Gotta march! We can’t normalize what’s happening in the Chicago area right now
Like you, I hope, I’m concerned, dismayed and furious about the heavy-handed tactics of federal agents on the streets of Chicago and surrounding suburbs these days: Masked thugs, some in uniform and some not, are on the prowl for brown-skinned people who might be in the country without authorization. They then seize them in warrantless arrests and fire tear gas at citizens who gather to protest the ominous, opaque and gratuitously violent acts against people who, in most cases, have no criminal records and are contributing to our society.
This episode of The Meidas Touch features several videos from Tribune reporters that illustrates the episodes of mayhem on our streets:
Jennifer Schulze has more receipts, and praises the “fearless journalists” and others who have been documenting the “chaos and brutality.”
My fellow Mincing Rascal Austin Berg reviewed opinion polling in his Substack “The Last Ward” and found strong disapproval of randomly rounding up otherwise law-abiding residents.
Here are a few points to keep in mind from the most comprehensive study of American views on deportations, as of March 2025:
Fewer than one-third (32%) of Americans say all immigrants living in the U.S. illegally should be deported, with 10% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans holding this view.
Among the majority of Americans who think some immigrants living in the U.S. illegally should be deported:
Virtually all (97%) agree that those who have committed violent crimes should be deported.
Just 15% believe those who have a job should be deported.
Just 14% believe those who are parents of children born in the U.S. should be deported.
Just 9% believe those who came to the U.S. as children should be deported.
More than 60% of all Americans do not think law enforcement officers should arrest immigrants living in the U.S. illegally at places of worship, schools, or hospitals.
Meeting their violence with violence is to take the bait and create an excuse for the Trump regime to send more federal agents and troops to the area. But protesting — peacefully expressing anger and determination by massing together — is a potentially effective alternative.
I’m headed to the “No Kings” rally and march in Grant Park on Saturday at noon:
We (will) show the nation and the world that Chicago is united in opposing these illegal and unnecessary attacks against our neighbors, our communities, and our democracy. Our actions and resistance are necessary as Trump sends militarized agents into our communities, silences voters and voices, and hands billionaires giveaways while families struggle. This isn’t just politics. It’s democracy versus dictatorship.
It might not make any difference, but chilling out at home certainly won’t.
Last week’s winning quip
For her birthday, I took my wife to an orchard and we stood there looking at the trees for half an hour. Not the Apple Watch she was expecting apparently. — @ThePunnyWorld
Bob Fioretti in 1975 (archival photo courtesy of Charlie Meyerson) and today
News: Bob Fioretti announces a run for Illinois attorney general.
View: Bless his heart, Fioretti seems to be vying with Chicagoan Lar “America First” Daly (1912-1978) for the title of most futile aspirant for political power in history. Daly unsuccessfully ran for office an estimated 30 times, earning him the title of America’s greatest election loser.
Since leaving the City Council in 2015, Fioretti is 0-7 with the voters, losing in these bids:
Mayor of Chicago (2015 and 2019)
Illinois Senate (2016)
Cook County Board president (2018 and 2022)
Cook County state’s attorney (2020 and 2024)
Even Willie Wilson (three futile runs for mayor, one for U.S. president and one for U.S. senator) has got to be saying, “Dude, take a hint.”
View: What happened to Debbie Brockman seems outrageous — she was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed by ICE agents on Foster Avenue near Lincoln Avenue last Friday morning, then hauled away and detained for seven hours before being released without charges — but I don’t see the relevance of her employment at WGN-TV, which appears in every story about this incident.
She is not a journalist — she works in “creative services” for the station — and was on her way to work, not on the job.
The Department of Homeland Security alleged in a statement that Brockman “threw objects at Border Patrol’s car,” though DHS’ credibility is close to zero with me, so I’ll wait to see evidence for this claim.
View: Stop the fuckery, all of youse! Absent the passage of a federal law or a U.S. Supreme Court ruling banning partisan gerrymandering, this form of citizen disenfranchisement will continue and accelerate. While I continue to reject the idea that any state or any party should unilaterally disarm in this war, I also continue to recognize that the cynical drawing and redrawing of political maps is terrible for democracy.
News: Alex Jones’ effort to avoid paying $1.4 billion for making false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre is rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
View: I couldn’t be happier. Jones is a thoroughly contemptible human being, and the vile claims he broadcast that Sandy Hook was a government hoax and the families of the 26 victims were “crisis actors” caused immense pain. The fact that those who did not properly mourn the murder of Charlie Kirk have lost their jobs while Jones continues to spew his poison on InfoWars is beyond galling.
