Justice delayed stands to be justice denied

Prosecutorial foot dragging and judicial dithering may give Trump a chance to pardon himself and those who beat up cops on Jan. 6, 2021

5-9-2024 (issue No. 140)

This week:

• The unpardonable delay in putting Trump on trial stands to thwart forever the administration of justice

• Last week’s winning tweet

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked on abortion protesters, speed limits, the Pulitzer Prizes and John Wayne Gacy

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

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

• The pathetic, transparent evasions of unrepentant liar Kristi Noem

• Mary Schmich — Memories of the first book she bought with her own money

• Tribune print subscribers, I hope you didn’t miss Sunday’s ‘Premium Issue’

• What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week

• Meet the Rascals: Cate Plys —She was bitten by the journalism bug early in life

• Who’s right? Ask Eric or Ask Amy? — You get to vote

• Quotables

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

• The Sun-Times really regretted the error!

• Good Sports — An update on the tantalizing possibility that the White Sox will be the worst team ever

• Tune of the Week — Tom Paxton’s “Mother” as sung by Anne Hills

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 the 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.

The unpardonable delay in putting Trump on trial stands to thwart forever the administration of justice

In a court filing Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon postponed indefinitely the start of Donald Trump’s trial on charges he mishandled classified documents due to multiple pretrial issues “to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court.”

Cannon, a Trump appointee to the bench, wrote that postponing the trial, which was to begin later this month, was consistent with Trump’s “right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice.”

Wednesday, then, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear Trump's challenge to a lower court ruling that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis could stay on the election-interference case against him despite her romantic relationship with one of the other prosecutors.

And, of course, we have the languid, Trump-friendly U.S. Supreme Court taking its sweet time ruling on Trump’s claim of near total criminal immunity for actions taken while in office, in effect putting on pause efforts to bring the major cases against him to trial prior to November’s election.

Trump is on trial right now in the so-called “hush money” case in New York City in which he’s charged with falsifying business records when he OK’d payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels to keep the lid on her allegations that Trump had sex with her. But those are widely seen as the least serious charges against the former president.

It now looks obvious that voters will go to the polls this fall before the other cases go to trial, which seems certain to give a boost to his bid to be elected president again. And if elected, he has strongly hinted that he’ll pardon everyone convicted in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and he’ll certainly pardon himself on all federal charges.

Yes, the court system is too slow and the judges too deferential to Trump as they facilitate the delays. But I place a great deal of blame for the fact that we’re not going to get answers soon and perhaps never will on the investigators and prosecutors who didn’t move with dispatch to bring the obvious charges against Trump and put him in the dock a year or two ago.

The consequences of their foot dragging could be monumental.

Last week’s winning tweet

I saw a book titled “Astrology For Dummies” and thought “Exactly!” — @RickAaron

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

News & Views

News: A Chicago City Council committee Tuesday advanced an ordinance establishing a “quiet zone” around a downtown women’s health clinic that has been beset by noisy foes of abortion rights.

View: Good. I’m all in favor of protest and freedom of expression until it crosses the line into harassment.

From Block Club Chicago:

Family Planning Associates (615 W. Washington Blvd.) regularly sees up to 20, sometimes more, anti-abortion protesters every Saturday morning. In July, the clinic had more than five times that number, with several of them rushing at patients and forcibly trying to hand out religious pamphlets and using a loudspeaker which could be heard from inside the clinic.

Officials from Family Planning Associates and clinic escorts again testified to the Committee on Public Safety Tuesday that conditions were so bad that patients and their health providers could often not hear each other inside the clinic.

The Sun-Times quoted Ald. Bill Conway, 34th:

I’ve personally observed protesters putting amplifiers up against the wall of the clinic, making it so loud inside that the clinicians can’t hear patients speak and building shakes. Also protesters running at patients with amplifiers on their person in attempts to harass women and discourage them from accessing health care, in addition to a voluminous amount of noise complaints from surrounding residents.

I wonder how defenders of these techniques would feel if those opposed to the restrictions showed up with bullhorns outside of their homes loudly trying to harass and shame them.

A law that calls for content-neutral restrictions on protest seems possible and very well advised.

News: Ald. Daniel La Spata, 1st, chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety, is promoting the idea of lowering the city’s default speed limit from 30 mph to 25 mph in order to save lives.

