Perishing the thought

Time magazine's interview with Donald Trump, headlined "If He Wins," reveals Trump's frightening plans for another term in the White House

5-2-2024 (issue No. 139)

This week:

• Last week’s winning tweet

• Donald Trump drops the mask in an ominous interview with Time

• Professor Steven Thrasher, the shame of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism

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

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

• Hair-shaming body-shamer Dan Proft

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

• Quotables

• Re:Tweets — The winning visual tweet — it’s doggone good this week! — and the new crop of contest finalists

• Good Sports — On moving the Super Bowl and a look at how the White Sox currently stack up against the worst teams of the last 124 years

• Tune of the Week — Reader Ted Burkhardt nominates “Ghost” by the local duo Finom

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.

Last week’s winning tweet

They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian. Well, they’re not laughing now. — @Ruth_A_Buzzi

Ruth Buzzi, now 87 and retired, is best remembered by those of us of a certain age as one of the stars of “Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In” on NBC from 1968 to 1973. This Twitter account appears genuine.

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

Can we drop the ‘pro-Palestine’ and ‘pro-Israel’ labels and agree on ‘pro peace’?

Host John Williams kicked off this week’s episode of the “The Mincing Rascals” podcast on WGN+ by asking those of us on the panel how the media should label the protesters on dozens of college campuses this week. What are they for, what are they against?

I’ve listened to a lot of interviews with demonstrators, seen their signs, listened to their chants and watched their skirmishes with police, and there doesn’t seem to be one answer. Some consider the Israeli Jews to be colonialists who should return the land to those who were living there before 1948 and go live somewhere else; others appear to side with Hamas and exhibit an indifference to Jewish life; still others simply want the grotesque slaughter in Gaza to end, and for United States lawmakers and business leaders to do much more to bring about an end to the killing.

And there are also counter-demonstrators fiercely defending Israel’s right to exist and to take retaliatory and defensive measure sufficient to eradicate the existential threat from Hamas.

But most of these demonstrators have the same long-term goal: Peace. They want the hostages and political prisoners returned, they want another cease fire like the one that Hamas violated with its bloody incursion in Israel on Oct. 7, and they want to see the warring factions set aside their mutual and understandable long-term grievances and come to some kind of lasting accord.

Those with more realistic expectations — the Jews aren’t going to leave Israel, folks — should seize the narrative of these protests and exclude from their ranks the extremists who exhibit indifference to the suffering and death of innocents in the name of revenge.

Trump drops the mask in an ominous interview with Time

This is the most chilling of many chilling passages in Time’s current cover story, “How Far Trump Would Go.”

What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.

To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland.

He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans.

He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers.

He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding.

He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury.

He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense.

He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.

There’s more: In the interview, Trump floated the idea of a 100% tariff on Chinese goods.

If South Korea doesn’t pay more to support U.S. troops there to deter Kim Jong Un’s increasingly belligerent regime to the north, Trump suggests the U.S. could withdraw its forces. …

I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles? Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. “I think a lot of people like it.”

I think Trump’s right. I think millions of his supporters are nodding eagerly at the ideas he puts forth in the interview. Migrant detention camps and mass deportations? Condoning the punishment of women who obtain abortions? Using the U.S. Department of Justice to go after Trump’s political enemies? Pardoning all the Jan. 6 rioters, even those who violently attacked law enforcement officers? Making U.S. foreign policy wholly transactional? Sign them up!

So normalized are Trump’s frighteningly deranged pronouncements that the Tribune put a story about the interview on the bottom of page 20 Wednesday and the Sun-Times didn’t even mention it in print.

The full transcript of the interviews is lengthy, but a good reference for exploring and understanding Trump’s political depravity.

Thrashing Thrasher

Thank to the Tribune Editorial Board for this passage from Wednesday’s editorial about the agreement that Northwestern University struck with pro-Palestinian protesters to bring to close the encampment at the school:

A good example (of the need for faculty accountability) is the outrageous conduct of Steven Thrasher, professor at the Medill School of Journalism. Thrasher has acted more as an ardent activist than a professor in the five years he’s worked at Northwestern. He appeared to treat the Deering Meadow encampment as a crowning moment, giving a speech over the weekend to students there in which he stated, among other things, “To the Medill students and journalists within earshot, I say to you: Our work is not about objectivity. … Our work is about you putting your brilliant minds to work, and opening your compassionate hearts, and linking your arms together understanding all of our fates are connected.”

