Mary Schmich: 'If there’s someone in your past you haven’t thanked sufficiently, do it soon. Time is short.'

Plus results of the reader survey on streaming TV, a question about the second 'A' in 'MAGA' and thoughts on the word 'pedophile.'

7-31-2025 (issue No. 204)

There will be no Picayune Sentinel next week, as I’m taking my first break since 2021. This publication will return the week of Aug. 10.

This week:

• Mary Schmich on the death of her high school sweetheart

• Last week’s winning quip

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked

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

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

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

• What streaming TV shows do PS readers recommend? — Results of our recent poll

• Nerding on wording — We’re too casual about using the word “pedophile”

• 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 — It might be time to suspend our monitoring of the Colorado Rockies

• Green Light — A recommendation of the audio book “Miracle and Wonder,” a musical biography of Paul Simon

Mary Schmich and Tom Kissell, May 1971

Mary Schmich: ‘You’ll always wish you’d said a little bit more’

This recent Facebook post by my friend and former colleague Mary Schmich was so enthusiastically received that she’s agreed to let me share it with Picayune Sentinel readers. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a classic that you’ll want to pass along.

My high school boyfriend Tom died yesterday.

I hadn’t seen Tom in years and, still, when my high school classmate Rusty texted the news, I felt my heart stop.

Tom and I got together early in our junior year at Gerard High School, a Catholic school in Phoenix, back when Phoenix was still a raw cowboy town exploding with new arrivals. We were an unlikely pair. I was the straight-A pom-pon girl. Tom liked to party and, though he was plenty smart, didn’t seem to give a hoot about his grades. He had a job — in a grocery store, I think — which meant that in an era when not many kids had cars, Tom could afford a groovy white Ford with a stick shift on the steering wheel.

As different as we were, Tom and I got along. We went to our junior and senior proms together, to homecomings and sports games and Sunday Masses and dances and drive-in movies and teenage parties called “boondockers” out in the desert near Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West. We went rafting in inner tubes down the Verde River, wearing skimpy clothes and no sunscreen.

Tom taught me to drive in that groovy car of his, and I’ve always enjoyed knowing I learned to drive on a “three on the tree.”

One summer I went to stay for a week at Tom’s parents’ little cabin in Pinetop, in the mountains north of Phoenix. At night, I’d lie in the dark on the screen porch and listen to some radio station from Chicago—WGN? WLS?—and dream of the day I might live somewhere that thrilling.

During my time with Tom, my family of 10 — I had 7 younger siblings — was in chronic disarray. In my junior year, we sold the house we’d lived in for a couple of years after moving to Phoenix from Georgia. We then rented a house on a busy Phoenix street; when we were evicted from that place, we moved into a house the church offered us on loan.

Through most of that period, my father was out of money and often out of work, and drinking way too much. Sometimes when he’d be ranting, I’d shut myself in my room and call Tom, who would come extract me from the madness.

One day in my senior year, my father — whom I loved, despite it all — convened our first-and-only “family council,” to decide whether we should go “on the dole.” Tom was the only person outside the family allowed at the meeting, and he sat beside me on the crowded couch.

We all voted yes to the dole.

“No!” my father decreed. We were not, he declared, the kind of people who took welfare. A family was not, after all, a democracy.

Shortly after that, we were evicted from the loaner house and my parents took the other kids to live in a room at the Motel de Mañana. It was the first of the three motels they occupied in the months that followed. I went to live nearby with my friend Marge’s family.

In that period, my family lost or hocked or gave away most of our furniture. Fortunately, the most precious item we owned — a baby grand Baldwin piano my mother had received as a 16th birthday gift — did not disappear into the black hole of our troubles. It found a haven at Tom’s parents’ house, where it lived for months — until Tom’s parents helped my parents rent the house across the street from theirs.

In that summer of 1971, I was preparing to leave for college in California. But I had no money for the kind of clothes a girl who’d been raised in Catholic school uniforms needed for college life. Tom knew this, and one day he told me that a friend of his mother’s wanted to take me shopping at Kmart, where I could stock up on appropriate college wear. Only years later did I learn that it was Tom’s mother, Rose, who paid for my new underwear and new velveteen corduroy pants and the cool, black packing trunk my new wardrobe traveled West in.

And then Sept. 18, 1971, arrived.

