Merry Christmas from COVID house

Now that the virus has ripped through our family, I'm guessing it will rip through nearly every family

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12-23-2021 (issue No. 15)

COVID-19 recently ran wild in our family. My wife — the most careful of all of us about masking and distancing — was the first to test positive, followed rapidly by our daughter, who had spent Thanksgiving at our house, then me. Our eldest son in New York City just tested positive this week, his second bout with the disease this year.

Two neighbors have it, several friends. All are at least double-vaccinated, none have required hospitalization and their symptoms, while not terribly severe, have varied widely. I had a couple of days of mild cold symptoms followed by a slight but persistent cough. NyQuil and plenty of rest was all the Rx I needed.

I’m now convinced that everyone will get COVID-19. Not literally everyone, of course, but all those who continue to move about in public spaces or have significant close contact with those who do seem destined to contract the virus, particularly now that it has evolved into a remarkably contagious variant. And, as my eldest son’s experience suggests, getting COVID-19 once will not necessarily be protection against breakthrough cases, even for the fully vaccinated.

Moral of our story: Get the damn shot.

Consider this from ABC:

In October, unvaccinated individuals had a 5 times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 and a 14 times greater risk of dying from it, as compared to fully vaccinated individuals, according to data compiled by the CDC. Additionally, unvaccinated individuals had … a 20 times greater risk of dying from it, as compared to fully vaccinated individuals with a booster.

And if you’re of a mind to consider the issue through a partisan lens consider this from NPR:

Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden. …In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth

And this from the crosstabs of a Monmouth University poll of 808 U.S. adults taken this month:

Have you received at least one dose of Covid vaccine?

Yes: Republicans — 54 %; Democrats — 96%

Is it likely you will never get the vaccine if you can avoid it?

Yes: Republicans — 30%; Democrats — 2%

Are you personally very concerned about catching one of the new variants of COVID-19?

Yes — Republicans 5%; Democrats 27%

My sympathies long ago vanished for those who refuse the shots based on ignorance, paranoia, stubbornness, political leanings, selfishness or phony religious excuses and then become dreadfully ill. But I do care about the first responders and other medical personnel who are overburdened and put in peril by the unvaxxed.

And my spirits were lifted Tuesday when President Joe Biden offered “thanks to the prior administration” for its efforts in accelerating development of the COVID-19 vaccines, and the leader of that prior administration, Donald Trump, responded in kind during an evening interview with Fox News:

I'm very appreciative of that — I was surprised to hear it. I think it was a terrific thing, and I think it makes a lot of people happy. I think he did something very good. You know, it has to be a process of healing in this country, and that will help a lot. When we came up with these incredible vaccines — three of them — and therapeutics, we did a tremendous job, and we should never disparage them. We should be really happy about it because we’ve all saved millions and millions of lives all over the world.

And this was after Trump told a crowd Sunday evening that he’d gotten a booster shot.

I’ve long maintained that the way to get MAGA cultists to embrace immunization is to refer frequently to the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson shots as “Trump vaccines,” even though, as Forbes has noted, “There is nothing in the record that warrants (Trump) taking credit for the vaccines. A review of events shows immigrants and immigrant-led companies created the vaccines.”

Trump could save literally thousands of lives if he would champion COVID-19 vaccines and encourage his followers to roll up their sleeves. And if getting him to do that requires stroking his grotesquely swollen ego, I’m OK with it.

I’m not OK, however, with the 13-day delay that Mayor Lori Lightfoot allowed Monday when she announced that proof of vaccination will be required at Chicago bars, restaurants, movie theaters, gyms, sports arenas and other public facilities starting Jan. 3.

Her explanation for the slow implementation — “so businesses have time to update signage and train workers” — is weak sauce.

No need to wait for fancy signage. Put some downloadable PDF files on a city website along with instructions on what sorts of tape to use to affix them to doors, windows and walls. That should take about an hour.

And to train workers, post instructions on the web explaining the simple procedure that employees have been following in New York City many other cities across the country have been following. That should take another hour.

If this is important enough to do, it’s important to do now.

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In today’s issue:

• Now we know more what a cluster event the Jussie Smollett case was in Kim Foxx’s office.