View: I’m opposed, for now. Simple physics tells us such a reduction would save lives, and that even more lives would be saved if we lowered the limit to 20 mph or even 10 mph.

Absurd? Page 191 of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s transition report listed as a "near term recommendation” to “lower the default citywide speed limit to 20 mph generally and 10 mph on residential streets.”

There would be tradeoffs — increased commuting time, more congestion — and any time a speed limit is set anywhere, officials have to weigh those tradeoffs.

A Tribune editorial urging caution said:

By all means, let’s have a comprehensive review of speed limits and accident rates involving cars with pedestrians and cyclists across the different wards of the city and see if there are locations where reasonable people can agree that 30 mph is too fast for such places. … But we don’t need a new blanket ordinance, the enforcement of which would require yet more speed cameras to extract money from the pockets of Chicagoans or yet more police encounters that could turn dangerous. Chicago drivers who are causing problems are usually going a lot more than 30 mph.

A Sun-Times editorial also wants the city to go slow — so to speak — on this idea, which would involve the replacement of hundreds of signs and a potentially huge increase in the number of traffic citations:

We welcome more conversation and more important, additional evidence on the exponential reduction in fatalities the city could expect by reducing the speed limit to 25 mph, and the costs involved.

News: Pulitzer Prizes awarded to City Bureau, the Invisible Institute and Martin Luther King Jr. biographer Jonathan Eig, all locals.

View: “You Didn’t See Nothin’,” the seven-part podcast series about the near-fatal 1997 beating of Lenard Clark, a Black child, by a group of white racists in the Bridgeport neighborhood is an extraordinary piece of work. I’m not at all surprised that the Invisible Institute and USG Audio won the Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting Monday. Go listen!

The Invisible Institute was also a key player in the “Missing in Chicago” series that won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. It’s by Sarah Conway, senior City Bureau reporter, and Trina Reynolds-Tyler, Invisible Institute data director, and looks at how police handle (or mishandle) reports of missing persons, particularly African American girls and women.

I’m also not surprised that local historian Jonathan Eig won a Pulitzer Prize for “King: A Life,” a richly detailed, fresh look at the civil rights icon that pulls no punches about King’s flaws, yet at the same time magnifies his greatness. I finished the book literally an hour before the Pulitzer announcement, and, as I’ve been telling people, it’s a very sobering reminder of just how openly racist our society was in the 1960s.

Land of Linkin’

• “My friends and I are turning 50 Now do we get to stop hating our looks?” by Tribune contributing columnist Heidi Stevens is magnificently wrought: “What I’m hoping about 50 is that we can remember to fall in love a little bit with the parts of us that reveal our age. To defend them even. Because our age is our reminder, to ourselves as much as anyone, that we’ve seen a thing or two. And tried a thing or two. And mourned a thing or two. And found hope in a thing or two. …Time is a thief, and it’s also a gift. And I think it’s OK to let it show on our faces and our bodies.”

• The Evanston Roundtable has a lengthy obituary of local folk music legend Stuart Rosenberg, who died Tuesday at 68. “Music was only one among his many other talents: He was an artist, a writer, a raconteur, a snappy dresser, an endlessly quotable conversationalist. Immensely beloved by his community.”

• Donald Trump hush-money trial transcripts.

• How have I missed this so far? A video of the 80-minute, mostly one-man play about Mike Royko, “The Toughest Man In Chicago,” has been online for a year. The show is scheduled to open at the Chopin Theater in Chicago in September. UPDATED NOTE: The creators removed the link to the performance shortly after I posted it, but watch for the opening of the play this fall!

• Friday is the 30th anniversary of the execution at the Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet of John Wayne Gacy, 52, one of the most notorious and prolific serial murderers in American history. One of his attorneys at the time, Karen Conti, has just published a book about her experience with the case, “Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy: Defending America's Most Evil Serial Killer on Death Row.”

• Readers took issue with my Pollyanna take on the pro-Palestinian protests, and, as I wrote in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, they seem to have a point.

• Wired: “Musi Won Over Millions. Is the Free Music Streaming App Too Good to Be True?” “In one classroom of sophomores that WIRED surveyed at a Chicago high school, 80 percent used it to stream music. When asked why they liked it, they noted it’s free, doesn’t interrupt the music to play ads as Spotify’s free tier does, and has a broad catalog. … (But) many music industry insiders that WIRED contacted for this story had not previously heard of Musi.”