On that day, I boarded a plane for California. My entire family — plus Tom and Marge— came to the Phoenix airport to wave me goodbye. Walking toward the plane, I turned around and waved back, knowing what Tom and the rest of them may or may not have known: I was gone, for good. I had a life to build.

Over the course of the next few months, Tom and I officially broke up and in the decades after that were only rarely in touch. And then, a couple of years ago, we re-connected by phone. He had melanoma. It had affected not his skin, but his vision and his speech.

He was scared, but hopeful and philosophical. He felt lucky in his second marriage, grateful for his children, appreciative of his friendly Texas neighborhood. He liked to take the dog driving to see the places he and the dog had once walked around.

We talked at length a few times after that, exchanged Christmas greetings. I thanked him for all the ways he held me together when I was 16 and 17.

And when the news of his death came yesterday, I was glad, almost painfully glad, that we’d had those conversations.

One thing I've learned through the deaths of the people I’ve loved and cherished is that when they leave for good, even if you've said what needed to be said, you’ll always wish you said just a little bit more.

I can only hope that Tom Kissell left this mortal world knowing the depths of my gratitude.

And if there’s someone in your past you haven’t thanked sufficiently, do it soon. Time is short.

— Mary Schmich (permanent link to this item)

Last week’s winning quip

Stages of any long term project: 1. I have plenty of time. 2. Oh shit. —@mommajessiec

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

Just when is ‘Again’?

Trump’s battle cry of “Make America Great Again” leaves it vague just what year or era he’s yearning for a return to.

Like Ronald Reagan before him, Donald Trump has not been at all specific about what year or era the word “Again” refers to in the slogan both Republicans favored, “Make America Great Again.”

MAGA suggests there was a time when most Americans were better off — led more fulfilling, safe, healthy and prosperous lives. And depending on your racial, ethnic and gender identity, there are probably times in the past you can point to when life in America was comparatively great. When well-paying jobs were more plentiful, for your kind, for instance. When housing was more affordable. When the future seemed brighter for the country and for you and your loved ones. When you had a stronger sense of freedom and safety than you now have.

Straight white men, in particular, may have some cause for nostalgia. Quoting Archie Bunker in the theme song to the 1970s sitcom “All in the Family”:

Guys like us, we had it made …
Girls were girls, and men were men … 
Didn't need no welfare state
Everybody pulled his weight 

I, for one, even as a straight white male, would not consider those days "great.” Discrimination was rampant, health outcomes were worse, poverty was a far bigger scourge than today.

The 1930s saw the Great Depression. The 1940s saw wartime rationing. The 1950s gave us McCarthyism and a Cold War that seemed to threaten nuclear annihilation. And all along, discrimination against Black people, in particular, was open and toxic, and opportunities for women were very limited.

The 1960s? An interesting time but very tumultuous as the U.S. fought a stupid, deadly war, and racists fought for the upper hand. The 1970s and ’80s when I came of age? Reagan was already looking back at some unspecified time of national greatness in the ’80s, so maybe the 1990s?

I’m genuinely curious, as each decade has aspects of lost greatness along with undeniable horrors and privations. What are the tradeoffs that MAGA would make to turn back the clock? Which groups should lose their rights and prerogatives? Which parts of the social safety net would they like to shred?

I do not consider this a great time in America. We are led by a vain, narcissistic, ignorant madman bent on stripping our hard-won rights, poisoning our environment, upending democracy and isolating us in the world community. The rapid rise of AI is ominous, and we’re as divided politically as we have been since perhaps the Civil War era. But we aren’t at war, the economy is humming along so far, violent crime is down.

What makes for a great era? My partial list, in no particular order:

• International peace, with the U.S. widely respected around the world

• Low unemployment and well-paying jobs

• Low taxes, low crime, low pollution

• A strong social safety net so that no one must starve, go homeless or be denied medical care

• Equal rights and opportunities for all, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality or gender identity

• Effective schooling

• Affordable technology that facilitates communication, learning and pleasure

• A strong commitment to freedom of speech and personal autonomy and a low tolerance for hate

• Political leaders with a genuine commitment to the public good

I’m sure I’m leaving some things out. But my point is that there was never a year or an era in our history that checks all these boxes or that I would rather return to (though I’d sure settle for 2024 at this point). “Make America Greater” is an aspirational slogan I can live with. But not “Again.” Never “Again.”

