Primarily, I'm sad to see Ken Griffin go.

& Meet John Williams, much more than just a Mincing Rascal

6-30-2022 (issue No. 42)

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Billionaire Ken Griffin, who has long held the title of Illinois’ richest person, was the biggest loser in a statewide primary Tuesday that was well populated by big losers. Four major candidates Griffin backed in contested races — Richard Irvin for governor, John Milhiser for secretary of state, Steve Kim for attorney general and Rodney Davis for the U.S. House — came up way short, inspiring a memorable Sun-Times headline, “Whiffin’ with Griffin.”

Irvin, into whose coffers Griffin dumped $50 million, ran third with a feeble 15% of the vote, 43 percentage points behind winner Darren Bailey. Milhiser lost by 53 points, Kim lost by 10 points and Davis, whose PAC Griffin supported, lost by 16 points.

It was money utterly wasted — funds that could have gone to support health clinics, schools, jobs programs, civic institutions, low-income housing or any number of other initiatives that would have actually improved Illinois rather than simply boost the bottom lines of TV stations and campaign consultants — though the money was, I believe, spent for a somewhat decent cause.

Though I disagree strongly with Griffin’s political views and the positions of the candidates he supported, I appreciate that his donations were in the service of attempting to impede the rise of candidates I find ever more objectionable — extreme right wingers who’d like nothing better than to turn Illinois into Oklahoma.

Yes, Democrats were chortling Wednesday morning at the prospect of running in November against a slate of rabid Republicans who make Alan Keyes look like Jim Edgar. Indeed, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Democratic Governors Association spent $34 million hoping to inspire conservative voters to support Bailey by airing what looked like attack ads hyperventilating about Bailey’s ultra-conservative agenda.

I expect the Democrats will prevail this fall, but the long-term effect of an energized hard-right base and a disappearing political middle will be greater polarization, greater anger and greater volatility in elections.

This is particularly true given that Illinois Democrats appear to be edging to the left, with victories in U.S. House primaries by Jonathan Jackson and Delia Ramirez, both of whom were backed by a host of liberal groups as well as Vermont’s socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But whatever happens here, it will no longer be Griffin’s problem.

He announced earlier this month that he and his hedge fund, Citadel, are moving from Chicago to Miami, presumably abandoning the effort to promote more traditional Republicans, the ones who haven’t fallen under the spell of a childish demagogue.

This region will miss him.

A June 23 Sun-Times article cataloged Griffin’s many nonpolitical acts of local philanthropy, including:

• $7.5 million to fund the first half of a four-year program providing free high-speed internet access to about 100,000 Chicago Public Schools students.

• $1 million to the Chicago Public Schools and $1.5 million to the Chicagoland Food Pantry to deliver breakfast and lunch to city kids at home while their schools are closed due to the pandemic.

• $125 million to the Museum of Science and Industry.

• $10 million to the Chicago Police Department /University of Chicago Crime Lab “innovation fund.”

• $3 million for 50 miniature soccer fields across the city.

• $12 million to complete a project separating runners from cyclists along the entire 18-mile length of the Lakefront Trail.

If Griffin would have confined his giving to such projects instead of investing so heavily in his political prerogatives — I’ll never forgive him for spending more than $50 million on the thoroughly dishonest yet successful 2020 campaign opposing a referendum that would have allowed Illinois to impose a graduated state income tax — he’d have easily become one of our most beloved citizens.

And yes, for the record, much of my griping about rich people heavily pressing their thumbs on the political scale applies to Pritzker and other plutocrats of both parties who claim vastly more political power and influence than the rest of us, though evidence is scant that they have more insight or talent for leading.

Respect, though, for Griffin not just endlessly griping about Chicago and Illinois but instead putting Mayflower where his mouth is and actually calling the moving vans. I’d offer a similar tip of the hat to a veteran local political pundit who, according to numerous reports on social media, has moved from the city to the Northwest Indiana suburbs, but this particular pundit seems to be trying to keep his new Hoosier identity a secret and did not respond to my email query trying to confirm the reports.