• A call for your predictions for 2022 and a review of predictions offered by readers and me 12 months ago

• The best adjective to describe Mayor Lori Lightfoot

• My new occasional gig with the Daily Herald

• Mary Schmich on Christmas gifts

• Bob Cratchit’s measly wages, adjusted for inflation

• The best tweets of the week and the best of the year’s losingest tweets

• One more great Christmas song

Last week’s winning tweet

@𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖_𝔾𝕚𝕣𝕝 @SundaeDivine

I don’t care what you say, the only difference between Jim Jones and Donald Trump is that Trump woulda charged for the Kool-Aid.

Scroll down to read this week’s nominees or click here to vote in the new poll.

Foxx still doesn’t have a handle on the Smollett scandal

The vast understatement of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s admission that she “didn’t handle (the Smollett case) well” in an October, 2019 interview with Axios came clear in the 59-page report from the Office of the Special Prosecutor released to the public this week.

Special Prosecutor Dan Webb laid out in compelling detail how Foxx lied to the public repeatedly as this weird, sordid story unfolded, needlessly but seemingly reflexively betraying those who had put their trust in her.

And she apparently did so in the service of protecting the still inexplicable decision of two of her underlings — then-First Assistant Joseph Magats, and current First Assistant Risa Lanier — to drop all charges against TV actor Jussie Smollett without so much as an admission of wrongdoing. This was after a grand jury had indicted Smollett for staging a hate crime against himself in early 2019 and then lying to police about it.

Foxx reportedly told Webb during his investigation that she, too, was puzzled by the decision to drop the case. But rather than rebuke and replace Magats and Lanier, as she should have done in the moment, Foxx contrived to rehabilitate their blunder

She haughtily derided those outraged by the outcome as "people who don't understand the intricacies of the justice system."

She scrambled her staff to attempt to bolster the assertion that the handling of Smollett’s case was routine, “not a new or unusual practice.”

During their interviews with the Office of the Special Prosecutor, Mr. Magats and Ms. Lanier both were asked what, if any, similar precedent they had in mind or relied upon when resolving the initial Smollett case. Neither identified any specific precedent on which they had relied.

In a Tribune op-ed at the time, Foxx wrote that “specific aspects of the evidence and testimony ... would have made securing a conviction against Smollett uncertain.” This, too, was “false and misleading,” according to the Special Prosecutor’s report:

In fact, neither Mr. Magats or Ms. Lanier—who both approved the decision to indict Mr. Smollett—identified to the Office of the Special Prosecutor any new evidence they learned of between the time Mr. Smollett was indicted and the dismissal of the indictment which changed their view that the evidence against Mr. Smollett was strong and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office could prove his guilt.

Foxx falsely told the public in numerous media interviews “that she stopped communicating with Jurnee Smollett, Mr. Smollett’s sister, after (she) had become aware that Mr. Smollett had become a subject of the investigation,” according to the report.

Foxx learned by February 8, 2019 that Mr. Smollett had become a suspect in the Chicago Police Department’s investigation, yet she continued communicating with (Jurnee) Smollett through February 13, 2019, including via five text messages and three phone calls.

And then there’s this:

Both Mr. Magats and State’s Attorney Foxx repeatedly stated during interviews with the press on March 26 and 27, 2019, respectively, that the maximum amount of restitution Mr. Smollett could have been ordered to pay if he were convicted after a trial or guilty plea was $10,000. However, this is false.

Although there are certain sections of the disorderly conduct statute that contain a restitution cap, there is no such cap for the provision under which Mr. Smollett was charged. …As a result, if Mr. Smollett had been found guilty and sentenced, Mr. Smollett could have been ordered to pay significantly more than $10,000, such as, perhaps, the $130,106.15 that the CPD claims it expended to investigate Mr. Smollett’s alleged false police report.

Foxx also falsely told the public that she’d not been aware of a legal analysis presented to her by Alan Spellberg, Supervisor of the Criminal Appeals Division, a document informing her that her informal “recusal” from the case — simply stepping back, listening to input and letting her deputies handle it — was improper and that she needed to call for a special prosecutor.

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office issued false statements to the press, which State’s Attorney Foxx helped draft, to cover up the fact that State’s Attorney Foxx was aware of the significant conclusion Mr. Spellberg reached, yet ignored it. …When shown … public statements stating that she had not been aware of Mr. Spellberg’s legal analysis, State’s Attorney Foxx admitted to the Office of the Special Prosecutor that they were “not accurate.”

Michael Bromwich, Foxx’s personal attorney, published a letter in the Tribune on Wednesday that didn’t touch on Foxx’s reported whoppers and instead argued that “a prosecutor has virtually unlimited discretion to decide whom to prosecute, what the charges should be, and how to resolve and dispose of criminal cases. The core of the job is discretion. Charging a prosecutor with abuse of discretion is a non sequitur.”