News & Views

News: Chicago City Council to consider a measure requiring everyone aboard boats to wear lifejackets.

View: I’m usually not one to complain about the nanny state, but come on! Here’s Bob Chiarito in the Sun-Times:

(16th Ward alder Stephanie) Coleman’s legislation, introduced July 8, is an amendment to an ordinance already on the books that makes an exemption for large commercial boats inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard. Coleman’s proposal eliminates the exemption, which means passengers on large boats like the ones used for architectural tours may be forced to wear life jackets. The ordinance on the books only requires there are enough life jackets for every passenger. …

“If passed as is, it would mean everybody — people on dinner boats and water taxis and architecture tour boats, would have to wear life jackets,” said Michael Borgstrom, chief executive of Wendella Tours & Cruises and a founding member and past president of the Chicago Harbor Safety Committee.

Coleman was reportedly moved to act by several recent drowning incidents — there have been 20 in Lake Michigan when you include all states that touch the lake — but by this logic, the law should require all pedestrians to wear bulletproof vests and all motorists to wear motorcycle crash helmets.

News: To watch the Cubs next season, Marquee Network subscribers will have to pay an additional $20 a month to subscribe to Comcast’s “Ultimate” programming tier.

View: It’s not a terrible deal in that the Ultimate tier also includes the Chicago Sports Network — White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks — though, as the Tribune reports, the “additional $20 per month (is), on top of the $20.25 regional sports network fee Comcast charges Chicago-area subscribers each month.”

Shifting regional sports networks to more expensive cable tiers comes as the pay-TV industry continues to evolve in the digital media landscape. Traditional pay-TV platforms, including cable and satellite, lost 6.5 million subscribers last year, a 12.2% annual decline.

Hiking the price that dramatically is shortsighted. I don’t subscribe to Marquee or CSN, have therefore watched almost no Cubs, Bulls or Sox games in recent years and have a weaker interest in those teams than I did before. And the ability to watch at least some sports on the Big 10 Network, ESPN and other outlets is currently the only thing that keeps me subscribing to the Dish Network.

News: An Italian American civic group is angry that the pedestal in Grant Park for the mothballed Christopher Columbus statue was removed last Thursday.

View: My abiding respect and admiration for those of Italian descent erodes a bit every time they start bleating piteously about Columbus.

It ought to be an insult bordering on an ethnic slur to equate the character of the avaricious, genocidal Columbus with the character of today’s Italian Americans. It’s beyond strange that a group so understandably touchy and offended at Hollywood’s linkage of Italians to organized crime would rush to the rhetorical ramparts to celebrate a man who, for example, shipped some 500 native people back to Spain to be sold into slavery (nearly half died along the way) and who amputated the hands of those who didn’t render enough gold to him.

Columbus, whose ethnic heritage is in some dispute, is always going to remain an extremely problematic historical figure, and no amount of table pounding by Italian Americans who claim him as a symbol of pride will change that. Pick a new hero, Italian American friends! There are plenty to choose from, including many who have actually set foot in North America, unlike Columbus:

• Enrico Fermi. He won the 1938 Nobel Prize in physics and oversaw the first controlled nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago in 1942. Some fault him for playing a key role in the development of the first atomic bomb; I would credit him for playing a key role in helping the United States to be first in acquiring such dreadful weapons.

• Florence Scala. She was a passionate community activist who led the unsuccessful fight in the 1960s to save her Near West Side Italian American neighborhood from plans to build the University of Illinois at Chicago campus on the site.

• Ron Santo. He had a 14-season Major League Baseball career with the Cubs, then played a year with the White Sox before retiring in 1974. He was a nine-time All-Star, won five Gold Gloves at third base, whacked 342 homers and went on to become a beloved broadcaster.

News: Willie Wilson is giving away coupons for free gas and free groceries again.

View: I hate to be cynical (actually, no I don’t), but this reignition of Wilson’s retail philanthropy seems aimed at boosting his fourth — count ’em! — run for mayor of Chicago, in 2027. Will four bids for mayor set a record for vanity and futility?

Lar “America First” Daly, whose name was long locally synonymous with sad-sack political striver, ran for mayor only three times. But Daly also ran once for the U.S. House, once for president, twice for governor and five times for U.S. Senate.