Other thoughts on the primary results:

• One of my neighbors working our Northwest Side polling place Tuesday attributed the traditionally dismal turnout in part to people not wishing to declare their party affiliations when asking for a primary ballot. That requirement takes quite a bit of the "secret" out of the secret ballot concept. It would be easy to offer all voters one ballot, one on which they would select and then vote in one party’s primary in the privacy of the voting carrel. But a proposal to allow for such confidentiality failed by 20 votes in the Illinois Senate in 2009.

• The only real surprises Tuesday were the margins of victory in most of the major races: Along with those noted above, we had state Rep. Delia Ramirez winning by 43 percentage points over Ald. Gil Villegas in the 3rd U.S. House District Democratic primary; U.S. Rep. Sean Casten winning by 39 percentage points over U.S. Rep. Marie Newman in the battle of Democratic incumbents in the redrawn 6th U.S. House District; and Alexi Giannoulias winning by 18 points over Chicago City Clerk Anna Valencia in the Democratic secretary of state primary. Democrat Jonathan Jackson’s 9-point victory in the 1st U.S. House District primary doesn’t sound that large, but there were 17 candidates in the field, and many of us expected a tighter race at the top.

• Keep an eye on Republican Catalina Lauf, the telegenic 29-year-old former U.S. Commerce Department adviser in the Trump administration who won the right to face incumbent Democrat Bill Foster in the 11th U.S. House District. But remember, I’m the guy who told you to keep an eye on Republican Erika Harold, the Harvard-educated former Miss America who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House in 2014 and for Illinois attorney general in 2018, but who now, at age 42, seems to have dropped off the political radar.

• Bailey deserves a second Oscar Rogers Award for his vague, meandering appearance Wednesday morning with new WLS-AM morning host Steve Cochran in which he said the winning words, “Something’s wrong, sir, and we’ve got to fix it” while never quite saying just how he intends to “fix it.” (Background on the Oscar Rogers Award is here.) By the way, Bailey was wrong when he said that Joseph Guardia —the man charged with setting fire last month to homeless “Walking Man” Joseph Kromelis — was released “on cash-free bail.” Cook County Judge Charles Beach ordered Guardia held without bond. UPDATE — What Bailey was trying to say, judging from previous times he’s told this story, was that Guardia was out on “cash-free bail” when he allegedly set Kromelis on fire. This also wasn’t true.

• Tuesday’s losers who just might enter the February 2023 Chicago mayor’s race include City Clerk Anna Valencia; Alders Pat Dowell, 3rd, David Moore, 17th, and Gil Villegas, 36th; state Sen. Jacqueline Collins; Karin Norington-Reaves; Jonathan Swain and Jahmal Cole. There’s still plenty of time!

Last week’s winning tweet

God @TheTweetOfGod

Everything's bigger in Texas. Especially the fear of the 21st century.

I’ve generally been keeping tweets with a political theme segregated into a separate occasional poll — there’s another one this week! — but I let this one through, and it won going away.

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

Meet the Rascals: John Williams

John Williams, WGN photo

John Williams, 62, hosts a daily talk show on WGN-AM 720 and has presided over “The Mincing Rascals” weekly podcast since 2014. This autobiographical sketch is based on edited excerpts of interviews with him.

My father was an Air Force intelligence officer so we lived all over when I was a kid. I was born in Chicago, but I spent my preschool years in West Germany. Then we lived in Taiwan when I was in first grade; second through fifth grades we were living on Oahu.

Then my father retired, and we moved to Edwardsville, Illinois, just northeast of St. Louis for a year while my dad was getting his master’s degree at Southern Illinois University.

Then we moved to Joliet when my dad got a job as a counselor at Stateville Correctional Center.

I’m the second of four children. My sister Jean is a year and a half older than I am (she’s now a resource officer at the Will County Courthouse), my brother, Mark, is 4 years younger (he’s now a retired Caterpillar, Inc. executive), and my sister Mary is 5 years younger (she’s now a Will County assistant state's attorney). 

When we finally put down roots in a rather isolated but nice subdivision called “Camelot,” I was pretty envious of all of the kids who had known each other for many years and had histories with one another. I felt like I was on the outside looking in on those relationships.

