that, I definitely agree.

News: NPR has become first major news organization to stop using Twitter

View: I totally get it. Twitter is an increasingly toxic and unreliable place. NPR is justifiably irked at being labeled “government-funded” by the platform as a way to undermine its credibility, when very little of its revenue comes from public sources. I wish there were a robust alternative, and I fear that NPR will be just the first major media outlet to leave the platform. Once a critical mass hits the exits, I’ll be gone as well.

Land of Linkin’

• The now-completed, seven-part podcast series “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling” gives away its bias by using a title that suggests the author of the massively popular Harry Potter books has been unfairly judged for her remarks about transgenderism. But the series gives significant time to Rowling’s critics and asks challenging questions in the first in-depth interview with her. It may not change your mind about Rowling, but it will certainly deepen your understanding of the controversy.

• Chicago Magazine offers a 4,000-word adaptation of “Everyone Against Us: Public Defenders and the Making of American Justice” by former Cook County Public defender Allen Goodman.

• Rex Huppke, now at USA Today, is in full-on satirical mode: “The company I have long supported by getting day drunk on Bud Light recently caved to the absurd liberal notion that we should treat everyone with kindness and respect by partnering with Dylan Mulvaney, who I’m told by Google is ‘a transgender social media influencer’ … I and my fellow truth-tellers took time away from our important crusade against the horrors of liberal cancel culture to encourage others to never, ever drink Bud Light again.”

• Like me, blogger Mike Koetting also cast a blank ballot for mayor April 4. He writes: “What really bothered me about Johnson was that as soon as he made it into the run-offs, he stopped saying anything of tractionable substance. It was wall-to-wall platitudes. … Johnson’s refusal to participate meaningfully was too much of an insult to involved voters.” (I published reader critiques of my decision on Tuesday).

• Caitlin Clark’s Lesson for White Athletes: Don’t Be a MAGA Pawn (The Nation)

• Here is a compendium of trivia about “Blazing Saddles,” a movie I attended 13 times when I was a kid but that could never be made today.

• The Picayune Sentinel preview: Tuesdays 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.

Is it time to get rid of the nickel, too?

This tweet from “The Gist” podcaster Mike Pesca resonated deeply with me. Nickels do suck. Nearly as hard as pennies.

Pennies were annoying in 1977, and they were worth then what a nickel is worth today. Not much, in other words. And the headline on this CoinNews.net article ought to seal the deal: “Penny Costs 2.1 Cents to Make in 2021, Nickel Costs 8.52 Cents.”

The net cost of this discrepancy — called seigniorage — was $144.6 million that year.

Other countries have successfully eliminated their microcurrencies and rounded price totals up or down without much inflationary effect. And now that so many of us pay electronically, there’s little sense of minting coins with basically no value.

It’s cheap sentiment (and pressure from the zinc and copper industries) that keeps pennies and nickels in circulation. But what say you?

Zero here

This has been around online for awhile and always makes me feel … vintage.

Minced Words

Conventional wisdom on political conventions from Austin Berg, host John Williams and me on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We also talk about Walmart’s partial exodus from Chicago and the apparent lack of ideological diversity in Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson’s transition team. In a discussion of my decision to cast a blank ballot for mayor last week, Berg laments the 36% voter turnout and compares it to the 82% turnout in Chicago’s 1983 mayoral election. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can now 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 and so can’t be included in the classic Tweet of the Week contest in which the template for the poll does not allow the use of images. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

And, because I forgot in all the election excitement last week, here is the winner of the April 4 poll:

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• When you see someone trending on social media and think “I hope they didn’t die” only to find out they died 12 years ago, face it, you never cared. — @eleniZarro

• Me: "Bears are omnivores so if you think about it, eating porridge makes perfect sense." My date: *heavy sigh* "OK. Do you have a second favorite book?" — @SuitSentient

• Let’s continue this argument later on when I’m alone in the shower and you’re not there to defend yourself. — @joeljeffrey

• I’m vegetarian, but sometimes I introduce myself as vegan so people will leave me alone. — @cellapaz

• *Going to bed* Me: Finally, I’m exhausted. Brain: Hey you know what’s a great song? “Help Me Rhonda.” — @EyalTweet

• Stop showing us pictures of celebrities just because they look terrible now. Gravity is real. Time's arrow points in one direction. Death waits for all of us. We get it. — @IamJackBoot

•  I like to approach strangers and say, "Your shoes are untied." And when they check and say, "No they aren't," I say ,"Not the ones you have on" — @MelvinofYork

• Safety message: Make your coffee before assisting others with their coffee. — @prufrockluvsong

• Do you think washers and dryers are, like, actually friends or just work friends? — @DzintraSullivan

• If you're not happy single, you won't be happy in a relationship. True happiness comes from watching a seagull shoplift snacks from a convenience store, not from another person. — @roxiqt

Vote here and check the current results in the poll. For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Tune of the Week

Just recently I’ve been learning a fiddle tune with a very timely name, “Tennessee Politics.” It was written but never recorded by the late John Hartford.

Hartford’s name may be slightly familiar. He wrote “Gentle on My Mind,” a Grammy-winning hit for Glen Campbell in 1968 that became a country-pop classic. He was a regular on the “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour” and '“The Johnny Cash Show,” all more than 50 years ago. (Full bio)

The version in this video by fiddler Noam Pikelny is the first track on “The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project, Volume I,” the subject of an American Songwriter article headlined, “World’s Finest Acoustic Musicians Come Together To Bring Unheard John Hartford Songs To Life.”

The article describes how Katie Hartford Hogue, Hartford’s daughter, discovered 68 notebooks containing over 2,000 unheard, original tunes after her father’s death in 2001 of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He was 63. With the help of fiddle player Matt Combs, Hartford Hogue curated the collection into a 2018 book of 176 tunes titled, “John Hartford’s Mammoth Collection of Fiddle Tunes.”

But “tunes are supposed to be played, not just seen on the written page,” Hartford Hogue told the magazine. So she and Combs selected 17 of them for inclusion in the 2020 album.

Tennessee politics these days are pretty ugly. But “Tennessee Politics” is awful sweet

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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