Memo to Republicans: Keep our city’s name out of your fearmongering mouths

& can someone tell me what is the deal with drag?

9-28-2023 (issue No. 107)

This week

• Last week’s winning tweets

• Memo to Republicans: Keep our city’s name out of your fearmongering mouths

• News and Views — The mystery at Halas Hall, Venmo robberies, drag shows, a modern art stunt, more content-free blather from the mayor and Colin Kaepernick’s comeback bid.

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

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

• On the gratuitous grandparent watch

• Songs of Good Cheer update — Sweet bells!

• Mary Schmich — Passing along a simple truth about life

• “The Mincing Rascals” podcast preview — We were live onstage this week!

• Cupboard or cabinet? — On the word watch

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

• Tune of the Week — “Who’s on the Way?”

Last week’s winning tweets

Most of my trips into Home Depot are to fix something that I screwed up after my previous trip to Home Depot. — @RodLacroix

The winner of the special bonus “dad tweets” poll featuring excruciating wordplay:

I always thought orthopedic shoes were overrated, but I stand corrected.

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

Memo to Republicans: Keep our city’s name out of your fearmongering mouths

While the nation teeters on the brink of a shutdown, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee held a “field hearing” on violent crime at Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 headquarters.

“Is Chicago savable?” bleated Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, whose concern for law and order doesn’t seem to extend to the actions of his party’s Dear Leader.

Why here? Chicago doesn’t appear on the list of the 30 cities with the highest per-capita violent crime rate. Murders and shootings are down here, though vehicle thefts and robberies are up, and public safety does remain an urgent concern. I’ll leave it to you why committee chair Jim Jordan didn’t hold hearings in Cleveland in his home state of Ohio, which ranks 10th on the list of most violent cities in America, rather than Chicago, which ranks 20th.

Kudos, though, to both major newspapers for some fact checking and added context in the news coverage.

Here’s Rick Pearson and A.D. Quig in the Tribune:

Charges that public safety offices have been defunded do not match recent budgets. With the exception of a slight dip in 2021, appropriations to the Chicago Police Department have consistently climbed: the budget has risen from $1.4 billion in 2016 to more than $1.9 billion this year. The county’s combined public safety spending — on the sheriff and various court operations — has also continued to climb from $1.1 billion in 2018 to $1.3 billion this year.

And here’s Tom Shuba in the Sun-Times:

(The hearing) was dominated by sharp partisan attacks, false claims and factual omissions. … Fox News commentator Gianno Caldwell falsely (claimed) that suspects accused of second-degree murder and arson couldn’t be detained under provisions of the controversial SAFE-T Act. …

Carlos Yanez Jr., a Chicago police officer who was wounded in a shooting that killed Officer Ella French, testified that the SAFE-T Act doesn’t live up to its “beautiful name” and actually puts crime victims in danger.

But Yanez did not mention that the bail reform law allows even people charged with misdemeanor crimes to be detained until trial – a fact praised by advocates for victims of domestic and sexual violence. …

The (Chicago Police Department’s) vehicle and foot pursuit policies, which tightly restrict when officers can chase suspects, were slammed throughout the meeting. …

No one mentioned that the department’s foot chase policy was implemented as part of a federal consent decree mandating sweeping reforms, or that the vehicle pursuit policy was revised amid a mountain of settlements stemming from crashes. …

Chicago Police Lt. John Garrido III … bemoaned the fact that Chicago cops are conducting far fewer street stops than they did in 2015, but he failed to mention a settlement the police department reached that year to curtail its stop-and-frisk practices.

Cash bail has been eliminated in Illinois for a little more than a week, and it’s impossible to say yet whether it will result in any noticeable overall changes in public safety. It’s also notable that Chicago voters have rejected the get-tough-on-crime candidates for mayor and Cook County state’s attorney in favor of more progressive candidates in recent years.

We know we have problems here. You have bigger problems in Washington with your fractious party likely to grind government services to a halt because the wingnuts are now evidently in charge.

Leave us to our devices and run along home to try answering the question, “Is the Republican Party savable?”