• “Republicans Are Objectively Pro–Junk Fee,” in The American Prospect. “A new congressional resolution aligns Republicans with the financial industry’s fight to preserve sky-high credit card late fees.”

• “Bernie Sanders says Gaza may be Joe Biden’s Vietnam. But he’s ready to battle for Biden over Trump.” “Now, in this election year, (Vermont independent U.S. Sen.) Sanders will be Biden’s most powerful emissary to progressives and younger voters — a task that will test the senator’s pull with the sectors of the Democratic Party most disillusioned with the president and his policies, especially on Gaza.” (Associated Press)

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:

■ Rick Perlstein at The American Prospect: “The response to college protests against the war on Gaza exemplifies the darkness of the Trumpocene.”

■ Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow channels a cop on protest duty at Columbia University: “We’re outside. And you kids are starting to agitate me. So you know what that makes you?”

■ Marking his HBO show’s 300th episode, John Oliver slammed a Fox News reporter for confronting a Columbia University protester with “what might be the dumbest question ever asked on TV.”

■ PolitiFact pours cold water on the “outside agitator” narrative.

■ After Donald Trump could be heard repeatedly cursing during Stormy Daniels’ testimony in his criminal trial, Judge Juan Merchan laid down the law for defense lawyers: “That’s contemptuous. … I won’t tolerate that.”

■ Incredulous at Daniels’ revelation that Trump called Daniels “honeybunch” and told her she reminded him of his daughter, Trump’s niece Mary L. Trump writes, “I can reveal this to you now: Honeybunch is my family’s preferred term of endearment.”

■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “The testimony was damaging enough that Trump’s lawyers asked for a mistrial, which … Merchan denied, noting that the lawyers had not objected to much of the testimony and must assume at least some responsibility for that.”

■ Law prof Joyce Vance: “The prosecution’s case is going well.”

■ “Amazon is very good at everything it does, including being very bad at the things it doesn’t want to do.” Columnist and author Cory Doctorow: “When it benefits Amazon, … they are … relentless in inventing new forms of fuckery.”

■ Wired: What you should know about Apple’s worsening iPhone spyware problem.

■ Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper calls Jerry Seinfeld’s new Netflix movie, “Unfrosted,” “one of the worst films of the decade.”

■ Tedium proprietor Ernie Smith: “John Mulaney’s pop-up Netflix show ‘Everybody’s In L.A.’ is my absolute new favorite thing.”

■ Chicago Magazine revisits Chicago’s first murder—committed by a man after whom a downtown street’s been named.

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

The pathetic, transparent evasions of unrepentant liar Kristi Noem

In the promotional draft of “No Going Back,” a new memoir by South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, she wrote:

I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all). Dealing with foreign leaders takes resolve, preparation, and determination.

That passage, which she also read aloud when recording the audiobook, turns out to be untrue. She never met with him. Enjoy this excerpt from the transcript of CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday when host Margaret Brennan called Noem on it:

BRENNAN: Did you meet Kim Jong Un?

NOEM: Well, you know, as soon as this was brought to my attention, I certainly made some changes and looked at this passage, and I've met with many, many world leaders, I've traveled around the world. As soon as it was brought to my attention, we went forward and have made some edits. So I'm glad that this book is being released in a couple of days, and that those edits will be in place, and that people will have the updated version.

BRENNAN: So you did not meet with Kim Jong Un? That's what you're saying.

NOEM: No, I've met with many, many world leaders, many world leaders. I've traveled around the world, I think I've talked extensively in this book about my time serving in Congress, my time as governor, before governor, some of the travels that I've had. I'm not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders, I'm just not going to do that. This anecdote shouldn't have been in the book, and as soon as it was brought to my attention, I made sure that that was adjusted. … Every single person in this country wants someone in elected office that's a human being that doesn't say they're perfect. I take responsibility for that being in the book. …

BRENNAN: So you talk about your time in the Armed Services Committee from 2013 to 2015. In that period of time, the leader of South Korea was a female president. I'm wondering, who is it that you confused Kim Jong Un with?