But sports helped open doors for me socially. It was a small high school — about 600 students — so I was able to play on the football team, the basketball team and the track team.

I played all three my first year at Joliet Junior College and then played basketball and ran track my second year. 

In track, I was a quarter-miler, half-miler and long jumper. I jumped 20 feet once. Every now and then, I'll get a tape measure out and show my kids how long that is. My best quarter mile time was a little under 51 seconds. (At Minooka, my name is still on the high school track record board in the 2-mile relay. A former teammate pointed that out to me recently, and I was amazed. Then he said, “John, they stopped running the 2-mile relay after we left. It’s the 3,200-meter relay now, so we’ll always have that record.”)

In high school, I thought I would be a writer. I was a good English student, so it seemed natural to want to follow that path. I’d go work for a newspaper. Write a book. What did I know? 

But I also remember having listened to talk radio in the car with my dad and imagining how cool it would be to sit there and make jokes and tell people what you think about things.

So when I went from Joliet Junior College to SIU, I thought, well, what the hell, I’ll try to be a broadcast major …

Read the rest. Also check out the other profile sketches in my “Meet the Mincing Rascals” series.

News & Views

News: Chicago officials Monday sent letters to 300 CEOs in 25 states where abortion rights are now being curtailed urging them to move to Illinois.

View: If I were starting a business and looking to recruit top young talent, I would certainly look askance at states with strict abortion bans, just as I suspect top young talent will be looking askance at moving to such states.

Michael Fassnacht, president and CEO of World Business Chicago, told the Tribune, “When companies or capital or talent makes a decision about where to start a career, where to relocate or expand, you have to take into consideration the values that a city and a state has, and it has to be part of the site selection decision.”

I suspect abortion laws will also play a role in where high school seniors choose to go to college and perhaps where major industries choose to hold their conventions and where sports organizations and leagues choose to hold their championship events.

If revenues start to shrink — let’s call it the Gilead Tax after the repressive nation in “The Handmaid’s Tale” — look for these states to modify or even drop their harshest restrictions.

News: Mayor Lori Lightfoot says “Fuck Clarence Thomas!” at a Pride rally

View: Those who have been chanting “Let’s Go Brandon!” all year because the phrase is widely understood as translating to “Fuck Joe Biden!” have no right to wring their handkerchiefs and fret about declining civility in our public discourse. And of all the times that Lightfoot has displayed her rough, impolitic side, this strikes me as the most justified.

The Sun-Times wrote that Lightfoot used an “obscenity” speaking to the crowd. But no. “Fuck,” in this context, is merely a coarse vulgarity. To be obscene, she would have had to describe in vivid, anatomical detail what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should do with his ominous concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health in which he suggested that the Court should revisit its decisions removing bans on same-sex marriage, gay sexual activity and contraception.

I do wish Lightfoot had expanded on her battle cry by outlining steps that outraged citizens and local governments could follow to, um, thwart Clarence Thomas.

News: “Topless sunbathing at Evanston beaches? Prohibition of public nudity ordinance in city could be changing.”

View: It will be interesting to see how Evanston addresses this proposal in light of the city’s commitment to gender equality and recognition of a range of gender identities.

A Tribune story quotes Evanston City Council member Devon Reid arguing that allowing anyone who wishes to go topless “could afford greater liberties to those in the transgender or nonbinary communities who don’t necessarily fall into the cisgender male or female mold.”

True. Our general social prohibition on the public exposure of female breasts is rooted in and relies on the increasingly unfashionable gender binary. Maintaining it requires legal recognition that female breasts are appropriately sexualized whereas male breasts are not, which creates a conundrum for those who want to argue for keeping the distinction while still adhering to modern enlightened thinking.

Just for yucks I’m trying out this new click-poll tool Substack is offering.

News: Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., said Sunday she’s "tired" of the concept of separation of church and state, calling it “junk” and adding, “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church."

View: I’m glad the far right is now speaking with such clarity about their beliefs and intentions. The only thing worse than an American politician saying something like this is an American politician thinking something like this but refraining from admitting it.