Wilson has also made a presidential run but has made only one bid for the Senate. He’s 77, so Daly’s overall record for electoral futility appears safe.

Meanwhile, Richard Boykin, the former county commissioner who ghost writes Wilson’s columns for the Tribune, is one of the candidates almost certain to jump in to try to replace Democratic U.S. Rep. Danny Davis of Chicago, who reportedly will announce Thursday morning that he’s not running for reelection.

I do not refer to Wilson as “Dr. Wilson” in order to make those comfortable with using honorary degrees as a credential uncomfortable.

News: Many travelers to the U.S. will soon have to pay a new $250 “visa integrity fee” as part of the big budget bill.

View: Sounds like a good way to depress international tourism. The Congressional Budget Office “estimates that enacting the provision would increase revenues and decrease the deficit by $28.9 billion over the 2025‑2034 period.” The charge will come on top of other fees charged to visa applicants.

That’s So Brandon!

Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s mayor

Hizzoner is getting lots of eyerolls lately for continuing to dust off his intention to tax the rich in order to close the city’s troubling budget gap. Here’s Fran Spielman in the Sun-Times:

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s strategy for digging Chicago out of its $1.1 billion financial hole has, so far, been more like a wing and a prayer.

He has talked about progressive revenue, but it’s been all talk and no action on the $800 million in tax increases he pledged during the campaign to impose on businesses and wealthy Chicagoans.

He has talked about extending the state sales tax to services. But he has yet to make a specific request for a change that can only be made by the Illinois General Assembly and Gov. JB Pritzker, with whom Johnson has a tense relationship. … Until Johnson’s Springfield losing streak is reversed, Chicago will have little choice but to lean heavily on tax-increment-financing surpluses and other one-time revenues.

Here’s Jake Sheridan in the Tribune:

Johnson’s calls for “progressive revenue” — a common, but often unspecific refrain from the mayor — comes as many of the options his administration might otherwise rely on to drive up revenue look politically tenuous.

The mayor pledged last week to not propose a property tax hike after his chief financial officer, Jill Jaworski, called such a hike “likely.” He has called for the city to maintain a 1% grocery tax of its own as the state’s version of the tax expires, though he has not pushed the tax to a vote in the face of broad aldermanic pushback.

And here’s the Tribune Editorial Board:

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before.

As Johnson prepared to take office following his surprise election win in 2023, progressive groups supporting his candidacy floated hundreds of millions in new taxes, with ideas ranging from a tax on financial trades to the reinstitution of the per-employee head tax on businesses and many others. Most of those new taxes would have needed, and would still need, state approval, and Gov. JB Pritzker along with numerous lawmakers quickly shot down the Johnson tax-bonanza agenda.

For good reason, too. A state with such lagging economic performance as Illinois can’t afford to be driving away more wealthy and middle-class people and businesses. …

So here we are. We’re well past the halfway point of Johnson’s term, and he’s still knocking at the “progressive taxation” door.

We’ll reserve judgment until we see precisely what the mayor has in mind. Maybe he and his team have devised some new plan not yet proposed (and rejected) that’s worthy of consideration. We won’t hold our breath.

This circles back to my main apprehension about Johnson’s candidacy two years ago: Though his lofty notions seemed unlikely to pass, he clearly had no Plan B.

Land of Linkin’

• Former Tribune White House correspondent Christi Parsons made a guest appearance on the op-ed pages Sunday with “Abraham Lincoln’s empathy is what our divided nation needs.”

• Is it crazy to suggest banning cigarette smoking altogether? PS reader Steven K. floated the idea, and I fleshed it out with an excerpt from a Chicago Reader polemic exploring the same idea.

• “Here Comes the Son” is an expanded version of Cate Plys’ wry take on 27th Ward Ald. Walter Burnett Jr.’s plans to hand off his seat to Walter Burnett III.

• Vulture interrupted: Alden Global Capital fails in its attempt to get its tentacles on The Dallas Morning News

• Seeing that naive appeasers are wringing their hands and suggesting that Illinois unilaterally disarm in the gerrymandering wars prompted me to lash back Tuesday. The solution to a problem that I admit exists is a strong federal law, not a state-by-state approach.

• The Guardian: “US court strikes down ‘click-to-cancel’ rule designed to make unsubscribing easier —Rule would have kept businesses from forcing customers through lengthy chats or other barriers to cancellation.”