NOEM: Well, I think you need to remember, Margaret, and everybody needs to remember that I've worked on ag’ policy and federal policy for over 30 years. My time in serving and making policies in this country has been extensive and covered decades.

BRENNAN: Right, but you never went to North Korea.

NOEM: I made no specifics in this book, I talk about the fact that, yes, I have. I've been there.

BRENNAN: You went to North Korea?

NOEM: I went to the DMZ. And there are details in this book that talk about going to the DMZ and specifics that I'm willing to share. There's some specifics I'm not willing to share with you. I've traveled the world, and I visited with world leaders. And some of that is referenced in the book. And this anecdote is something that, when it was brought to my attention, we made some changes. And when the book is released, we'll do all that we can to see that that is reflected.

BRENNAN: Okay. Well, I'm asking you about that specifically because you made the point to bring him up twice, and that he was a "little tyrant.”

NOEM: Do you have a question for me, Margaret?

BRENNAN: Yes, I do. South Korea is a treaty ally, North Korea is a nuclear armed adversary, so that's a pretty big thing to confuse. I know you read this book before it was published because you released video of your recording of the audiobook. You didn't catch these errors when you were recording it?

NOEM: Well, Margaret, as soon as it was brought to my attention, I took action to make sure that it was reflected. …

BRENNAN: You're not taking responsibility for the mistakes in the book?

NOEM: I am saying that this book is very, very good. And I've met with many world leaders, and that world leaders that I've met with that are in this book (but) there are many that I met with that are not in this book. And this is an anecdote that I asked to have removed because I think it's inappropriate at this point in time. But I'm not going to talk to you about those personal meetings that I've had with world leaders. I'm just not going to have that conversation because I think it's important. … I'm not retracting anything. I'm not retracting anything.

The full interview gets into the whole dog-shooting incident that dominated the news last week. Why Noem would decline to discuss her conversations with world leaders is utterly baffling. She now appears to be off the short list of potential running mates for Donald Trump, though being an unrepentant, brazen liar is no longer disqualifying in the Republican Party.

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

Mary Schmich: First book bought with my own money!

I stumbled on this copy of "Jane Eyre" today. It is, literally, crumbling. And I remembered how happy and proud I was the day I bought it, off one of those old twirling paperback racks in a drugstore in Macon, Ga. I was 12 years old.

My seven siblings and I were living with my grandfather, my mother's father, in Macon because my father could no longer support us. He was living up near Atlanta, where he ran a Norge Village laundromat and sold Encyclopedia Americanas (anyone remember those?) door-to-door. He was also peddling Amway (anyone remember that?) and he "hired" me to do some of his paperwork, which is how I earned the 60 cents to buy the most thrilling book in the world.

There is no higher point to this post, though I could go on about how I wish my handwriting were still this legible. I like to think that my attention to detail was a foreshadowing of my life as a reporter.

Tribune print subscribers, I hope you didn’t miss Sunday’s ‘Premium Issue’

Tucked away among the inserts of the home-delivered Sunday Tribune — some of us refer to them as “the giblets” — was the latest “Premium Issue,” a 48-page advertisement-free New York Times-branded tabloid consisting of articles aimed at those of us of a certain vintage, such as:

• What is the ideal retirement age for your health?

• Over 60, single and never happier?

• Mortgage debt after 65: No brainer or big risk?

• Retirement move? Consider your family first

Hope you liked it, because if you’re a print subscriber, you probably paid $10 for it. “Living Well” was the latest “Premium Issue” that the Tribune quietly adds onto your bill,according to the fine print in the subscription renewal postcard:

These “Premium Issues” are never labeled as such — I called customer service to ask if this was indeed one and the operator confirmed that it was — and they range from sports-season previews to holiday gift guides to collections of puzzles to summer entertaining guides. Basically the kind of stuff you see on the specialty magazine racks at Walgreens and CVS.

What the renewal postcard does not tell you is that, if you call Tribune customer service — 312-546-7900 — and ask not to be charged for these “Premium Issues,” they will do so, but only for six months at a time. Why can’t you permanently opt out? Obviously because the newspaper hopes you forget to call within six months and they can start charging you for magazines you probably don’t want.

It’s shamefully scammy and takes advantage of consumer inertia in a way that the Tribune itself would be exposing and writing editorials about if the paper wasn’t the beneficiary.

