PING Power! Can this acronym catch on?

& a happy blogaversary to Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg

6-29-2023 (issue No. 94)

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.

This week

• Last week’s winning tweet

• Abolition of the death penalty depends on life without parole

• News & Views

• In which I advance the acronym “PING.”

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

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

• Neil Steinberg on his 10 years in the blogosphere

• Florida man gives middle finger to minor league baseball players

• The cereal prices are too damn high!

• “The Mincing Rascals” preview

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

• Tune of the Week — Nominated by local author Barbara Mahany

  Mary Schmich is off this week but will be back!

Last week’s winning tweet

You don’t see faith healers working in hospitals for the same reason you don’t see psychics winning lotteries.

I am unable to establish an original source for this oft-stolen quip.

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

A proposal in Springfield threatens to fray the ‘if only’ thread upon which abolition of the death penalty hangs

Capital punishment isn’t a particularly lively issue in Illinois anymore — it’s been more than 12 years since then-Gov. Pat Quinn signed the bill abolishing it, and there’s been no serious effort to reinstate it.

But one of the reassurances that those of us who favored abolition made to those who still supported the practice was that a life-without-parole would always mean just that. In 2007, I wrote confidently, “No one -- I repeat, no one -- given a life sentence in our state courts in the last 29 years has been released on parole. There isn't even a legal mechanism for that to occur” in Illinois.

Now it’s been 45 years.

I noted a Tribune opinion survey that found support for the death penalty in our state dropped from 58 percent to 43 percent when respondents were presented with the option of a guaranteed natural-life sentence.

I called that 15% difference the "if only" gap, as in "I'd be against the death penalty if only I could be sure that a life sentence was truly a life sentence." And I found it in numerous other polls, with one gap as high as 20%.

In polls taken since then, majorities of Americans tend to support capital punishment when faced with a yes/no option. But when “life/no parole” is an option, that support tends to become a minority view.

So I’m of a mixed mind about news in Tribune Statehouse reporter Jeremy Gorner’s story, "Should people in prison serving life for crimes committed when they were under 21 get another chance? Some Illinois legislators say yes."

The measure would make sentencing reforms that have been passed in recent years retroactive for nearly everyone in prison who was convicted of serious crimes committed when they were teens or young adults. Instituting the reforms would make them eligible for parole at some point, giving House and others in similar situations a chance at being freed. …

A separate bill that has been signed into law abolish(ed) most natural life sentences for those convicted of committing crimes under 21. That law affects only those in prison sentenced on or after June 1, 2019.

But opponents argue making the measure fully retroactive would reopen old wounds for victims and their families who fought hard to seek justice. …

Such efforts are not new. In 2016, former Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie introduced legislation that would have allowed defendants given natural life sentences for crimes committed when they were under 25 to file petitions for possible resentencing. The measure, which would have been applied retroactively, went nowhere.

Gorner notes that the bill did not advance in the General Assembly this spring, but “its backers aren’t giving up.”

No-hope sentences for those under 21 whose brains weren’t fully developed yet do seem awfully harsh — and they’re now illegal — but I do worry that unless political marketing for such an initiative is handled well, introducing the possibility of parole for young people who commit heinous crimes will ignite a movement to reinstate the death penalty.

News & Views

News: A subsidiary of Alden Global Capital is selling off the Greyhound bus stations it recently purchased in December.

View: This is a very on-brand move by the opaque hedge fund that’s been buying up newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and wringing the cash out of them. The Alden subsidiary paid $25 million in December for the property at 630 W. Harrison St. that Greyhound now leases and is trying to sell it. The Sun-Times report says:

Greyhound has been booted from stations in several cities over the last few months after the sale of its properties. …

Their experiences show what could be in store for Greyhound’s Chicago station, which, as a regional bus hub, serves about a half-million people a year and 55 buses daily.

Passengers in other cities were left confused and angered about losing shelter while waiting for buses. … If Greyhound gets booted from the (Harrison Street) station, the company will likely do curbside pickup and drop-off in a West Side parking lot until it finds a permanent home

Given there are often lengthy layovers for those catching connecting buses, this could create many problems.

The Chicago Department of Transportation wants to buy the Greyhound station and create the city’s first public bus terminal. … Ten of the 14 largest U.S. metro areas have public-owned bus terminals.