• The Associated Press: “US fertility at an all-time low in 2024 —The fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to an all-time low in 2024 with less than 1.6 kids per woman, new federal data released shows. It has been sliding for close to two decades as more women are waiting longer to have children or never taking that step at all.”

• I haven’t read much about President Donald Trump’s recent declaration “Whatever the lowest price paid for a drug in other developed countries, that's what Americans will pay,” but I must say I do like the sound of it.

• CWB’s list of “Brandon’s Bodies” — “cases where people have been found shot in areas that were previously covered by ShotSpotter (until Sept. 23, 2024( —areas where the system, had it still been active, might have provided a faster or more accurate response” — has reached 51.

• Neiman Reports’ most recent list of the the Top 25 local newspaper websites has the Tribune at No. 8 and the Sun-Times at No. 18. In the list of Top 25 nonprofit news sites, Block Club Chicago is No. 7 and the Chicago Reader is No. 12.

• Here is all I know about the recent Tribune layoffs, plus some salty words for anyone who’s reveling in young reporters losing their jobs.

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:

■ “Claiming a 17-year-old girl who fell into the hands of sex traffickers was stolen from you is the kind of thinking that makes sex trafficking possible”: That’s USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist, Rex Huppke, on Trump’s complaint—“without a hint of empathy or compassion”—that now-dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein “stole” a teenage spa worker from Mar-a-Lago.

■ Popular Information: The president’s callous account raises at least four thorny new questions for him.

■ Snopes confirms as “true” video showing Trump cheating at golf in Scotland over the weekend, which gave Jon Stewart plenty of material.

■ Economist Paul Krugman on what looked like European Union concessions to Trump—including a “sort-of” pledge to invest in U.S. oil and gas: “Europe played Trump for a fool. Specifically, a fossil fool.”

■ A term this summer’s hot weather should add to your vocabulary: “Wet-bulb” temperatures.

■ Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect explains a cheaper and simpler way for homeowners to go solar: “You don’t have to pay for contractors or a grid hookup.”

■ “This column … is the one I hoped I’d never write”: Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters) says concentration camps have come to America.

■ “The DOGE Boys and the barely-crypto Nazi punk overlords have, at baseline, slowed this down to the point where they’re making money on the deal by not sending it to a qualified American (me)”: Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Jack Ohman is having trouble collecting on his Social Security.

■ ProPublica: “A Las Vegas festival promised ways to cheat death. Two attendees left fighting for their lives.”

■ Illinois’ best hospitals: U.S. News & World Report’s latest ratings put Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Rush University Medical Center in a tie , although that report was compiled before the air conditioning in the main Rush tower downtown went south.

■ Check your hospital’s ranking here.

■ Here’s the Chicago Music Guide overview of what’s new at Lollapalooza this year.

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

Poll results on streaming TV

I recently posted a series of click polls about the streaming TV shows that got the most Emmy nominations, asking readers to choose one of these options:

• Green light — I recommend this series.

• Yellow light — It was OK, but I’m not recommending it.

• Red light — I did not like and do not recommend.

• Haven't watched it.

Here are the “haven’t watched it” rankings, from most watched to least watched:

1. “The Bear” Season Three (Hulu/FX), 43% haven’t watched

2. "Hacks" (HBO Max), 57%

3. "The White Lotus" Third Season (HBO Max), 58%

4. “The Pitt” (HBO Max), 59%

5. “Severance" (Apple TV+), 64%

6. “Adolescence” (Netflix), 74%

7. “The Last of Us” (HBO Max), 75%

8. "The Studio" (Apple TV+) 77%

9. "The Penguin” (HBO Max) 85%

Among those who did watch, here are the green, yellow and red light percentages ranked in order of green light responses. The number of responses for each show was more than 600 in each case, but varied from show to show:

I concur with the low ranking for “The Studio,” which we gave up on after just two episodes. And of the above shows we have watched, I would green-light “The Pitt,” “Hacks” and “The Bear,” while yellow-lighting the deeply weird “Severance.”

Nerding on wording

This will strike some of you as almost distastefully fussy, but the accusatory term “pedophile” is getting thrown around a lot lately to describe those who may have engaged in sexual intercourse with adolescent girls on Jeffrey Epstein’s island.