Last summer, attorney Scott R. Drury — former Democratic state representative from the North Shore — filed a suit against Tribune Publishing, which I summarized at the site where I aggregate my ongoing coverage of this predatory business practice.

I reached out to Drury Tuesday for an update, but didn’t hear back in time for my deadline for this issue.

Minced Words

Lots of pop cultural references in the new episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast, starting with “The Caterpillar,” said to be perhaps the “Greatest Horror TV Episode Ever,” which gets a mention in the pre-roll video above. On the show itself we mention the hot-dog car sketch from the Netflix series “I Think You Should Leave” and the episode in the eighth season of “Seinfeld” in which Elaine is tasked with writing the autobiography of her boss, J. Peterman. Host John Williams was joined by Cate Plys (see below), Austin Berg and me to talk about police response to recent local campus protests, the contract demands of the Chicago Teachers Union, the proposal to lower speed limits in Chicago and the unexpected death of famed local music producer Steve Albini.

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.

Ron Garzotto and Cate Plys

Meet the Rascals: Cate Plys

Chicago journalist and historian Cate Plys, 61, is one of the newer regular members of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast team. This autobiographical sketch is based on an edited excerpt of an interview I conducted with her in April 2024:

I became obsessed with being a reporter in the third grade. Mom would let us order a paperback book from the monthly Scholastic Books program at school, and I got “Nellie Bly, Reporter” by Nina Brown Baker. Bly was a pioneering woman journalist in the 1800s who did things like go undercover into an asylum. I thought it was just the coolest thing, the stuff she did.

And of course newspapers were a big deal then. Everybody I knew subscribed to at least one local newspaper. We were a Chicago Daily News family, so that meant Mike Royko on Page 3. I read Mike Royko as soon as I could read. I didn’t understand it a lot of the time, but I read it and just loved him. One of my brothers got Royko’s compilation “Slats Grobnik and Some Other Friends” for Christmas one year, and I loved that book. So yeah, like everybody else who went into journalism around here back then, I wanted to be Mike Royko.

My family was all Southeast Side—my mom’s family in South Shore, my dad’s in Hegewisch and East Side. My parents got married in what I think of as the iconic year of 1956 and were ready to buy a house in 1960, when Dolton was rapidly expanding. That was right across the Chicago border from my grandparents in Hegewisch. We were all born in Hyde Park at the University of Chicago hospital, and then my two older brothers and I grew up in a classic ‘60s bungalow in Dolton near my grandparents—though when I was in junior high, we moved three blocks away into a house that actually had a second story, which was amazing to us at the time.

Dad worked at the Sinclair Oil Corp. refinery in Whiting, and then worked his way up into management and eventually became head of the Atlantic Richfield technical center in Harvey. My kids thought it was crazy, and I guess I did too, but his dream growing up was to be a chemical engineer and work for Sinclair, so that worked out for him!

My mom was a homemaker after she got married. Before that, a secretary. I did ask her once, “Didn’t you want to go to college and get a job?” Because growing up in the dawn of the women’s movement, I couldn’t believe anybody would want to be a housewife. I’m sure I was a little jerk about it, because in the ‘70s, society was telling me that girls were not as good as boys, but also that girls could be anything they wanted and we better do something more than be a housewife.

Continue reading here, where other Meet the Rascals interviews are posted

In which I disagree with “Ask Amy” Dickinson

Here’s the setup from Amy Dickinson’s May 2 advice column:

A happily married man writes to say that his wife’s sister, with whom he and his wife are personally and geographically close, recently pulled him aside: “She told me she has had feelings for me ever since high school. She said she knew she could never act on those feelings, but that she wanted to be honest about it and that’s why she told me.”

He concludes, “She urged me not to tell my wife about this and I agreed. Now I’m not feeling good about that. I don’t feel comfortable with the whole situation and I’m not sure what to do.”

I see only two options here:

1. Memory-hole the entire awkward, one-time exchange. Pretend it didn’t happen and never speak of it again.

2. Tell your wife and manage the inevitable fallout.

Dickinson chose one of those options, and I would choose the other. But before you read on, I’d ask you to vote:

Now.

Here is a portion of Dickinson’s advice:

Intimacy involves telling the truth and being brave enough to be honest about a situation that might wound the relationship between your wife and her sister. Holding this bombshell as a secret creates a bond with (your sister-in-law) and distance from your wife.