That’s such shameful, evasive, non-illuminating nonsense I can certainly understand why Foxx didn’t offer it herself. She preferred instead to put forth an anodyne statement saying she “respectfully disagreed” with some of Webb’s conclusions.

Bromwich responded to the mendacity charge in an interview Tuesday with Paris Schutz of WTTW-Ch. 11:

It’s disappointing that Mr. Webb’s team suggested that every erroneous statement, every incorrect statement, every inaccurate statement is false and misleading. Language matters here. And by characterizing it as false and misleading it suggests that the misstatements were intentional. That they were not the results of failed recollection or bad information that was passed to Ms. Foxx.

Which poses the question: What’s worse, a top prosecutor who forgets details and relies on bad information in dealing with the most high-profile case in her career? Or one who has great difficulty telling the truth?

Foxx didn’t just mishandle this case, she piled blunder upon deception upon contradiction. She trusted Magats and Lanier — who to this day can’t get their stories straight about which of them did what in this disquieting cluster event — and then set fire to her reputation in a flailing effort to vindicate them. She took a bad story and made it worse, and now, in the wake of Smollett’s conviction and this damning report, all she can do is issue vague, platitudinous statements that evade the central accusations.

If Foxx wants to earn back the trust of the public she betrayed with her blundering lies, she’s got to stop dissembling and start confessing.

News & Views

News: Embattled Thompson Center Lands Buyer With Plans For Overhaul, Reuse

View: Yeah, good luck with that. I’m sorry, but as visually arresting as the former State of Illinois Center is, the structure is inefficient in almost every way — heating and cooling that vast atrium is an environmental nightmare. Preservationists wax poetic about how the open design symbolizes the ideal of transparency in government, but all the problems the building has had in its nearly four decades with noise, heat and maintenance failures actually symbolize government ineptitude, vanity and fatuity.

Built in 1985 for $172 million — $431 million in today’s dollars — the Thompson Center was on the block for an estimated $300 million several years ago under then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, up just a tick from the 2003 estimate of $292 million in 2021 dollars when then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich proposed selling it. The price now? Set at $70 million.

The Prime Group, under Chairman and CEO Michael Reschke, said it will invest $280 million in renovations:

The plans call for redoing the exterior with a new curtain wall with floor-to-ceiling energy efficient windows. There will also be several levels with outdoor terraces. ...The centerpiece will be the new atrium, which the developer likens to the Gardens of Babylon.

"It'll be the jewel of the building and hopefully … the place where tourists to the city of Chicago want to come and have a photo," Reschke said. (ABC-7)

I hope I’m wrong that he appears to be throwing good money after bad.

News: State Sen. Kimberly Lightford carjacked in suburban Broadview

View: The details here, as in most carjackings, seem horrifying and traumatic.

It happened at 9:45 p.m. Tuesday. Three masked individuals commandeered Lightford’s car and fired shots at her husband. The shots missed and the car was later recovered, but it’s still an awful event.

I’m hoping Lightford will use her status as the second highest-ranking member of the state Senate to join Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and other public officials to promote technical solutions to a pervasive crime that has occurred a record more than 2,000 times in the county this year.

Earlier this month, Dart sent a letter to major automakers:

A potential solution is for each manufacturer or brand to establish a dedicated 24/7 hotline to seek (tracking) assistance from our law enforcement partners. It would be accessible to customers and law enforcement, which would – at no expense to the victim – immediately and diligently activate the tracking capabilities and communicate with responding law enforcement until securely recovered.

In the longer term, we hope that every car sold will have the capability to be tracked and safely disabled in real time on a platform accessible to your customer or your company if the victim is unable to assist.

We also encourage you, based on our experience, to continue to develop internal monitors and safeguards that could assist in identifying perpetrators and would defeat criminal efforts to disable telemetry and clone radio frequency devices like key fobs.

Does tracking sound too Orwellian for your tastes? Well, permit owners to disable the feature if they choose. But the only way to put a stop to carjacking will be to allow speedy remote disabling of stolen and carjacked vehicles as soon as they come to a stop or perhaps even slow to a certain speed. Inert cars are worthless to evildoers.

Similar remote disabling for stolen phones could also vastly diminish those thefts (which are often part of carjackings).