Katie Herzog, writing in the Stranger in 2019, explained why that’s inaccurate:

Pedophilia isn't just a colloquial term for anyone attracted to people under the age of 18, even if that is how it's commonly used. … Pedophilia is defined by the psychological establishment as a persistent attraction to pre-pubescent children. ... As far as we know, Epstein's attraction was to teen girls, and while many of us may find this icky (I do), isn’t actually all that abnormal. … Adults having sex with minors is both morally and legally indefensible … (but) that doesn't make (Epstein) a pedophile, and the distinction is an important one. Sex researcher and clinical psychologist David Ley told me, “Media coverage of these issues affects general public perception. We don’t want every man (and woman) who finds teenagers sexy to think there is something wrong with them.”

Herzog noted that Epstein and those who raped underaged girls on his island were either hebephiles — those sexually attracted to early adolescents between 11 and 14 — or ephebophiles — those sexually attracted to later adolescents between 15 and 18.

Any adult who acts on such attractions is a criminal, of course. Herzog wrote that making such a terminological distinction “may come across as either hair-splitting or an attempt to mitigate his guilt— (but) there is, indeed, an important distinction to be made.”

She went on to quote Canadian psychologist Michael Seto, the director of Forensic Rehabilitation Research at the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group, where his research focuses on pedophilia:

Clinically, an accurate diagnosis matters because the trajectories and outcomes for pedophilic versus nonpedophilic men who have sexually offended are different. Scientifically, we can't start our research if we don't define our terms accurately and as precisely as possible. A lot of my career has been spent studying pedophilia, and the research I've produced would be a lot less useful—maybe even useless—if I didn't distinguish interest in prepubescent children from young teens. Not making this distinction would change how we understand the etiology of pedophilia, how we assess for it, characteristics of offenders, and how we understand it relates to sexual offending against children and the risk of doing it again.

Things we don’t say anymore

On BlueSky, Jack Boot writes, “To my boomer brethren: They don't call them flat screen TVs anymore. They call them TVs.”

I’m so Boomerish that I remember when it was important to specify “color TV” since most TVs were still black-and-white.

This topic got me thinking about other expressions and bits of nomenclature that are outmoded. You have to be of a certain age to refer to “dialing” or “hanging up” a phone* or “taping” a TV show. Saying that something or someone is a “carbon copy” of another person or thing is likely to puzzle those who have never even seen carbon paper.

Hardly anyone “rolls down” a car window anymore — reportedly, as of 2025, no new car made in America has hand-crank windows — though I still use that phrase.

And “411” as a slangy term for information makes no sense to a generation that simply looks up phone numbers online.

*Even I have stopped using the term “butt-dial” to refer to accidentally calling someone by hitting the wrong icon on a a phone. Used to be that by bending or sitting in a certain way with a phone in your back pocket you could activate a key that would mistakenly initiate a call. Phone touch screens make that particular mistake difficult.

Quotables

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

Polls have shown since the late 2010s that as many as one-third of Trump supporters have steadfastly believed in QAnon, a murky belief system built around theories of widespread sex trafficking by wealthy liberal elites and politicians, and the notion that Trump’s real purpose is to expose this supposed ring and destroy it. Almost all of QAnon and its adjacent theories, like “Pizzagate” — a fraudulent story about a sex ring operating in the basement of a D.C. restaurant — are bat-guano-crazy nonsense, but Epstein, in death, has become the intersection of fantasy and reality. It’s no wonder, then, that the Trump regime’s inept effort to burst the Epstein bubble has instead blown up in its own face. — Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer

This Lolla lineup is one of the worst in recent memory, a wasteland of frat rappers (Ian), Temu yacht rock (Wild Rivers, Ocean Alley), bros named Landon (specifically Conrath and Barker, the latter of whom is the nepo baby of Blink-182 drummer Travis), and Spotify wallpaper pop (exemplified by Djo, aka former Chicagoan Joe Keery, who plays Steve from Stranger Things and recorded perhaps the strangest hit about Chicago, “End of Beginning,” which has the personality of an O’Hare phone-charging station). — Leor Galil in the Reader

The position of today’s Democrat Party is they want more illegal immigrants in America, more murderers in America, more child molesters in America, more gang members in America. And that is not hyperbole. That is what they are advocating for. — U.S. Sen Ted Cruz, R-Texas