Those are rousing words — for an activist. They are inappropriate for a professor at one of the nation’s foremost journalism schools. If the Medill School cares for its reputation — and it well knows how many alumni work as journalists here in Chicago — it will instruct Thrasher to find a job more suited to his interests. We have too many reporters in this city and elsewhere behaving essentially as activists rather than pursuing the facts wherever they lead, which represents this profession at its finest. Professors encouraging — indeed embodying — that former approach do a disservice to journalism.

Thrasher’s presence on the faculty of a school of journalism is a disgrace and an affront to the ideals of a profession ideally rooted in facts and truth. And making a straw man of “objectivity” betrays a misunderstanding of the mission.

Journalists are human and bring their judgments and experiences to bear on their reporting. Good journalism often directly or indirectly makes a case for a particular point of view and argues — implicitly or explicitly — for certain actions to be taken. But good journalists also strive to be fair, to consider various points of view and ask sometimes difficult questions.

In 2021, I wrote a column for the Tribune about the police slaying of 13-year-old Adam Toledo saying that, before bodycam video was released and more evidence was available, it was still too soon to conclude, as activists had, that a racist officer had murdered an innocent child of color.

Though I later conceded that the tone of that column was too chilly and analytical given the inherent tragedy of a dead child, time has so far been kind to the overall assessment — progressive prosecutor Kim Foxx declined to press charges against the officer for what appears to have been a ghastly, split-second mistake, and his case before the police disciplinary board is still pending.

Journalism demands challenging conventional wisdom, not reflexively amplifying that which comports with a certain viewpoint.

Thrasher, though, tweeted at the time that he was canceling his subscription to the Tribune over the column because “there is no space in a newspaper for arguing for the murder of a child, and that it’s ‘never too early’ to think they are worthy of murder.”

Of course that’s not what I argued. So a month later, after the hubbub surrounding that column had died down, I wrote to Thrasher to ask if he’d be interested in “a more nuanced exchange by email” about his accusation and the proper role of columnists in such situations.

I wrote that “one of the jobs of a journalist is to question and challenge emerging narratives and conventional wisdom, to be clear about what we know for sure and what we suspect.”

Here is his response in full:

“Your words make the murder of children more likely, and I have no interest in you, your unethical nature, your cynical worldview, or in communicating with you.”

As the Tribune editorial notes, Thrasher is in the wrong line of work. And so, evidently, are the people at Medill who hired him.

My November, 2021 speech, “The Perils of Public Discourse,” covers much of the fallout from my first Adam Toledo column.

Land of Linkin’

• Field of Schemes “is the companion website to (the book) “Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit,” by Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause. In this post, the authors say Mayor Brandon Johnson’s “no new taxes” promise about the construction of a new stadium for the Bears on the lakefront is “utter BS” and the idea that it will pay for itself is “extremely unrealistic.” In sum, say the authors, the Bears plan is “bonkers no matter how you slice it.”

• No, Daniel Burnham did not say the Chicago lakefront should be “forever open, clear and free.” But I told you in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus who did coin that expression . I also excerpted Ben Joravsky’s spot-on rant regarding paying for sports facilities with hotel taxes.

• Steve Chapman’s latest for the Tribune: “Trump’s claim to presidential immunity prompts a Republican about-face.” “The Republican Party and its allies once upheld the principle that presidents should be accountable under the laws of the land. But now their philosophy about principles resembles Kristi Noem’s  philosophy about dogs: Don’t get too attached, and kill them off when they give you trouble.”

• Mr. Rogers auto-tuned is a delight. Here is “Garden of Your Mind” and below is “Sing Together.”

"A Banjo that I Used to Own" is a parody of Gotye’s 2011 hit "Somebody that I Used to Know." “You didn’t have to smash it up! You took a hammer and you broke it into little pieces.”

In an interview with WLS-AM 890’s Bill Cameron, Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates once again exhibited indifference to the concerns of city taxpayers about where the money will come from to realize her aspirations.

Read Marj Halperin’s Tribune op-ed, “With Bears, Chicago doesn’t seem to have secured a fair deal for taxpayers,” “Bears stadium costs? Add another $1.2 billion” in the Sun-Times and “True public cost of Bears stadium will be billions more over time” in the Tribune, and you’ll better understand why Gov. JB Pritzker Wednesday deemed the Bears’ plans for a new stadium on the lakefront “a non-starter.”

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:

■ Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey on Mayor Johnson’s tumescence for a new Bears stadium at the shore: “Chicago’s crown jewel is its lakefront. And you’re helping to tarnish it.”

■ Johnson’s pitch sent Chicago historian Cate Plys back to an eerily apt Mike Royko column from almost exactly 52 years ago.

■ A lawyer for Donald Trump straight-facedly told the Supreme Court that U.S. presidents should be able to order political rivals’ murders without fear of prosecution.