News: South Dakota Republican state Rep. Joe Donnell claims Mount Rushmore is a demonic portal spreading communism across the nation

View: Oh, no! Our lefty treachery has been found out! And guess who’s to blame for the security leak?

That’s right, God.

“What the Lord revealed to me is that Mount Rushmore has a direct line to Washington, D.C.,” Donnell said, going on to refer to the monument as “an active altar that acts as a portal for demonic things.”

News: The price of a first-class “forever” U.S. postage stamp is going up a week from Sunday

View: I love the idea of “forever” stamps, but I am forever forgetting what they cost. Are you more attentive than I? Fill out the click survey here before you look to the bottom of “News and Views” for the correct answer.

Admission: I had no idea.

News: Vanna White is negotiating for a raise

View: White has the stupidest, most useless job in the world. That she is already reportedly earning $3 million a year to be the elegantly clad person who needlessly touches letters on the game screen of TV’s “Wheel of Fortune” is appalling.

The number of people who now watch “Wheel of Fortune” who would not watch the show if White weren’t there to touch the letters as they are revealed to contestants has to be approximately zero. I say give her the sack and donate that $3 million a year to Los Angeles food pantries.

News: A WBEZ-FM 91.5 reporting team has named the best places to buy pizza by the slice in Chicago: “In no particular order,” Jimmy’s Pizza Café,  JB Alberto’s, Art of Pizza, Dimo’s, Pizza Lobo, Dante’s, Pizza Friendly Pizza, Fabulous Freddies and Benny’s Pizza.

View: Rank them, you cowards! Though the article says that Jimmy’s at 2434 W. Montrose “polled highest in our informal survey of WBEZ listeners,” how did the team rate them one through nine?

News: Prosecutors dropped murder charges against a woman and her son. They then turned around and sued the police department for false arrest.

View: I’m puzzled by this story. The woman, Carlishia Hood, got into an inexplicable argument with Jeremy Brown while they stood in line at Maxwell Street Express, a fast-food joint at 11656 S. Halsted St. Cellphone video from the scene showed Brown shouting, “Get your food!” at Hood, threatening to knock her out and then punching her three or four times in the head.

Very shortly thereafter, Hood’s 14-year-old son shot Brown, protecting his mother in accordance with Illinois law on self-defense that allows “the use of force which is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm (if a person) reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or another.”

Then, per the Sun-Times report, things got complicated.

Brown ran from the store as Hood’s son allegedly continued to fire. The teen and his mother followed Brown to the parking lot, where she told her son to keep shooting Brown and to kill him, prosecutors said.

The law does not allow you to shoot someone in self-defense if that person is running away, unless you believe that person poses an imminent threat to others. Arresting and charging Hood and her son under the circumstances as alleged — not seen in the police video — seems reasonable, though obviously we all have a great deal of sympathy for the woman who was punched and not a whole lot for the man who attacked her.

News: New York Yankee pitcher Domingo Germán threw a perfect game against the hapless Oakland A’s Wednesday night.

View: The 21-61 A’s continue to make interesting the question whether they will win 39 games this season and avoid becoming the worst team in Major League history. They have 78 chances to win 18 games.

The Kansas City Royals, with just 22 wins so far, are also in the running.

*The price of a “forever” stamp will rise from 63 cents to 66 cents on July 9. (CORRECTED)

Can we make ‘PING’ happen?

Johanna and a couple of friends were talking the other day about the stage of life that she and I and many acquaintances of a similar vintage are in: Money is coming in at a slower rate than when we were fully employed at the height of our careers, but we’re feeling OK about our finances in part because our children are adults and, without grandchildren yet in the picture, we have more freedom to indulge our own interests than we’ve had in decades.

Partial Income, No Grandchildren — “PING,” suggested one of her friends. A variation on DINK, the acronym for Double Income, No Kids — a phase many of us found ourselves in just after marriage.

Not quite retirees, not quite peripatetic grandparents. Couples with some leisure time, some disposable income — PINGs.

Marketers, ping the PINGs.

Land of Linkin’

• NBC’s “The Today Show:” “Emad Mahou was captured by pro-government forces in Syria and tortured, but eventually released and found himself in Chicago. He talks to NBC’s Maggie Vespa about graduating from DePaul University and setting out on a mission to help refugees.” Mahou, who was law school classmates with our future daughter-in-law, Cori Bills, was the subject of a Tribune profile earlier this month.

• A Reuters genealogical study of U.S. leaders found five living presidents, two U.S. Supreme Court justices, 11 governors and 100 legislators descended from slaveholders.