If you want to understand why New York — and virtually every other state — is drifting to the right, observe how so many in the Democratic establishment confuse triangulation with leadership and treat stability as a virtue in and of itself. There’s a chasm between what we say and what we deliver. We continue asking voters to show up while we refuse to show up for them. ... (President Donald) Trump’s appeal isn’t rooted in policy; it’s rooted in style. He uses delusional bravado to cosplay as a rebel against a broken system that both parties helped to rig. The Democratic establishment’s timid, survivalist politics can’t compete with that. You can’t beat an immoral agent of chaos with risk aversion. You beat him with moral clarity — the kind that’s willing to sacrifice corporate donations, political comfort and maybe even your own career for the sake of the greater good. — New York Democratic Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado

Call me an idealist, but I preferred when the U.S. government did a better job of pretending not to be evil. — Frank Ray Whitehouse

There are all these photos of Donald Trump partying with creepy pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. We've seen them for years. They're not in any way inconsistent with everything we know about Donald Trump, and his pussy-grabbing, porn-star-schtupping, daughter-sexualizing ways. The man's a major creep, scuzzball and swine. Married three times, most recently to an Eastern European soft porn model. Suddenly, some part of the MAGA world, indoctrinated for years to the Epstein saga, looks up from its silage and snaps to the fact that the Epstein files they were promised, whatever they are, aren't materializing. — Neil Steinberg

Next week, … Ghislaine Maxwell will give a statement: "Yes, Donald Trump was sometimes in the same room as naked 14-year-old girls, but it was only to read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 to them. After he finished, he left to give alms to the poor and wash the feet of beggars. Glory!" — Betty Bowers

The tipping point (in Gaza) has already occurred, unfortunately, for a large number of children and infants and toddlers and adolescents — these are definable age categories where the level of starvation and malnutrition has passed the tipping point, where July already saw a large escalation in the number of deaths but August is going to be significantly higher because a lot of the children have already passed the point of no return where their physiology has eroded to the point where even refeeding could potentially cause death itself. The gut lining has started to auto-digest and it will no longer have adequate absorptive capacity for water or for nutrition. Death is unfortunately imminent for probably thousands of children.— Mark Brauner, an American emergency physician who was working in Gaza

BREAKING: Tulsi Gabbard claims that the FBI has conclusive evidence that on August 28th, 2014 President Barack Obama wore a tan suit. — Rick Aaron

State Farm’s huge rate hike raises suspicion because it is inconsistent with what we know. … State Farm rejected repeated requests for information from the Department of Insurance. Rather than being transparent and letting the numbers speak for themselves, State Farm is withholding vital information not just from the government, but also from its customers. — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker

I was taught you never, ever disrespect your opponent or your teammates or your organization or your manager and never, ever your uniform. Make a great play — act like you’ve done it before. Get a big hit — look for the third base coach and — and — and get ready to run the bases. Hit a home run — put your head down, drop the bat, run around the bases, because the name on the front is more — a lot more important than the name on the back." — Ryne Sandberg Hall of Fame Speech.

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:

• My wife is furious that our neighbor sunbathes naked in her backyard. Personally, I'm on the fence. — @ThePunnyWorld

• Me: If short pants are called shorts, then long pants should be called longs. Cop: OK, you’re under arrest for not wearing longs. — ‪@frovo.bsky.social

• "You Can't Always Get What You Want" was written and sung by a guy who in all probability always got what he wanted. — ‪@jakevig.bsky.social

• If you were in a hypothetical situation, what would you do? — ‪@itsabbyyep.bsky.social

• Conflicted: I like big butts but I'm a chronic liar. — @jakevig.bsky.social

• Conspiracy theorists all seem so unbelievably dumb that I suspect they've been planted by a shadowy and nefarious underground organization to distract us from what's really going on. — @wheeltod.bsky.social‬

• Hi, I'm a parent and your chef for this evening. You may remember me from such greats as "That’s what you asked for,” “It’s the same as we always make it,” and “No, it doesn’t taste funny.” — @notmythirdrodeo

• For the foreseeable future, I’d really like it if there were a foreseeable future. — @thealexnevil.bsky.social

• If you want to get my attention, start out by saying, "Not to sound creepy...” — @topaz_kell

• I'll admit, ever since I saw “Psycho” as a kid I've felt a tiny bit nervous each time I kill someone in the shower. — @JohnLyonTweets

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Why “quips”? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.” Also, I’m finding good stuff on BlueSky now as well.