News: Kansas City area health system stops providing Plan B contraception to rape victims, citing fear of running afoul of Missouri’s abortion ban. And the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is warning that new abortion bans may discourage health care providers from quickly terminating potentially fatal, non-viable ectopic pregnancies, which occur in from 1 to 2 percent of pregnancies.

View: The intended and unintended consequences of the new, harsh abortion bans are sure to be grim.

Land of Linkin’

• Mayday offers a step-by-step guide on how you can obtain abortion pills in any state during first 12 weeks of pregnancy. “Abortion pills are safe, effective and approved by the FDA to end first trimester pregnancy at home in all 50 states.”

• David Frum draws a hopeful parallel in “Roe Is the New Prohibition.” “As Prohibition became a nationwide reality, Americans rapidly changed their mind about the idea. Support for Prohibition declined, then collapsed. … When Prohibition did finally end, so too did the culture war over alcohol. Emotions that had burned fiercely for more than half a century sputtered out after 1933.”

• Voting "is a single breath blown upon the guttering spark of liberty, the idea that we are not a nation of serfs, awaiting orders from our masters. Not yet anyway. Still a free people, bending leaders to our will,” writes Neil Steinberg in “Why Bother Voting?,” putting forth an idea that roughly 4 in 5 Illinois voters ignored Tuesday.

• In “The Case for Prosecuting Donald Trump Just Got Much Stronger,” conservative commentator David French writes, “Any criminal indictment of Trump would be complex and detailed, but at its heart would be a relatively simple story, one that goes like this: First, Trump summoned the mob to Washington. … Second, he knew the mob was armed and dangerous. … Third, he not only exhorted the mob to ‘fight like hell’ and march on the Capitol, he reportedly attempted to lead it himself. … Fourth, Trump further inflamed the mob while the Capitol attack was underway.”

• In “The Supreme Court That Transforms Right-Wing Grievances Into Law,” The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer blasts the “lazy, clumsy, and malicious” jurisprudence of the suffocating conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court and argues that “no rights that Americans currently possess are safe from this Court. Decisions about which rights survive and which do not are highly dependent on what it means to be a conservative at that time. There will always be new right-wing grievances to ameliorate by judicial fiat.”

• Check out the newly unhinged Radio Shack Twitter feed. By the time you read this the company may have deleted everything and had their social media manager horsewhipped, but if not …

• The Picayune Sentinel on the air: On Thursdays at 4:30 p.m., WCPT-AM 820 host Joan Esposito and I chat about ideas raised in the new issue. The listen-live link is here.

• The Picayune Sentinel preview: Mondays 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.

Mary Schmich: My Craziest Summer

Mary Schmich photo, 1974

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

It began with a letter, dated April 25, 1974:

Mesdemoiselles,

Thank you for your letter received this morning, concerning the trip we propose onboard my 40 foot motor sailing yacht “BOUCANIER” from La Rochelle (or Bordeaux) to the Mediterranean.

I am flying tomorrow night, Friday, to Paris and will arrive at my hotel: GRAND HOTEL - rue Scribe (Opera) at about 8:30 p.m.

I am having dinner there at the Restaurant of the Cafe de la Paix—which belongs to the hotel—with my two “mates” who also intend to make the trip, one of them being the General Manager of the Hotel Group and the other an airline jet pilot. This should give you the occasion to meet us and I will be glad if you would call on us at 9 p.m.

If, for some reason, you were engaged at that time, please call me on the phone of Cafe de la Paix: 260.33.50 and we will make another appointment for Saturday morning.

Best regards,

Cdt. J. Dore

The day my friend Diana and I — the demoiselles in question — received the above letter at the Grand Hotel des Balcons in Paris, I was 20 years old. It was the end of our semester abroad in France. I didn’t want to go home. Didn’t really have anything to go home to. So when Diana and I saw a small advertisement on a Paris bulletin board for two cooks on a yacht we laughed hysterically and applied. We did not know how to cook.

A few years ago, I wrote a column about that adventure. The memory was reignited recently during my closet purge (mentioned in previous posts) when I rediscovered the letter and some photos from the trip.