News: Northwestern University professor wins the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his historical studies on sustained economic growth through technological progress.
View: Hooey. Journalists need to be better about distinguishing between this award — cooked up by bankers in 1968 to put a gloss on economics as a field of study — and the five original Nobel Prizes — awarded since 1901 for achievements that have conferred the “greatest benefit on mankind” in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace.
Northwestern economist Joel Mokyr shared this year’s Bank of Sweden prize for demonstrating how technological innovations become a “self-generating process,” building upon themselves to fuel progress. My grasp of economics isn’t strong enough to judge whether such a demonstration is brilliant or banal, though I’m skeptical that it confers a significant benefit on humankind. After all, as the joke goes, economists have predicted nine out of the last five recessions.
Journalists and other media outlets have failed to preserve the distinction between the original Nobels and the Alfred-come-lately memorial prize in economics, in part because all come with the same cash award — about $1.2 million this year — and in part because they are all announced in the same week in October.
View: American students who feel the pinch can thank the Trump regime’s hostility to foreigners. International students often pay full tuition, which allows colleges and universities to offer more generous scholarships to American students — my daughter, for instance, got a nice partial ride at Illinois Tech, where 52% of the students come from other countries. So when they see the frightening and uncertain conditions emerging here for noncitizens and decide to get their schooling elsewhere, it’s our kids who are likely to lose out.
News: President Donald Trump whines on social media about a Time magazine cover he considers unflattering.
View: This pathetically vain and needy man merely assured that millions more people see this photo than otherwise would have:
He posted:
Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time. They “disappeared” my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing and why?
View: Out pops the cloven hooves! Politico obtained more than seven months of Telegram chats among Young Republican leaders that “offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening.”
They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.
William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” …
The messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely — and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders.
Vice President JD Vance dismissed condemnation of such comments as “pearl clutching” and added “We’re not canceling kids because they said something stupid in a group chat.”
Land of Linkin’
“The Nobel Peace Prize Just Surrendered to Trump” by Jett Heer in the Nation: María Corina Machado “supported a coup against democratically elected President Hugo Chávez in 2002 … and welcomed further American interventions into Venezuela. … (She) has repeatedly sought out alliances with authoritarian leaders … (and) was a virtual participant in a conference in Madrid called Patriots of Europe, a meeting of far-right groups steeped in racism.”
Wall Street Journal: “Grocery Prices Keep Rising. Frustrated Consumers Are Trying to Adapt.” “Over the 12 months ended in August, the price of coffee increased 20.9%, Labor Department data showed; ground beef was up 12.8%, and bananas rose 6.6%. Dairy, fruits and vegetables and cereals have all become pricier.”
Politico: “The Supreme Court is hearing a case that could weaken the Voting Rights Act — and upend the midterms.” “Supporters (of the Voting Rights Act) say the requirement of what are called majority-minority districts prevents state legislatures from diluting minorities’ voting power by either ‘cracking’ communities — scattering minority voters into numerous white-dominated (and frequently Republican-dominated) districts — or ‘packing’ districts by trying to fit as many minority voters into as few districts as possible so they end up underrepresented in the House or state legislature. But some conservatives say any race-conscious redistricting violates both the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, which generally prohibits the government from discriminating on the basis of race, and the 15th Amendment, which says the right to vote cannot be abridged on account of race.”
Firstpost: “You can sext with ChatGPT soon. Here’s how.” “OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said ChatGPT will soon allow adult users to generate erotic content. This is a major shift in OpenAI’s policy, which previously forbade such material.” Seems like a big deal, as ChatGPT isn’t even 3 years old yet. But it’s nothing new. In June, Washington City Paper posted “Best Dirty Talk AI: Top 13 Sex Chatbots & Apps.”
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:
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
If you use Chrome, here’s a useful tip
If you are among the 65% of people who use Google’s Chrome web browser and if you’re like me and sometimes have 20 or 30 tabs open, simultaneously pressing the keys “Command+Shift+A” on a Mac or Control +Shift +A on a PC running Windows will bring up a window showing detail on your open tabs with the most recently viewed tabs at the top.
This makes it easy to toggle back and forth between tabs that may be far apart at the top of your screen, and fairly easy to spot open tabs that really ought to be closed.
The “take me to the most recent tab I was looking at” function seems so useful Chrome ought to have an easier shortcut, but this remains a blessing.