Memo to grocers who make customers use their store apps to get discounts

Just stop. Nobody likes to have to pull out their phones and browse your damn apps at checkout. If you want to keep track of our purchases — for whatever reason — in exchange for discounts, fine! But I finally had it the other day when a cashier at Jewel rang me up for a $1.79 cucumber when the price listed at the display was $1. After I pointed the discrepancy out to her, she helped me navigate on the app to claim the deal while the customers behind me waited.

Enough!

Apropos of that, the Tribune had a fine editorial Wednesday morning leveling a pox on the idea of “personalized pricing” that might someday allow grocery stores to charge certain customers more than others for items based on what algorithms tell them about the person’s “price sensitivity.”

This line from the editorial — "Big companies spend billions trying to discover who is price sensitive and who is not, so as to charge those who don’t care more than those who do” — lacked self-awareness. Much of the Tribune’s business model is rooted in charging higher and higher subscription rates to customers who aren’t particularly price-sensitive, either because they’re well-to-do or because they’re inattentive.

Speaking of variable airfares that use algorithms to “offer you a different fare for a particular trip than your neighbor down the street,” the Tribune sniffs, “Surely there should be a group of real, fair fares out there, not an infinite number of gradations that makes a task as simple and routine as buying a vacation flight a frustrating exercise that leaves you suspicious you just got ripped off, or at least did not get the best possible deal.”

Substitute “subscription rates” for “fares” and “paying for a newspaper” for “buying a vacation flight” and, well, yeah.

Minced Words

Cate Plys, Marj Halperin and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. Most of the conversation focused on local issues, though, of course, by the end we got around to All Things Trump.

Traffic lights

• Cate — A yellow light for “And So It Goes,” the HBO Max two-part documentary on Billy Joel.

• Marj — A green light for “Paradise,” a “political science fiction thriller” on Hulu.

• John — A green light for author Andy Weir’s 2021 science-fiction novel “Project Hail Mary.” A movie based on the book will be released next spring.

• My green light is below.

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

Equity and inclusion?

A friend’s brother died recently, and at his memorial, one of his sons fondly recalled that, when he coached youth soccer, he always made sure that every kid from the most to the least talented got roughly equal playing time.

I had the same philosophy coaching kids’ Park District basketball. It’s nice to win, yes. and I made sure my best players were in at the ends of games, but I felt very strongly that participation was the goal and that the opportunity to get on the court was by far the most important thing to both the children and their parents. I felt this philosophy should have been at least a league guideline, if not a rule.

The opposing view would be that those who have practiced harder and longer should reap the rewards of that effort with more playing time — an early and object lesson in the value of commitment. The athlete who shovels off a space on her driveway in midwinter so she can practice her jump shot on the hoop over the garage deserves more playing time than the kid who prefers video games and is on the team only because her parents made her. And I would agree with that view when it comes to interscholastic competition, even for preteens.

Your view?

Rock bottom?

Rather than remind you each week of the various records for MLB futility that the 2025 Colorado Rockies are chasing, I have created this permanent link that explains the table below.

It may be time to discontinue this feature. Since the All-Star break, the Rockies have been playing .500 ball (6-6) —

— and by the time I return from my annual college reunion on Cape Cod in two weeks, there’s a good chance they will be a near mathematical certainty to avoid entering the record books as the worst team in modern baseball history.

11-44 is a winning percentage of .200; 14-39 is .264. The Rockies’ current season-long winning percentage is .259

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.

I missed “Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon”when it came out in 2021, but listened to it on a recent road trip and recommend it highly.

It’s a five-hour edited version of more than 30 hours of conversation between Simon, Malcolm Gladwell and his co-author Bruce Headlam, and it goes into sometimes granular detail about Simon’s stunning compositions. Art Garfunkel doesn’t get mentioned often enough for my tastes, and a little of Gladwell’s precious asides goes a long way, but all in all it’s fascinating.

If you are the “plan manager” of a Spotify premium account, you can listen to “Miracle and Wonder” at no extra charge. Spotify’s audiobook selection is substantial and permits 15 hours of listening per month. But that listening can only be done by the family member member whose name is on the account, and not all those who are part of the plan. It’s a strange and annoying restriction that regularly prompts complaints on Spotify-related message boards.

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.

Contact

You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:

I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.

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