News & Views

News: Bears defensive coordinator Alan Williams, 53, resigned under mysterious circumstances last week

View: Of course we’re all curious! Williams’ statement — “I am taking a step back to take care of my health and my family” — and the team’s refusal to offer a further explanation for his abrupt departure hints at scandal, embarrassment and shame.

The Tribune Editorial Board was nearly indignant in wanting to know what might be behind the vague rumors of “inappropriate conduct” that appeared in other media. In “Come clean, Chicago Bears. What has been going on?” the board wrote:

It sure looks like the Bears are trying to keep everything under wraps, and there may well be good reasons we don’t yet know to try to protect Williams. But those in these prominent, well-compensated positions of authority in the professional sports business rightly are expected to be good leaders and eschew the inappropriate. Or, at least to explain themselves when that word is being bandied around.

Sure, but absent illegality, what might be going on in the private life of an employee of a private company falls pretty clearly under the heading, “None of Our Business,” no matter how well-paid or prominent he was. When I was at the Tribune, there was an informal rule that editorials ought not tell private companies what do (as a columnist I had no compunction about breaking this rule, since “should” and “must” have always been among my very favorite words), and the suggestion that the Bears owe us a dish of dirt violates that rule.

Meanwhile, not to worry about the defense of the 0-3 Bears. Wednesday, the team signed a cornerback off the backup squad of the 0-3 Minnesota Vikings.

News: “Venmo robbery: Man forced victim to surrender phone near Wrigley Field, transferred $3,000 to himself, prosecutors say”

View: I’m convinced that one reason street robberies are up so dramatically is that evildoers know most of us are carrying around really valuable hunks of electronics that have become portals to our bank accounts. Cash? Most of us don’t even need to carry much of it. Credit cards? Easily and quickly canceled. But smartphones? Jackpot.

“Forced to Venmo at gunpoint; smartphone crime gets more violent, more tech-y” is an alarming rundown of how thieves are keeping a step ahead of efforts to foil phone crime.

Apple’s FindMyiPhone feature is a powerful tool that allows consumers to recover lost or stolen phones — even watch in real-time as a criminal escapes.  Criminals know this, too, and in some cases have now escalated their tactics to force victims to disable the tracking.

The phone giants and security consultants need to step up their efforts. Maybe we should have secondary emergency codes that seem to work for about five minutes but then disable all but the tracking feature. As our phones become more and more integrated into our lives, to the point that they are pretty much the only thing we carry around, the need for a public/private partnership to all but eliminate this problem becomes more and more urgent.

News: Trump-appointed judge won't force Texas university to allow drag show.

View: I’ve never understood anything about the drag phenomenon: Why does anyone consider it entertaining or, for that matter, threatening? And yes, I’ve been to a drag show. After about two minutes of watching men swanning about dressed convincingly as broad caricatures of women — often trafficking in the most bizarre stereotypes of femininity — I couldn’t have been more bored.

Generally in today’s cultural environment when members of a dominant group adopt the attire, mannerisms and vocal stylings of an often marginalized group, we consider it offensive cultural appropriation, no matter how respectful the intent. When it comes to drag, though, such sensitivities evidently don’t exist.

I truly would welcome a thoughtful explanation/defense of drag.

News: Pew Research Center finds that “nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults (65%) say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.”

View: Aside from enshrining chattel slavery, giving us the Electoral College and conferring grossly disproportionate power onto small states was the worst thing the Founders did. Because changing this anti-democratic method of electing the president would require a constitutional amendment and teeny states have more than enough power to block constitutional amendments, this is never going to change.

News: Danish artist ordered to repay museum $72,000 for submitting blank canvases

View: Hasn’t this judge ever heard of Robert Rauschenberg’s 1951 work, “White Paintings”? Look, I think some modern art is meaningless, fraudulent nonsense celebrated by fatuous aesthetes who can’t recognize unclothed monarchs. Here, for instance, is artspeak on Rauschenberg’s monochromatic canvases:

In each case, Rauschenberg’s primary aim was to create a painting that looked untouched by human hands, as though it had simply arrived in the world fully formed and absolutely pure. … The White Paintings have gradually secured a place in art history as important precursors of Minimalism and Conceptualism. … Ultimately, the power of the White Paintings lies in the shifts in attention they require from the viewer, asking us to slow down, watch closely over time, and inspect their mute painted surfaces for subtle shifts in color, light, and texture.