Here’s a snippet of the column:

Soon — this was long before tourist barges crowded the Canal du Midi — we were bobbing over the Atlantic Ocean toward the 17th-century canals that run through the French countryside out to the Mediterranean.

We’d barely made it to the first canal lock when it became clear that our employers expected more than cooks.

Diana and I — plus our friend Pam, who’d come along — were astonished.

So were the three middle-aged men: Had we really thought cooks meant cooks?

To make matters worse, they really did expect us to cook, which we’d assured them we could. In truth, we knew nothing, though just before departure I’d bought a pocket paperback called “La Cuisine Francaise.”

Within a few days, our mismatched crew had a routine. Diana, Pam and I helped navigate through the locks, pausing while the wrinkled peasants who lived on the canal banks slaughtered our daily chicken, picked our vegetables and brought us local wines.

Our employers taught us to make coq au vin and a good vinaigrette, then, in the warm evenings, with food and wine and cigarettes, we explained why we could not concede to their sexual wishes.

The jet pilot, Pierre, got off in Toulouse, muttering. “Not the vacation I planned.”

The rest of us cruised on, however, in a tense truce that grew into a kind of friendship.

The Commandant, a jowly man in his 50s, made light of his miscast cooks by writing out a daily “ordres de service.” I still have the paper. It begins with reveil, petit dejeuner and travaux maritimes, directions we followed. It concludes with the services we refused: education sexuelle (theorie) and education sexuelle (pratique).

Things could have gone terribly wrong for Diana, Pam and me on that journey. But they didn’t, and when we reached the Mediterranean and chastely told our employers goodbye, the Frenchmen cried.”

When I wrote that column, I didn’t have space to describe the full adventure, and the column didn’t come with photos, which I’ve included with this post.

The guy in the teensy bathing suit was named Jean Roch; he was the general manager of the Grand Hotel. The other guy—barechested in jeans—was Pierre, who had been the private pilot for France’s former prime minister, Jacques Chaban-Delmas.

None of the photos shows Jacques Dore, the man who wrote the letter, the man we called simply “The Commandant.” He was taking the pictures. And when I found them the other day, I wondered: What happened to him?

Thanks to Google, I discovered that he’d been in the French resistance. That he was still alive in 2010. That he’d been decorated by the French president, Nicholas Sarkozy.

As I read about The Commandant in his old age, I wondered: Did he remember those three young women on the good ship Boucanier? Did he remember that after we parted he mailed me those photos care of American Express in Paris? Did he remember that he’d promised that when he got back from a sailing trip to Corsica, he’d find me a job in Paris?

I’ve never written about what happened after we left that boat. Diana and Pam went back to the States. But I decided to stay in France, though I had no money. I mean, no money. None. Zero. Rien.

The other students on my semester abroad flew home on schedule. When I declined to go, I forfeited the plane ticket back.

So there I was in Paris. No friends. No money. No ticket home. Determined to stay because if I could hang on for a couple of weeks, the Commandant would come back from Corsica and give me that job. Right?

Wrong. Things got crazier.

I’ll chronicle the rest of my craziest summer in another post, with thanks to anyone who has read this far.

The photos (see all) show us “cooking” in the galley kitchen; recovering from seasickness on the trip on the Atlantic toward the Garonne River; working the buoys on the river locks; and giggling at the preposterous situation we’d gotten ourselves into.

And, forgive me, but I loved those pants. — Mary Schmich

Minced Words

Jon Hansen was this week’s guest host for “The Mincing Rascals” podcast and was joined by Austin Berg, Heather Cherone, Brandon Pope and me to go over the primary election results, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s F-bomb, the latest developments with the Jan. 6th commission, news that Google is in talks to buy the Thompson Center and more.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can now hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

Re: Tweets

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• Just saved a ton of money by converting my car’s engine to run on printer ink. — @RickAaron

• Most women put a bun on the top of their head, they look like a ballerina. I do it and I’m Tweety Bird’s Granny from Looney Tunes. — @juliepafoofnic

• When my friends don’t answer their phone at 2 a.m., I just figure this is probably because of that boundary crap they’re always complaining about. — @ddsmidt

• “Condominium” sounds like a safe-sex spell you learn at Hogwarts. — @FScottFitzJesse