• Decades-long bet on consciousness ends — and it’s philosopher 1, neuroscientist 0

• Big event coming up in your life? Create a countdown clock to consult and share.

• Steve Chapman’s latest: “Josh Hawley Is Good at Neither Preaching Nor Practicing ‘Masculine’ Virtues.” The contributing Tribune columnist writes about the Missouri Republican U.S. Senator’s recently released book “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs” and says, "Much of Hawley’s advice to men is reasonable, if unoriginal: Get a job. Make commitments and keep them. Be brave. Cultivate humility. Don’t make a god of money. Serve something greater than yourself. These choices, he neglects to note, are equally useful for women. … But what stands out in his public conduct are his flair for demagoguery, his supine fealty to Trump, his intellectual dishonesty, and his distrust of individual freedom—not his virtues, that is, but his vices.”

• Speaking of former colleagues, congratulations to John Kass for “graduating” recently from the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab in Homewood, where he’d been rehabbing from a heart attack, quadruple bypass and stroke in January.

• Meet “Uncle Duke,” one of the funniest fellows on Twitter.

• Sorry, but I don’t yet take presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr., putative Democrat, seriously as a candidate, no matter how many pushups he can do. But if he ever does gain traction, the 2015 book “RFK Jr: Robert F. Kennedy and the Dark Side of the Dream” is likely to cause considerable slippage. The Daily Mail ran an excerpt.

• “8 Podcasts We Can’t Wait to Listen to This Summer” by Vulture’s Nicholas Quah: “Wilder,” “Classy With Jonathan Menjivar,” “You Feeling This?” “Diss and Tell,” “Search Engine,”  “Cover Up: The Pill Plot,” “Fiasco: Vigilante” and  “Hang Up.”

Squaring up the news

A bonus addendum to the Land of Linkin’: Here, from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson, is a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing, Chicago Public Square:

■ ProPublica unzips a report on “the secretive world of penile enlargement.”

■ The naming of a new host for “Wheel of Fortune” gives Chicago native Pat Sajak more time to spend overseeing a Michigan college that forbids gay relationships.

■ Farewell to the Chicago-born founder of the company that brought civilization the Chia Pet and the Clapper.

■ Community activist and civic leader Marj Halperin condemns plans to pour taxpayer money into a big residential, transit and business development just west of Soldier Field.

■ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg discounts Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s twisted view of a past that never was.

■ Columnist Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the (last) Week: The stepson of one of the Titan expedition victims—whose behavior on Twitter through the crisis was, to put it mildly, awkward.

■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “Members of an Indiana chapter of the group Moms for Liberty found out … that Adolf Hitler … was a bad person.”

■ The Guardian: Texas has avoided rolling blackouts through its latest heat wave —partly by doubling its solar power supplies since last year.

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

All 3,652 goddamn days?

Saturday marks the 10-year anniversary of Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg’s personal blog, “Every goddamn day.”

That’s quite a milestone in the ever-shrinking blogosphere. The medium that was all the rage 20 years ago has largely been eclipsed by social media — Facebook is very much like an aggregation of your friends’ blogs — and self-published newsletters like this one. Podcasts and online videos have claimed much of the attention devoted to blogs.

I used to read dozens a day. Most have folded their tents or begun posting very sporadically, so I’m down to regularly checking only a few, Steinberg’s being one of them.

First, let me quote him at length about the criticism he has received for the use of or a least allusion to a profanity in the name of his blog:

You're bothered by this blog's title? "Every goddamn day?" By the word "goddamn" because ... it has the word "god" in it, right? Have I guessed right? I bet I have.  

Well, big sigh of relief — I can set your mind at ease right now, by drawing your attention to the lower case "g"— it's "goddamn," not referring to your one-and-only God at all, not the uppercase Almighty, King of the Universe, Lord of Lords, or whatever personal deity you hold in far higher regard than your fellow mortals. 

No, this a small "g" minor deity — Hermes, perhaps, or Pallas Athena, unless you worship those; then it's someone else. I know that's frustrating—there's a certain unacknowledged joy in being offended, a permission to rush over and beat the crap out of whoever you have decided has offended you, verbally if not physically. You probably feel like taking a few whacks anyway, just on general principles, right?

Of course that might be overstating the case. The first people who were taken aback by the blog title were readers who reacted more in sorrow than anger—a "do-you-really-need-to-call-it-that?" kind of reluctant objection.