Lightford is in a position to join forces with Dart and others to make some real noise on this issue. We’ll be listening.

It’s time again to predict the news of the year ahead

Creative Commons

I’ve extended the year-end tradition of my former column in the Chicago Tribune and am asking readers to join me in attempting to predict the news of the next 12 months. The point, as always, is not to be right, but to ponder for a moment all the known unknowns that lie ahead.

Patrons helped me develop this year’s multiple choice prediction survey, and I’ll reveal the results along with my own guesses next Thursday.

Questions on the 2022 survey include:

Will Jussie Smollett go to prison for lying to police about staging a hate crime against himself?

Who will be the Republican nominee for governor of Illinois?

Who will formally enter the 2023 race for Chicago mayor?

Will the U.S. death toll in the COVID-19 pandemic exceed 1.5 million?

Will the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade?

Will the Chicago Sky repeat as WNBA champs?

Meanwhile, let’s take a look back at how we did predicting 2021.

Readers and I correctly agreed on the following predictions:

• President Donald Trump will not attend the inaugural ceremony for his successor, Joe Biden.

• In his first 100 days, President Joe Biden will re-enter the Paris climate agreement.

• In his first 100 days, Biden will end the national emergency declaration that allows the diversion of federal defense money to build the U.S. and Mexico border wall.

• In his first 100 days, Biden will reach his stated goal of overseeing 100 million COVID-19 vaccinations.

• The U.S. Supreme Court will not overturn the Affordable Care Act.

• Neither Trump's children nor Hunter Biden will be indicted.

• Gov. J.B. Pritzker will be running for reelection by the end of the year.

• Not declaring their candidacy for governor will be State. Sen. Jim Oberweis of Sugar Grove, Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin.

• State Rep. Michael Madigan will not be reelected as speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives.

• R&B singer R. Kelly will be convicted or will plead guilty to the charges facing him.

• Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, will still be awaiting trial.

• Jussie Smollett will be convicted of or plead guilty to charges related to staging a hate crime against himself.

• The Tiger Woods-designed championship golf course on the south lakefront will remain just a fantasy.

• The University of Alabama will win the college football championship.

• The White Sox will make the postseason.

And together we were wrong on these guesses:

• Trump will announce his candidacy for president on or before Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day.

• Biden will re-enter the Iran nuclear deal.

• The COVID-19 death toll in the United States will not exceed 700,000. (It’s now at more than 800,000.)

• Entrepreneurial gadfly Willie Wilson will announce a run for governor.

• Kyle Rittenhouse will still be awaiting trial at year's end.

• The Georgia U.S. Senate runoff elections Jan. 5, 2021, will result in a split verdict or a Republican sweep. (Democrats won both.)

• The number of homicides in Chicago will be roughly what it was in 2020. (It’s higher.)

• Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani will be indicted.

• The Kansas City Chiefs will win the Super Bowl. (It was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.)

So together we got 15 right and 9 wrong.

I was right and readers were wrong when I predicted:

•  Trump will not pardon himself and at least one of his children before leaving office.

•  Trump will not be indicted at either the state or federal level.

•  The national unemployment rate in December 2022 will be lower than 5%.

• Illinois lawmakers will not hike the state income tax rate.

•  Republican State Rep. Darren Bailey of Xenia will announce a run for governor.

• The Bears will make the NFL playoffs in 2020.

But readers were right and I was wrong when they predicted:

• At the end of 2021, a majority of Republican voters will still be telling pollsters they believe the presidential election was stolen from Trump.

• David Brown will remain as superintendent of the Chicago Police Department.

• Construction will begin on the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park.

• Trump's Justice Department will not appoint special counsels to investigate election fraud and Hunter Biden on its way out the door.

• Trump will not hold an inauguration ceremony for his imaginary second term.

• New President Joe Biden will not award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Col. Alexander Vindman.

• U.S. attorneys will not indict Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

• Former state Rep. Jeanne Ives of Wheaton and Illinois U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger will not announce bids for the Republican nomination for governor.

• Construction will not begin on a Chicago casino.

Bottom line, readers beat me by three, 24 correct predictions to 21. I predict I will turn things around in 2022!

Oh snap! Neil Steinberg finds the perfect adjective for Mayor Lightfoot

In his Friday Sun-Times column, Neil Steinberg referred to Mayor Lori Lightfoot as “snappish.”

Among the synonyms for “snappish” offered by Merriam-Webster: Choleric, crotchety, irascible, irritable, peevish, prickly and testy. All of which might perhaps describe you, too, if you had the problems on your plate that Lightfoot does.