■ Columnist Rick Perlstein at The American Prospect: “The question of how many electoral votes each candidate gets on Nov. 5 might pale next to how many people are willing to take up arms should Trump lose.”

■ The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo: Trump’s considering Sen. Marco Rubio as his running mate, but that would put the campaign in a constitutional bind.

■ Mary Trump lists (maybe) all the reasons she’s tired of her uncle.

■ “It’s a shame college administrators are so god-awful stupid”: The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg says “the smart thing to do would be to cough into their fists and leave the protesters alone.”

■ The author of a book about the “campus wars” of the ’60s and ’70s warns that “college administrators are falling into a tried-and-true trap laid by the right.”

■ The Bulwark flashes back to 1968: “History doesn’t repeat itself, and all that—but this is a bit on the nose.”

■ A Northwestern professor says not so much.

■ Forbes: Employers are souring on Ivy League grads and instead leaning into hiring alumni of the “New Ivies,” including the University of Illinois and Northwestern.

■ Need a hospital? Illinois’ are down two notches—to 30th—in the nonprofit Leapfrog Group’s national rankings for safety. You can find your hospital’s grades here.

■ The Active Transportation Alliance’s executive director: Lower Chicago’s default speed limit of 30 miles per hour.

■ The Pulitzer-worthy humor site The Onion has been sold under a deal that will keep the “entire staff intact and in Chicago,”—and the new parent company takes its name from a long-running Onion gag.

■ Following Stephen Colbert’s lead, Jon Stewart and company will bring “The Daily Show” to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention in August. As with Colbert, tickets will be available—probably, eventually—here.

■ Seinfeld alumnus Jason (“George Costanza”) Alexander explains what brought him to Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

■ Critic Richard Roeper gives 3 1/2 stars to David Letterman’s new Netflix special—filmed mostly in Chicago—with comedian John Mulaney, returning for the first time to his alma mater, St. Ignatius College Prep.

■ Ready to cut loose? Cord Cutter Weekly’s ever-helpful Jared Newman has just published The Complete Guide to Cord Cutting—including tips like how to choose a streaming device and how to shop for home internet, and it’s available in convenient online form for, well, whatever you think it’s worth—as little as $1.

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

Mulling over how to refer to Dan Proft’s hairstyle

Normally I don’t make negative comments about the appearance of newsmakers, even their regrettable fashion choices. But since conservative political operative and morning local talk radio host Dan Proft frequently and publicly mocks Gov. J. B. Pritzker for being overweight, I thought I’d ask my Facebook friends to describe Proft’s coif as seen in this portion of a Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams. The photo accompanied a story about allegations that Proft’s PAC, People Who Play By The Rules, did not play by the rules when Proft, 52, illegally coordinated with 2022 Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey.

Here are some of the suggestions:

• Gregg Fraley — Old-man Mullet

• Liz Zoller Cohen — Lego Snap-on Hair

• Julie MacCarthy — Republican Hipster Wannabe

• Emily Kelley — Medieval pageboy

• Allison B. Clark — Hipster Jesus

• Jerry Caldwell — Steve Bannon Oil Slick

• Kevin Sullivan — Middle-aged Jam Band

• Chuck Sudo — Retired LBJ

Sudo’s comment included this photo of Lyndon Johnson taken after he left the White House:

Proft, who now lives in Florida but still busies himself meddling — mostly unsuccessfully — in Illinois politics, is the winner of the 2024 Mulletzer Prize.

Minced Words

Host John Williams welcomed Cate Plys, Marj Halperin and me to “The Mincing Rascals” podcast panel for Wednesday afternoon’s recording. We spoke about the campus protests, touched on the Bears’ stadium proposal and moved along to discuss Mayor Brandon Johnson’s PR stumble regarding the funeral of slain Chicago police Officer Luis Huesca, insurance coverage for weight loss drugs and the widespread revulsion at South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s pride at having shot and killed her own dog because it had an “aggressive personality” and she’d deemed it “untrainable” and “less than worthless.”

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.