Actually, yes, I do. The name is why this blog exists. Back when the Sun-Times ran my column four times a week, I suggested it run the column every day, out of pure gumption and joy at what I do, and said I even had an advertising slogan to go with it, "Neil Steinberg: Every goddamn day — only in the Chicago Sun-Times." 

They didn't take me up on that idea.

Steinberg and I are friends, and in anticipation of his July 1 anniversary, I wrote to ask if he’d really posted an entry every fucking day as promised, and for any other reflections. His response:

None missed to my knowledge. There are one or two columns from the vault that got posted twice, years apart. I seem to recall noticing at least one, long after the fact, and deciding there was nothing to be done. So a duplication or two. But that's it.

How did I do it? The honest answer is that I love writing the blog. I enjoy writing stuff. It's my joy and my drug. I know that is contrary to the tortured writer cliche, and probably the sign of a hack. But it's true, and honesty is my default move, if not my superpower.

It is hard work, too, at times. I wake up at 4 a.m. most days, send out my email blast, re-read that day's post. But what's Bruce Springsteen's line? "Sooner or later, it becomes your life."

If I'm going on vacation, I'll rack up a week or two, on a theme. When I went to Virginia in 2021 to watch my son Kent graduate from the University of Virginia Law School I did a week of "Songs about Lawyers."

It helps to have a deep bench. When I went in for my spine surgery in 2019, I presented a bunch of old columns about surgery. I am of the notion that a column I wrote 10 or 20 years ago bears re-reading, and it's gratifying that the readers seem to agree. I've never had a reader demand, "Why am I reading something from 1995?" I consider that a compliment, and wouldn't do it if people objected.

I'm blessed that I don't consider myself important, I don't have to comment on the top news of the day. I can focus on what interests me in a way to interest others as well, if I've done it right.

It helps that the blog gives me more latitude than the paper. For instance, one of my favorite posts is just a deep dive into the word "rocket." I could never publish that in the Sun-Times because it's not news. I can be saltier on the blog, like exploring the word "fuckery." When the boys were younger, I could write short vignettes about life with them, like this about Kent, or this about my other son, Ross.

The blog also allows me to post my preferred version of stories that get mangled. The Sun-Times cut my interview with Amanda Palmer in half. No big loss: I could post the full version on my blog. The paper isn't very good about having its archive online, and so if I don't post old stories on my blog, they are often not available.

Plus it pushes me to do things I'd never do otherwise — those two long take-downs of John Kass (“In Defense of John Kass” and “And John went down into the land of Indiana”) and the April 1 pranks. I did them for the blog, and am glad they exist.

From the start, I tried to give myself a break on Saturdays, starting with my "fun activity" then a photo contest for a couple years, then Caren Jeskey, who really owned Saturdays for almost three years. I was proud that I could step back and let someone very different than myself shine.

I've thought about what I'm going to do for the 10th, and am going to go very low key — thank the readers, acknowledge some key fans — Marc Schulman, John, you. Otherwise, no grabbing the scenery and pondering, Hamlet-like, whether it's time to quit. I've done that too much already.

Congrats!

Florida man gives middle finger to minor league baseball players.

(Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law this month that) will exempt Minor League Baseball players from Florida’s minimum wage law. When the bill was filed, minor leaguers were at the bargaining table, trying to raise minimum starting salaries above $20,000. “I’ve been covering Florida politics for more than 20 years now, and I have never seen a more mean-spirited piece of legislation than this,” said Jason Garcia, an independent journalist and Florida’s foremost chronicler of pay-to-play politics. “It’s the sort of bill Montgomery Burns would sponsor.” The day after the bill was filed, Joe Ricketts, whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, gave $1 million to DeSantis’ 2022 reelection fund.

Reader, I said bad words

Ten bucks for a box of cereal? No way.

I’ve been dismayed by the huge leaps in cereal prices in the past few years — attributed to “soaring grain and sugar prices …. made worse by the war in Ukraine, a major grain producer” — but seeing this price at our local Jewel-Osco caught me up short. (The media team at Jewel-Osco’s parent company, Albertsons, did not respond to a request for comment).

Pattern has documented a 13.6% average increase in cereal prices over the past year, but what’s confounding me is how — and why — increases and prices vary so dramatically from chain to chain and month to month. I’ll wager that some reader out there can send me a photo of Great Grains selling for half this price.