I’m not ready to write off her chances for reelection in 2023. Incumbency is a significant advantage, and the last sitting mayor of Chicago to be defeated was Eugene Sawyer back in 1989. But she has underwhelmed and disappointed many of us who supported her in 2019.

Robert Feder @RobertFeder

No one can write like @NeilSteinberg. No one.

Neil Steinberg @NeilSteinberg

Leggo my (union-made) Eggo. https://t.co/RfgRii8wKq https://t.co/zvINdEF4FT

Feder, a veteran local media columnist, is absolutely right. Steinberg is a brilliant stylist and indefatigable reporter with an insatiable curiosity. If you haven’t bookmarked his blog, now is the time to correct that grave error in judgment.

Land of Linkin’

• Jorts the ginger cat sparks debate about ‘perpetuating ethnic stereotypes’

• Yes, you do want to spend four minutes watching the extended cut of Chevrolet’s Christmas commercial. And no, you have something in your eye.

• America Is Not Ready For Omicron. Ed Yong of The Atlantic has been stellar on coronavirus all along — clear, informative, sobering. This latest article is no exception.

• Merry Christmas, Doctor is a classic Mike Nichols/Elaine May bit in which May plays a hypersensitive psychoanalyst who reacts poorly when her patient cancels a session scheduled for Christmas Eve.

• A supercut of Stephen Colbert’s nicknames for Donald Trump.

• The concert length video of Songs of Good Cheer is available for rental streaming here. Below is one of the promo videos:

  A promo clip of a portion of “Gonna Sing” is here. And the clip that includes our rousing take on “Auld Lang Syne” is here.

Heralding my new media partnership

I’ve read the Arlington Heights-based Herald since 1985 when the Tribune editors transferred/exiled me to the suburbs and I began immersing myself in the papers that covered that region to try to get a feel for what was for me foreign territory.

It was immediately obvious to me that the Herald’s journalism was first-rate, a fact underscored by how many Herald reporters and editors ended up at the Tribune and Sun-Times doing terrific work. I won’t start naming them because I’ll forget some and that wouldn’t be fair, but the list is long. Yet I will make special note of Herald columnist Burt Constable, with whom I was in direct competition when I was writing “Hometowns,” my suburban column that began in 1986. I was a fan before we became friends, and it’s a thrill now to be colleagues, of a sort.

To be clear, though, this is not a “new job,” as some have written in congratulatory notes. It’s an occasional freelance gig. Note the line in Lampinen’s letter, “Zorn’s work will be appearing sporadically …”

That means that if and when Herald editors spot something in the Picayune Sentinel that they think might be of interest to their audience, they’ll use it as they would an op-ed submission. I’m grateful for the opportunity to find new readers and hope a few Herald readers will sign on to get regular delivery of the PS.

Readers weigh in with their best purchases of 2021

Last week I waxed enthusiastic about my new, hands-free shoes but conceded that my best purchase of 2021 was a Honda CRV hybrid, the best car we’ve ever owned.

I asked readers for their best purchases of the year and here is a partial list:

• A propane fire-pit table

• An Aeron chair for a home office

• Darn Tough wool socks

• A Bosch dishwasher

• RubberMaid glass containers with the latches that, when closed, make the container airtight, and, when open, allow venting -- perfect for soup in the microwave!

• A new roof

• A new deck

• A Toyota Prius

• A Tesla Model 3 with a range of 350 miles

• An electric Mini Cooper with a range of about 100 miles

Several respondents mentioned family vacations, which, yes. I was thinking more of consumer goods and gadgets. But the two weeks my wife and I spent in Savannah last winter to get out of the cold was worth every penny.

Here’s a harder question: What was your worst purchase of 2021 — that thing you bought or otherwise spent money on that now seems the most regrettable? The thing you are now warning others not to buy?

Mary Schmich on giving, getting, expecting and demanding

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts column-like thoughts most Tuesdays on Facebook. Here is this week’s offering:

Back in 2018, I was asked to write an essay to accompany the Tribune’s annual holiday gift guide. I was honored to be asked, but I had to be honest: I was not a good pitch person when it came to convincing people to buy stuff for the holidays.

I said I had some thoughts on holiday gifts but they were a little cranky. I was told I should just write what felt true, and so I did. That column is below, and for those who don’t want to read that much, my conclusion was this:

• Give without expectation or demand.