Quotables

My wife sometimes suggests I’m a good person for coping with (my father’s slide into dementia), the constant logistics. I always disagree, replying, “You mean there’s a choice?” I don’t see a choice. They brought me into this world, It’s only fair to help them on their slow journey out of it. — Neil Steinberg

To the people who think Kristi Noem’s career is over because she murdered a dog, welcome back from your 8+ year coma. There’s a lot to catch you up on. — Tim Hanan

Wild how much fake news National Enquirer publisher David Pecker created for the guy who’s always screaming about “fake news.” — unknown

I increasingly believe this election will be a referendum on whether anything matters anymore. There's no rational case for Trump, but there's a loud contingent on the left that just wants to burn it down. Combine that with low information voters and Republicans circling the wagons around their guy, and you have the outlines of a calamity. — Aaron Rupar

Turns out that murdering puppies is not popular. There’s a reason Charles Schulz never released “You Shot Snoopy In A Gravel Pit, Charlie Brown.” — Rick Aaron

A reelected Trump’s … priority will be to sell out Ukraine and bust up NATO. Eighty years of U.S.-led alliance structure will collapse, and the whole system of world peace and security will unravel—with who knows what consequences. — David Frum

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:

I didn’t discover this one until too late for the contest, but I like it even better:

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• Do the cops storming colleges not realize that this will only lead to more folk music? — @jessecase

• Be thankful. Before the Internet you might have gone your entire life and not seen a single amusing picture of a cat. — @wildethingy

• Hell is just a grocery store full of people you know. — @NotTodayEric

• Dear Old People: Waking up at 6 a.m., tending to a garden, eating dinner at 5 p.m., reading books and going to bed at 9:30 p.m. feels amazing. I was wrong You were right. — @kilprity

• I lose my self-control around cookies. Last week I had a package of Oreos in the cupboard, and I killed a guy. — @aotakeo

• Jesus take the wheel. My smartwatch is telling me it’s time to stand up. — @PleaseBeGneiss

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

•  As wedding season kicks off, please remember this truth: Nobody in history has ever said "I wish that wedding ceremony was longer." — @KrangTNelson

• After listening to 10 true crime podcasts you start to think you could probably solve a murder. After 100 you start to think you could probably get away with one. — @MartinPilgrim1

• You're not going to believe this, but I was doing really well, and then your email found me. — @GraniteDhuine

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

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

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Good Sports

Move the Super Bowl back a week? Why not just move it back one day?

NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell said last Friday that he’s considering moving the Super Bowl to the day before President’s Day, which falls on the third Monday of February, so that many of those who attend or host Super Bowl parties can have the following day off to recover. The game is currently played on the second Sunday in February.

Why not just move the game to the second Saturday in February? "

Just from an audience standpoint, the audiences on Sunday night are so much larger," Goodell said when asked about this possibility in a 2018 interview. "Fans want to have the best opportunity to be able to see the game and we want to give that to them, so Sunday night is a better night." 

Average TV ratings, yeah, I’m sure. But the Super Bowl is an event unto itself and would supersede — ahem — other plans and dramatically change viewing habits.

The No-No Sox

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

After 31 games:

YEAR TEAM RECORD   GB 
1916     A’s             13-18         --
1962     Mets          12-19         1
2003      Tigers        6-25          7
2024     White Sox   6-25         7

The A’s finished with a winning percentage of .235. The Mets finished with a winning percentage of .250. The Tigers finished with a winning percentage of .265. The Sox now stand at .194.

Tune of the Week

I’ve been opening up Tune of the Week nominations in an effort to bring some newer sounds to the mix. I’ve asked readers to use the comments area for paid subscribers to leave nominations (post-2000 releases, please!) along with YouTube links and at least a few sentences explaining why the nominated song is meaningful or delightful to you. The following nomination is from Ted Burkhardt.

We’re lucky to have Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart in our city. As solo artists, the multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriters collaborate and perform a wide variety of musical styles. Together, as Finom, they’re one of the best acts in recent years. Their NPR Tiny Desk Concert drew rave reviews

Many of their songs are “weirdly cool” and beautifully push boundaries. “Ghost,” my nomination, is a bit more straightforward, yet a superb blend of infectious grooves. An upbeat, danceable song created to get through the dark times of 2020. Sometimes you’re ready to move on from someone or a set of circumstances, and “fantasize their ghost.” If Marvin K Mooney had a theme song, this could be it.

I'm counting the days, acquiring the taste
I'm sick of looking at the silly grin on your face

Zorn addendum:

I've known Sima Cunningham since she was a little kid, growing up around the corner from us. In 2006, I wrote this in a column:

Put the name Sima Cunningham on your to-watch list. She’s 16, a junior at Whitney Young High School and a formidable, ambitious singer-songwriter.

We took the kids to see her and her newly renamed band, The Audians, last weekend at Metro. Now, yes, Sima is a neighbor of ours, so perhaps I can’t listen to her music with clear ears. But … the kid has some seriously good chops.

The music business and the life itself are too weird to predict that anyone that young is going to be a rock star, and my musical tastes … well, let’s all remember it wasn’t long ago that I devoted an entire column to defending the song “Kumbaya.” Still. Be sure to remember me as the writer who first told you about Sima Cunningham.

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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