Shoppers now are well advised to wait for sales and then buy as much cereal on discount as your cart will hold. It stays fresh in the difficult-to-open interior bag for many months.

Here are the top 10 best-selling cereals in the United States by number of boxes sold per the website Cereal Secrets:

1. Cheerios  
2. Frosted Flakes  
3. Honey Nut Cheerios
 4. Honey Bunches of Oats 
5. Cinnamon Toast Crunch 
 6. Froot Loops  
7. Lucky Charms 
 8. Frosted Mini-Wheats 
 9. Life  
10. Fruity Pebbles 

I have issues with this list. Plain Cheerios and Life are bland. Flakes and Mini-Wheats are better unfrosted. Froot Loops never fail to disappoint. But those are my tastes. I’m looking for a hive-mind ranking, and I invite you to click and drag these cereals into the order of your preference.

Minced Words

Brandon Pope has a theory about why Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looks so ripped. He shares it with me, Anna Davlantes, host John Williams and listeners to this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals.” 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.

Re: Tweets

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

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

1. It doesn’t matter how successful I am in every other aspect of my life, if the ETA on the GPS ticks up by so much as a single minute during a trip, I have failed as a man. — @UncleDuke1969

2.  Apparently you're really dating yourself when you say, "Time to slide down the dinosaur" at 5 p.m. — @SennettReport

3. LOL, Garfield is so relatable! I too wish to destroy my master but lack the courage to suffer the consequences of his demise. — @TheAndrewNadeau

4. These fireworks are awesome! High four! — @JohnLyonTweets

5. Just to expound a bit ladies, mansplaining is a portmanteau of man and explaining. — @Shade510

6. My local Olive Garden is always out of gabagool. — @BuckyIsotope

7. (At grocery store) Hi little green pepper!  I'm taking you home with me! Would you prefer a slow death in the fridge or would you rather go straight into the compost? — @BrickMahoney

8. Husband: “Why are you always on your phone?” Me: Sounds good, I’m starving. — @OMGSoOverIt

9. Paperclips are staples for people with commitment issues. — @TheRealPalMal

10. It amazes me how much “exercise” and “extra fries” sound alike. — Unknown

Several of these tweets rely on knowledge of TV classics: Sliding down the dinosaur is what Fred Flintstone did at the end of his work day during the opening theme of “The Flintstones,” an animated series that ended in 1966 — thus dating anyone who recognizes it — though it’s still shown in syndicated reruns.

And “gabagool” is a mutation of “capicola” heard on the legendary HBO series “The Sopranos.” (1999-2007). Capicola is a thinly sliced, cured meat made from pork shoulder and neck.

I don’t expect either tweet to do particularly well, especially “gabagool” which is only funny (if it is funny) because the word is funny. I almost included this tweet —

Gonna start calling everyone “Chef.” — @yeeeerika

— but I doubt enough people are familiar with the Hulu series “The Bear” — set in a Chicago restaurant where many of the workers refer to one another as “Chef” — to recognize the humor in it.

Vote here and check the current results in the poll. For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Tune of the Week

This week’s guest nominator is Chicago-area author Barbara Mahany, a friend and former Tribune colleague:

This spring, during the disorienting first weeks after my latest book, “The Book of Nature: The Astonishing Beauty of God’s First Sacred Text” (Broadleaf Books, 2023), had been published, only to be followed a couple weeks later by lung surgery, a cancer diagnosis, and a paralyzed vocal cord that left me without a voice, a friend who’s a brilliant and soulful rabbi started sending me playlists.

Natalie Merchant’s “Come on, Aphrodite” (featuring the radiant Abena Koomson-Davis) became the anthem I played over and over.

Maybe it was the line, “I’m begging you, begging you,” which so echoed my own desperate prayers, as I considered for the first time in my life the cold hard math of five-year survival equations.

Maybe it was “see me down on my knees,” the posture I’d wholly assumed upon being told I’d had cancer.

Maybe it was the trumpets rising shortly thereafter, a resurrective blast I clung to.

Maybe it was Natalie’s naming Aphrodite “queen of the garden of earthly delights,” a touchstone to the sacred at the core of my book.

Or maybe it was where Natalie and Abena, fierce warrior women, call and respond to each other: “Come with your rapture, come with your pain,” a duality of piercing emotions that throbbed through me as I navigated this uncharted topography. — Barbara Mahany

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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