The story here is that the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Denmark loaned artist Jens Haaning about $84,000 in cash and asked him to use the notes to create works based on previous installations in which he displayed currency in frames. His twist was to say he was keeping the cash — “The work is that I have taken their money,” he said — and give them blank canvases titled "Take the Money and Run."

Haaning justified this stunt with a statement replete with artspeak:

By changing the title of the work to "Take the Money and Run" I question artists' rights and their working conditions in order to establish more equitable norms within the art industry. Everyone would like to have more money and, in our society, work industries are valued differently. The artwork is essentially about the working conditions of artists. It is a statement saying that we also have the responsibility of questioning the structures that we are part of. And if these structures are completely unreasonable, we must break with them. It can be your marriage, your work — it can be any type of societal structure.

A court in Copenhagen sided with the museum and ordered Hanning to return the money minus his fee. But the museum and the artist deserve one another.

News: Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office says it will adopt “a multifaceted approach” to closing the city’s budget gap, “encompassing expenditure reviews, revenue enhancement measures and potential reallocation of resources.”

View: Johnson’s facility for content-free argle-bargle is impressive: “While specific details of the plan are still under development, Mayor Johnson’s administration is focused on minimizing the impact on vital public services and ensuring that the burden of closing the budget gap is borne as fairly as possible.”

News: Blackballed NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick has written to the New York Jets asking to be put on the team’s practice squad in the wake of the season-ending injury to QB Aaron Rodgers.

View: The cancellation of Kaepernick in 2016 over his refusal to stand for the National Anthem in protest over police treatment of Black people stands as one the NFL’s most shameless and disgustings moments. He’s 36 now and reportedly has kept in shape hoping for another chance in a more enlightened era. He wrote:

"Worst case scenario, you see what I have to offer and you're not that impressed. Best case scenario, you realize you have a real weapon at your disposal in the event you ever need to use it . In either of these scenarios, I would be committed to getting your defense ready week in and week out, all season long, and I would wear that responsibility like a badge of honor."

Next time you hear someone on the right whine piteously about cancel culture, remind them of the shabby treatment afforded Kaepernick.

News: A reported 95% of non-fungible tokens — NFTs — are now reportedly worthless.

View: Gee, who would have ever guessed that this —

—— "CryptoPunk #4156” — wasn’t actually worth $10.26 million? Aside from everyone with a brain in their heads, I mean? And that 95% figure seems to me to be about 5% low.

Land of Linkin’

• I missed “Chicago cameos in ‘The Bear’ Season 2” by Monica Eng at Axios Chicago when it came out over the summer, but fans of this stunning series will want to read it.

• Slate: “How Gen Z influencer Kelsey Russell is getting her generation hooked on print media.” To say that the 23-year-old newspaper enthusiast “is” getting her generation hooked on print media is a vast overstatement. But Russell does have some interesting things to say about the value of ink-on-paper news: “Print media gives us the opportunity to sit down, and decide when we want to feel the emotions we want to feel, rather than letting some arbitrary algorithm decide how we should feel. … Reading the paper gives people the opportunity to have some autonomy over their time again.”

• “Everything is Alive” is an extremely inventive, often very funny podcast in which the interview subjects are inanimate objects. This week the feed launched a five-episode special series interviewing animals, their first animate subjects. First up: A kangaroo and her joey. Time magazine calls the show, “a profound pleasure.”

• The Investigative Project on Race and Equity and WBEZ Chicago have launched an investigative series on race and traffic stops in Illinois. Part one is, “Illinois traffic stops of Black drivers reach record highs: State law and oversight board fall short of goals to collect law enforcement data and to reduce racial disparities in police traffic stops.”