Tell your wife what happened. … I believe that the entire clan can recover from this and move forward (eventually), but this depends on the temperaments of the principal parties.

Your honesty about this will kickstart some awkwardness, but you should refuse to be a party to any subsequent drama.

My advice:

Don’t blow up the family with a disclosure that will be extremely difficult if not impossible to “recover from.” Dickinson posits that the disclosure “might wound the relationship” between his wife and her sister. Might? Ya’ think?

Your sister-in-laws’s admission was a pass, a sexual overture. She was probably hoping for a return of the sentiment followed by an affair, a betrayal of Shakespearean dimensions for which the word “inappropriate” is inadequate. Chalk it up to a moment of weakness in which she spoke aloud a fantasy that she obviously should have kept to herself. She’s human. She made a mistake.

Disclosing her mistake to your wife will not simply “kickstart some awkwardness” but obliterate the love, trust and goodwill between your wife and her sister. That bell cannot be unrung.

Of course, if your sister-in-law makes another such overture, that relationship should end and your wife should be brought into the loop.

I don’t see a third option. Readers?

Quotables

The trick to journalism is to both think what you're doing is the most important thing in the world and know that it actually doesn't matter much — Neil Steinberg 

Donald Trump has the mind of a toddler. If there’s one thing a toddler understands, it’s that when mom and dad start counting like, “Nine… nine-and-a-half… nine-and-three-quarters …” the brat has already won. — Daily Show host Jordan Klepper on the numerous small fines Trump has been getting for contempt of court.

When Kristi Noem says she’s going clubbing, she's talking about baby seals. — @WilliamAder

Jack Kevorkian was a saint. There’s no more fundamental human right than to end your own suffering. I remember when a friend’s father died, the priest said something about the value of his suffering. I gave a eulogy, and I almost said to that priest, “You’re out of your mind. There’s no value in having this good man suffer.” I want a perfectly chilled Bombay martini and a hundred Valiums. — Tony Fitzpatrick

If I had a worm eat part of my brain, I would hope it’s not the part that knows it’s a bad idea to tell people about my brain worm. — Andrew Nadeau

Stop with the fucking history lessons about what the Israelites did, or what the Ottomans did, or what the British did, or whatever. It is fucking immaterial. There is a pile of dog shit in the living room. Instead of arguing about whose dog took the bigger shit in the living room, maybe focus on how we clean up the dog shit, and maybe we keep the dogs outside. — Mo Hosseini

People often say, with pride, “I'm not interested in politics.” They might as well say, “I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.” ... If we mean to keep any control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics. — Martha Gellhorn

Our leaders can't be both blithering idiots and masters of vast conspiracies. For what it's worth, my money is on blithering idiots. — @wildethingy

Images of public disorder seldom redound to the benefit of parties of liberalism or the center-left. And they basically never “heighten the contradictions” and lead to a new revolutionary millennium. They almost always redound to the benefit of the political forces of reaction. — Josh Marshall

Approximately 70% of Republicans still say that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Are we going to abandon truth to that degree? It's absolutely absurd. After all this time, all the courts that were solicited to look into it, there's been no evidence of widespread fraud. Actually, most of the evidence I've seen so far has been Republicans trying to corrupt the election. And yet they continue to put it out there and promote it. How does a party survive in a setting like that? — Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah 

When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God — Leviticus 19:33-34 (New International Version)

In his arrogance, the wicked man hunts down the weak who are caught in the schemes he devises. He boasts about the cravings of his heart; he blesses the greedy and reviles the Lord. In his pride the wicked man does not seek him;  in all his thoughts there is no room for God. His ways are always prosperous; your laws are rejected by him; he sneers at all his enemies. … His mouth is full of lies and threats; trouble and evil are under his tongue. — Psalms 10

Re: Tweets

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

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• "What do we want?""Autocorrect to stop making us look stupid by changing simple words in our texts.""When do we want it?" "Not!" — @Pandamoanimum

• Another day another dollar. …  World's slowest counterfeiter. — @OFalafel

• I feel terrible about that time I got stuck in the mountains and had to eat my family, especially after the traffic cleared and I still made it home for dinner. — @wildethingy

•  My wife just gave the wrong definition of mansplaining. We've been sitting across from each other in silence for the last hour and I have no idea what to say. — @danaintq