• We didn’t start the fire. O.K. we did start the fire; we’re sorry. We’re not sorry, we’re sociopaths. O.K. That’s a lie; we just can’t stand feeling guilty. We’re cowards. It’s fine. — @michikoconuts

• I just realized the Flintstones used dinosaurs for every job except to power cars. Which is the only job we use dinosaurs for. — @TheAndrewNadeau

•  When my dog poops, I respect his privacy and drop his leash and keep walking. I don’t know if he cleans it up or not, that’s his business. — @jlock17

• I was a teenager when “Go to your room” was a punishment and not the same as saying “Go to your arcade/shopping mall/video chat room/infinite music and video library/recording booth/photo studio.” — @JohnLyonTweets

• I'm "My mother was my seat belt" years old. — @itsBABYSMITH

• I accidentally typed "prude parade" and I've got an idea for July now. — @LeftySheridan

Here are the political-tweet nominees:

• The problem with leaving abortion rights up to the states is that some states are literally Mississippi. — @ginnyhogan_

• BREAKING: in light of recent news, top democrats will be writing “enough is enough” on a paper airplane and throwing it into the sky — @eddyburback

• A president of the United States smeared ketchup on the walls when he didn’t get his way like a chimp smearing feces, but please continue to tell us how women are too emotionally volatile to handle such a high position —@OhNoSheTwitnt

• If you sit on your hand for 15 minutes before voting for Trump it feels like someone else is plunging the republic into an eternal darkness. — @WheelTod

• They talk about American “food deserts” but what about the “news deserts”? There’s vast swaths of the USA where facts only occasionally dart down the main street like lone coyotes, fearful of hunters. —@GianDoh

• “The FOUNDING FATHERS wanted ________________” 1. You’re probably wrong 2. I don’t care. — @derekkbaker_

• I don’t know if y’all know this, but back in the latter 18th century there was a big legal kerfuffle where some states were deemed “free” and others not, and it was ultimately left up to the states and territories to decide. It worked out well then why wouldn’t it now? —@JoParkerBear

• I hear church and state are getting back together. — @SaltyMacTavish

• Witness: At that point, the former president smashed his way into my home. He wrecked all my worldly possessions. He made fun of my cat. He fired a powerful bazooka at my head Committee Chair: Incredible. I guess he lost your vote, huh? Witness: I never said that. — @longwall26

• Please don’t ask “how could things possibly be worse?” because Republicans are not taking that as a rhetorical question. — @OhNoSheTwitnt

Vote here in the poll. Also, vote here in the all-politics ToTW poll. For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Race to the slop

As long as the Cubs and White Sox are both under .500, I will periodically post this comparative update:

White Sox 35-38 (.479)
Cubs 28-46 (.378) (7 1/2 games worse than the White Sox)

After Tuesday’s games

Today’s Tune

Several years ago I embarked upon what I called The Mama’s Opry Project — an effort to learn all the gospel songs referenced or alluded to in the chorus of folksinger Iris DeMent’s “Mama’s Opry.”

We sang Sweet Rose of Sharon, Abide With Me
'Til I ride the Gospel Ship to Heaven's Jubilee
In that Great Triumphant Morning my soul will be free
And My Burdens Will Be Lifted When My Savior's Face I See

So I Don't Want to Get Adjusted to this world below
But I know He'll Pilot Me 'til it comes time to go ...

In the course of my research, which included sending an email query to Iris DeMent asking what “My Burdens Will Be Lifted” was referring to (she did not respond), I came across this stunning, undated rendition of “He’ll Pilot Me” featuring the tenor stylings of Robert Belk ("I really am a man, even though I sound like a woman!!!" he wrote in an online bio). Wait for the 39-second mark, then hang on for the modulations:

Belk, who sang with a number of gospel groups during his life, died in Gastonia, North Carolina, at age 61 in 2015.

I know this makes two Southern gospel songs in a row in Today’s Tune and that you may consider my fondness for this genre a little off-brand. But I grew up with it and appreciate the poetry, the melodies, the harmonies and the passion that animate it.

Consult the complete archive of my featured tunes!

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