• The New York Times: “You’ve Got (Scam) Mail: Is everyone being swindled all the time and just not talking about it?” “Scams have been around forever, but in 2022, consumers reported losing almost $8.8 billion to fraud, a 30 percent jump from the year before, according to data released by the Federal Trade Commission. The actual number is probably much higher. John Breyault, a fraud expert at the National Consumers League, said that fraud tended to be underreported.”

• Neil Steinberg’s “The sheer tenacity of clematis” is a fun look at the ubiquitous climbing vine that has recently flowered on and over our back deck.

• Mark Jacob: “Six toxic attitudes that could kill democracy.”

  "It’s just politics.”
  “All politicians lie.”
  “MAGA doesn’t scare me. There are more of us than them.”
  “Our politics are self-correcting. We always move back toward the center.”
  “Big money is all that matters in politics.”
  “I don’t care what they do in Alabama. I live in California.” 

• Jonathan Alter: “Could Biden Decide Not to Run?” “A statesmanlike withdrawal in the next few weeks would allow time for aspirants on the talented bench of the Democratic Party to jump in and create an exciting, energizing campaign about the future.”

• Block Club Chicago: “What To Know About GardaWorld, The Controversial Security Company Tapped To Build Migrant Tent Camps.”

• The Picayune Sentinel preview: Tuesday 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.

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:

■ The AP: “New cars are supposed to be getting safer. So why are fatalities on the rise?”

■ Visiting a South Carolina gun store, Donald Trump said he wanted to buy a Glock handgun—but federal law says he can’t, so his campaign walked back a claim he did. And Rolling Stone reported the ex-president’s increasingly been wondering aloud what life would be like if he’s convicted.

■ Want to check your credit report? You can now do so free once a week. Next, Consumer Reports wants the big three credit bureaus held to fixing mistakes quickly.

■ Apple’s unleashed a free operating system upgrade for Macintosh computers, and Jason Snell at Six Colors says it goes “above and beyond what was required to bring a little delight.”

■ Critic Richard Roeper praised a four-part documentary, Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court, now on Paramount+/Showtime, which TechHive’s Jared Newman says you can still get for free.

■ Dress codes were Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week—with New York Times columnist David Brooks a close second.

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

On the gratuitous grandparent watch

In the Tribune Wednesday morning came yet another example of headline writers needlessly mentioning the previous reproductive accomplishments of the subject of a news story:

Technically this isn’t an unnecessary grandparent reference, but it seems equally meant to invoke stereotypes.

Previously: On the gratuitous grandparent watch (8/10/23)

Cheer Chat

We had our first audition session for “Songs of Good Cheer” last Sunday — a meeting at the Old Town School of Folk Music where we listened to recordings or sang through possible new numbers for the annual winter holiday caroling programs that Mary Schmich and I have hosted for the last 25 years.

It’s always one of my favorite meetings because there are still quite a few seasonal songs or variations on familiar songs that I haven’t heard despite having done this now for so long. We entertained a new groove on “We Three Kings,” for instance, that I hope makes the final lineup (it’s a democracy in the cast and I get just one vote).

I’m also high on this variation of “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night,” which often goes by the name “Sweet Bells.”

Kate Rusby has a lovely solo rendition here, but I’m fired up by the thought of 400 people harmonizing on that chorus.

Yes, it feels early to be thinking about the winter holidays, but tickets are once again going fast. Here is the link.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what season it is!

After canoeing on the Fox River last Saturday a group of friends and I stopped by a roadside farmstand to celebrate this time of year.

Mary Schmich passes along a simple truth about life.

My former colleague Mary Schmich frequently offers thoughtful, provocative and popular posts on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a t recent offering:

I'm reading Ann Patchett's latest novel, Tom Lake. And this morning I read these perfect, true sentences:

There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you'd never be able to let go? Now you're not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else. Memories are then replaced by different joys and larger sorrows, and unbelievably, those things get knocked aside as well.