• Receive with grace, whatever the gift is or isn’t.

• Remember that bigger isn’t necessarily better, and that less may be best.

Schmich family photo

Here’s the full column, about the year I was recruited to help my parents play Santa Claus, which was several years after my encounter with Santa Claus in the photo above —

On Christmas Eve when I was in fifth grade, with the clock creeping toward midnight, my father told my mother that he was heading out to buy some gifts.

It hadn’t been a festive holiday season in our household. My father was out of work and we were living in a rundown rental house where more than once the water and electricity were cut off because we hadn’t paid the bills. My parents argued a lot about money.

Technically, I suppose, it wasn’t argument. My father vented and my mother listened. Whatever that’s called, the tension over money was a constant nervous hum in the house, like the hiss of a high-voltage wire.

The coming of Christmas made it worse.

At 8 p.m. on that Christmas Eve, Santa, meaning my parents, had no gifts ready. Earlier that day, after an argument, my dad had gone out for a while, and when he came home — I deduced from eavesdropping — he had scored some money from who knows where. With Santa’s deadline zooming in, he announced he was setting off for some last-minute shopping…

I’m wary of using too much Tribune copyrighted material here, so I’m directing you to read the rest of this wonderful tale here or at Mary’s Facebook page here.

Meanwhile, Mary has saved my Christmas, circa 1965. You will understand why from this recent photo if you read last week’s Sentinel or attended Songs of Good Cheer this year:

Minced Words

This week’s panel: Brandon Pope, Eric Zorn and guest host Jon Hansen

Topics discussed on this week’s episode of The Mincing Rascals podcast include why I think Brandon Pope has been avoiding me, our confessions to ancient academic misdeeds, the misplaced priorities of the absent Austin Berg and the usual raft of news items. Due to technical difficulties the show will post sometime Thursday morning. Watch your podcast feed or keep refreshing this page.

Re: Tweets

Earlier this week I asked PS members to participate in a second-chance poll pitting the 10 tweets that did the worst in the weekly polls against one another.

The winner among the losers was: “I bet there was a draft of ‘Green Eggs & Ham’ where Sam got his ass kicked on like page 3” by @mack44_d. The loser among the losers was a tweet that I still happen to like very much for its strange darkness, a @Cpin42 tweet that reads, “Horses will eat almost anything. Pizza, broccoli, peppermints. You know what they don’t like? The terrifying prison of consciousness.”

Anyway, here are this week’s nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• I would love to have been privy to the conversation that took place between the fourth and fifth days of Christmas. — @DogGoing

• The CDC changed their name to the Department of Natural Selection and now encourages everyone to just do whatever they think is best. — @SladeWentworth

• Santa: He works one day a year and spends the rest of it judging you. — @pdxjohnny99

• Yes, I'm vaccinated, but not "go to your thing" vaccinated. — @bautanist

• Christmas inflatables are like college kids, full of life at night and face down on the lawn in the morning. — @Stap_Jr

• Just once I want to meet a baby named Ebenezer. — @English_Channel

• Biden is doing his best, okay? You try being almost 80 and running a country full of jackasses. — @dumbbeezie

•  Yankee Candle should come out with a scent called "I have absolutely no clue what to get you for Christmas." — @Social_Mime

• Christmas is just a plot by big everything to sell you everything. — @wildethingy

• Being "the most famous reindeer of all" isn't all that impressive, to be honest. — @skullmandible

Click here to vote in the poll. For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Yes, in fact, Scrooge was a cheapskate

In your travels online you may see a claim that Ebenezer Scrooge, the supposedly flinty main character in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” was actually fairly generous because he paid his clerk Bob Cratchit 15 shillings a week, according to the text, and this rate of pay, adjusted for inflation, is higher than the minimum wage in the U.S.

But no. The story is set in the 1840s. There were 20 shillings to a pound, so Cratchit took home £39 a year, which would be worth £5,204 in 2021 according to this online inflation calculator. That’s $6,934 in today’s terms or about $3.50 an hour.

Today’s Tune

Indulge me for one more song of the season. “On this Christmas Day” is another somewhat contemporary carol that sounds old and has been a hit at “Songs of Good Cheer” several times. Here it is performed by band member Fred Campeau in 1999:

Snow falls round the manger

Love melts it away

Greet the host of angels

On this Christmas Day

Folksinger Joe Newberry wrote it. His exquisite version with April Verch is on a new album. Listen to it here.

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