•  I have cleaned the house. The house is now read only. Please do not edit the house. — @kmdoublev

• I always love it when people say “baby steps!” to imply that they're being tentative, when actually, baby steps are a great unbalanced, wholehearted, enthusiastic lurch into the unknown. — @OliveFSmith

•  I've just taken a tablet that completely erases your memory of the last 24 hours. What was I thinking? — @whoelsebutalf

• “Have you tried to stop overthinking?” … Me, as a therapist. — @Lisabug74

• Whoever discovered Newfoundland was better at discovering places than naming them. — @jswtreeman

• Did the aquarium staff warn me? Yes. Did they warn me enough? My lawyer isn’t sure. — @kipconlon

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media. And I will continue to call the platform Twitter if only to spite Elon Musk:

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

The Sun-Times really regretted the error!

A page designer mistakenly decapitated Neil Steinberg’s Monday column, lopping off the first three paragraphs. Rather than post a correction, the paper chose to run the entire, corrected column on Wednesday.

It reminded me of how the Tribune used to reprint entire obituaries if there were even one tiny mistake in them — like a granddaughter's name spelled "Kayley" instead of "Kehleigh,” say — on the grounds that obituaries are precious family keepsakes. I remember arguing to the editors that it would be much cheaper to dummy up a corrected obituary and provide a dozen copies to the family rather than use up real estate in the paper that could be used for an obituary that would become a keepsake for another grieving family.

But that suggestion, like my suggestion that the big, fat weekend newspaper come out on Saturday instead of Sunday in order to give readers two days to read it, was ignored.

University of Illinois emeritus professor George Douglas, author of the 1999 book "The Golden Age of the Newspaper," dates inception of the fat Sunday paper to the 1880s. "This is well before the 40-hour workweek," he told me in 2001. "Most people worked Monday through Saturday. Sunday was the day for leisure and reading."

No longer. Most of us now have a two-day leisure block that begins on Saturday morning when the comparatively slim Saturday paper comes out. Why not make Sunday's paper the slim one?

Good Sports

The No-No Sox

Sun-Times columnist Rick Morrissey is now on Sox Collapse Watch with me, enjoying the prospect of a memorably awful season for the South Siders. In: “There for the tanking: Embrace the White Sox' pursuit of being the worst team in MLB history“ he writes:

My recommendation to Sox fans is to sit back and chortle, the way you might delight in a terrifically bad community theater production or in a church choir that sounds like horse stables on fire. If you can’t find humor in this dreadful rendition of the sport of baseball, if you can’t laugh at the ineptness on display, you’re going to burst a vein. …

It’s one of life’s inexplicable truths that sometimes feeling bad feels good. And sometimes it’s better to be remembered than forgotten. … . In terms of lasting significance, historically bad beats almost-historically bad every time. Let’s keep our eye on the prize, folks.

As long as the race remains close — which it may not — I will offer you comparison standings of the 2024 White Sox with the 2003 Detroit Tigers and the 1962 New York Mets, teams that have defined futility for more than 80 years, and the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, the worst team in baseball’s modern era (20th century on).

After 37 games:

YEAR TEAM RECORD GB WINNING PERCENTAGE

1916 A’s 14-23 -- .378 (.235 full season)

1962 Mets 12-25 2 .324 (.250 full season)

2003 Tigers 9-28 5 . 243 (.265 full season)

2024 White Sox 9-28 5 .243

After a loss Wednesday night to the San Francisco Giants, the currently slightly more abysmal 2024 Colorado Rockies are now 8-28 (.222), 5 1/2 games behind the 1916 A’s after 36 games, so let’s keep an eye on them, too!

Tune of the Week

Tom Paxton’s 1982 song “Mother,” offered here in recognition of Mothers Day Sunday, may bring a tear to your eye even if your family has not experienced adoption. It’s in the form of a letter from an adult adoptee to the mother she has never known, and this version from Anne Hills is particularly moving.

 How I'd love to see you, Mother, just to let you know
That the mom and dad who raised me, raised me well
And I love them more for knowing that they chose me
But I want you to know, wherever you are, that I love you

Now your child's a mother three times over
God knows that she loves those children so
Feeling them beside me now, I really can't imagine how
You found the strength to let your baby go

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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