Host John Williams with Jon Hansen, Brandon Pope, Austin Berg and Eric Zorn at The Second City 9/26/23

Minced Words

Our “Mincing Rascals” live show at The Second City Tuesday night was lots of fun. We yakked on topics in the news for more than an hour, then took audience questions. This quintet has developed very nice chemistry over the years, but we are keenly aware that, as several of those in the audience said to me afterward, we’ve needed a regular female voice on the panel since Heather Cherone stepped back earlier this year.

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.

Word watch: Cupboard?

Yes, Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard, but do you? The word came up on a show we were streaming the other day, and I reflected that I never use the word in the context of a kitchen storage area. It feels dated — like “monkeyshines,” “davenport,” “dungarees,” “sneakers,” or “moxie.” But is that just me?

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:

This image may be photoshopped and therefore ineligible to claim victory. I can’t tell. Just in case, I am also giving a tip of the cap to the runner-up:

Short people screwing things up for the rest of us!

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• Our friends have canceled our dinner plans three times in a row. I'm starting to think they really don’t like dinner. — @Tbone7219

• A candle is just a pet fire. — @HeavenlyGrandpa

• Ninety percent of being a parent is pretending to be impressed by shit that’s really not that impressive. — @itssherifield

• I wear a ski mask to bed so if there's a home invasion the intruder will think I'm part of the team. — @ReelQuinn

• Kicking off your underwear and catching it in one hand is as good as it gets. — @justinmatic5000

• Ordered new coats for my kids and for convenience I had them shipped directly to their school’s lost and found section. — @Chhapiness

• “Is Pepsi okay?” Server  slowly leafing through Pepsi’s disturbing drawings. — @davidgrossTV

• "Knock, Knock!""Who's there?""Interrupting cow""Interrupting cow who?"“Moo!”“OK. Thanks. We’ll be in touch” [Interrupting-cow joke audition]. — @MooseAllain

• It's cruel to set a Roomba free. For one, they're raised in captivity and don't have the skills to survive outside. And for two, nature abhors a vacuum. — @theevilwriter

• If we're at a 4-way stop and I wave you through, go. Don't wave me through. It's not a contest to see who is more polite. I already won that by waving you thru first anyway. — @Scottzilla667

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.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Tune of the Week

“Who’s on the Way?” is a peppy old-time song from Hogwire Stringband’s 2011 album “Rascal Fair.”

If I had as many diamonds 
As starfish in the sea
I’d give them all to you my dear 
If you would come with me. 

I’d somehow never heard this earworm until it popped up on Spotify last week, so I wrote Hogwire’s fiddler and vocalist Brad Leftwich to ask about it:

I got the song from a recording of banjo player and singer Dan Tate of Fancy Gap, Virginia. I've always been interested in his music because my grandfather, also a banjo player, was from Fancy Gap. You can hear Tate's rendition on a Field Recorders' Collective release, FRC506. We used two of his verses, borrowed another verse from Abe Horton (another banjo player from Fancy Gap), who sang a similar song called "Cold Frosty Morning" on one of his LPs (Heritage XIX).

Leftwich’s wife and longtime musical partner, Linda Higginbotham, wrote several of the verses. Hogwire also included Joel Lensch on guitar and Marielle Abell on bass. Leftwich, who lives in Bloomington, Indiana, and hails from Stillwater, Oklahoma, played a major role in preserving and advancing traditional string band music, and he and Higginbotham recently retired from touring. I shot this jam-session video at the Indiana Fiddlers‘ Gathering in June, where he and Higginbotham played their final show:

See “Brad Leftwich and Linda Higginbotham, Interview by R.D. Lunceford” in the July 2021 Banjo Newsletter.

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

The Picayune Sentinel is a reader-supported publication. Browse and search back issues here. Simply subscribe to receive new posts each Thursday. To support my work, receive bonus issues on Tuesdays and join the zesty commenting community, become a paid subscriber. Thanks for reading!

.Tickets, which tend to go fast, went on sale Wednesday for Old Town School members and will be available to general the public starting Friday morning. Here is the link.