Organizations from across the media spectrum, from legacy organizations like The Associated Press and The New York Times to outlets like Fox and the conservative Newsmax, told their reporters to leave instead of signing the new rules. Only the conservative One America News Network signed on. Its management likely believes it will have greater access to Trump administration officials by showing its support, Gabrielle Cuccia, a former Pentagon reporter who was fired by OANN earlier this year for writing an online column criticizing Hegseth’s media policies, told the AP in an interview.
When Fox and Newsmax are walking out the door, that’s maybe a clue that you’ve gone too far.
Burying Bari
Bari Weiss’ appointment as editor-in-chief of CBS News prompts me to post this four-part takedown of a column that appeared in her publication The Free Press. It illustrates a reason to be more than a little skeptical about Weiss’ claims to having the highest journalistic values. All four parts were posted on Substack last year by investigative reporter Radley Balko, a former Washington Post columnist.
(A note that “Retcon” is a portmanteau of “retroactive continuity“ and refers to “changing an existing fictional narrative by introducing new information in a later work that recontextualizes previously established events.”)
The retconning of George Floyd — Bari Weiss’s Free Press is the latest outlet to tout a conspiratorial documentary alleging that Derek Chauvin was wrongly convicted. It’s all nonsense.
Indiana University fired its faculty director of student media after he refused to censor the campus newspaper, then eliminated the print paper altogether without explanation
Ahead of our Oct. 16 newspaper, which was to include a Homecoming guide inside, the Media School directed us to print no news in the paper, an order blatantly in defiance of our editorial independence and the Student Media Charter. …
The Media School … gave the IDS a choice: “As an option, the IDS print edition may be distributed with news in the Bloomington community, but the IDS on campus should contain nothing but the designated special (homecoming) edition.”
In a follow-up post Wednesday afternoon, the editors indicated that the university has killed the print edition of the paper after 158 years of publication but has not said why.
NBC News eliminated its teams dedicated to covering issues affecting Black, Asian American, Latino and LGBTQ+ groups as part of its layoffs of about 150 staffers on Wednesday.
(According to) the Alliance for Audited Media, the (Washington) Post’s paid average daily circulation is now down to just 97,000, with roughly 160,000 on Sundays. That’s a fraction of the 250,000 average daily circulation five years ago, when the Post was one of the largest newspapers in the country. …
In recent months, the Post has seen an unprecedented loss of talent as many of their most accomplished writers have left for competitors. The outlet had an awkward breakup with Opinion Editor David Shipley, who resigned when (owner Jeff) Bezos announced that the section would only publish pieces in favor of “personal liberties and free markets,” while leaving the job of publishing all other opinions to “the internet.”
Quotables
A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
According to the CATO Institute, about 1.2% of U.S.-born citizens in their 30s have been incarcerated at some point, compared to 0.6% of immigrants without legal status and 0.3% of immigrants with legal status. How can that be? … Allow me to offer a helpful metaphor: Imagine that if you are caught speeding, say going 45 mph in a 35-mph zone, you could be arrested and deported to a country you left as a toddler. You’d drive slower, right? That is the simple explanation for the lower immigrant crime rate. — Neil Steinberg
Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet. The UK is imprisoning thousands for their tweets. France is criminally investigating tech leaders who defend freedom and privacy. A dark, dystopian world is approaching fast — while we’re asleep. Our generation risks going down in history as the last one that had freedoms. — Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram
No one can save CBS News, because it was made for a media ecosystem that is now dead. Broadcast television is slowly circling the drain, its aging audience drifting toward the great inevitable. Younger people are getting their news from TikTok and Instagram in ever-greater numbers, and they trust institutional media less than ever. CBS in particular has the oldest audience in primetime TV. — Elizabeth Lopatto at the Verge on the appointment of Bari Weiss to run CBS News
Trumpism is more than politics. It’s an emotional gas-main explosion, from people who felt unheard, patronized, left behind. … As we watch Trump lay waste to multiple generations of conservative dogma, it starts to become clear that ideology of any kind is inadequate to capture what is happening in the electorate. — Michael Hirschorn in The New York Times
Readers of this page are well aware that we have no praise for the Wicked Witch of the West, though we do take issue with the uncivil use of the word “wicked” to describe her. … But we would be remiss if we did not also note how Dorothy has escalated tensions by refusing to share her ruby slippers with the witch. … We also believe Dorothy would be well advised to pick better friends. — From “Show some civility, Dorothy.” Mark Jacob’s parody of a Tribune editorial
Based on the known spending so far, the deployments (of federal troops to U.S. cities) could wind up costing Americans roughly two-thirds of a billion dollars. — Marc Novicoff in The Atlantic
Two reactive forces to modern pluralism have developed: a hard nationalist right and a radical illiberal left. They present themselves as opposites but are united in their obsession with identity politics and a dream of sameness, in which alternative ideas and cultures are seen as threats. For years, the illiberal left tried to cancel dissenting voices on campuses and in academic curriculums. Now the Trump movement seeks to impose its own orthodoxy, threatening universities, law firms and media companies with government power. This ambition to enforce one idea on everyone is always presented as a call for unity. In practice, it creates a zero-sum game that fuels conflict. — Johan Norberg in “Is it America’s fate to decline and fall? Here’s what history says.”
Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone. — Anne Frank, 1943
Rahm Emanuel referred to the Chicago Teachers Union as a socialist conspiracy. … But little did he know there was no conspiracy. We were just doing it. — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson
Autism is still a mystery, no matter what (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) says. Maybe we’d eventually know more about it if we weren’t slashing medical research left and right. — Neil Steinberg
I know a lot of people don’t agree with me, but I am the only one that matters. — Donald Trump
The first is that I’m heartily sick of people saying, in effect, that we should pay little mind to the strange, nonsensical, scary things President Donald Trump says, we should pay attention only to what he does. As though there is some disconnect between his unhinged verbiage and the actions his administration later takes; as if it’s of little consequence that the president of the United States unleashes intemperate and inaccurate blather.
But the second is that the Editorial Board seems either not to know or not to care that “disinterested” is not a synonym for “uninterested,” which is plainly the concept they were going for.
An uninterested person is bored, unconcerned, or indifferent; and a disinterested person is impartial, unbiased, or has no stake in the outcome.
You want the referee of your game to be disinterested. You don’t want the referee to have a bet on the game. As another example, if you’re on trial, you want a disinterested judge.
Here’s how to use these words according to the traditional rules:
Squiggly was uninterested in the Super Bowl. Instead, he was looking forward to the Puppy Bowl.
The ex-wife can hardly be considered a disinterested party in the estate sale.
I don’t consider the distinction to be disagreeably pedantic — like, for instance, the farther/further, between/among or comprise/compose distinctions. I believe it’s worth fighting to keep “disinterested” and “uninterested” separate and not to shrug off the blurring together as just an example of language evolving.
But was your opinion I was interested in, gentle reader, and you were emphatic
630 votes
Cheer chat
Update on preparations for the 27th annual “Songs of Good Cheer” winter holiday singalongs Dec. 11-14 at the Old Town School of Folk Music hosted by Mary Schmich and me.
We had our first in-person rehearsal Sunday afternoon and settled on “We Need A Little Christmas” as our opening number for this year’s program. Somehow, we’ve never offered this earworm song from the Broadway musical “Mame.”
I’ve taken on the challenge of leading “Chariots,” a song with a fairly ambitious range for me and trickier intervals than I’m used to.
The Tylers, above, have suggested we dust off “Friendly Beasts” and give the audience a chance to yodel. Our new cast member, De’Jah Perkins, is working up “Santa Baby.”
At a Zoom meeting Tuesday, we made a tentative set list and tried to strike the right balance between familiar and unfamiliar, secular and sacred, peppy and moody. As those who have been before will tell you, we do a pretty good job of mixing things just right.
Buy tickets online, by phone(773-728-6000) or at the Old Town School of Folk Music box office, 4544 N. Lincoln Ave. in Chicago.
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite social media posts that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest:
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
When one door closes, another one opens. Other than that, it’s a pretty good car. — unknown
Me: Is there something I could do differently to improve my sleep? Doctor: I recommend not looking at your phone for at least an hour before bed. Me: So nothing then. — @johnlyon.bsky.social
This celery traveled all the way from California to end up in the garbage. It makes you think. — @schumoo
Me and a few other buddies who aren’t that intelligent individually are forming a hive mind. — @camerobradford
Any job can be a dream job if you have nightmares about work. — @itsabbyyep.bsky.social
Just saw onto the sidelines. They have enough footballs for literally all the players. They’re making them fight over that one for no reason. — @TheAndrewNadeau
Oh, you can’t miss it. I live just a stone’s throw away from the house with all the broken windows. — @benedictsred
The thing about baseball chants is that I actually do want a “belly itcher.” That would be awesome. — @jakevig.bsky.social
My bank’s website is one letter off from a German porn site and it’s annoying because I keep accidentally visiting my bank’s website. — @johnlyon.bsky.social
We’ll we’ll we’ll if it isn’t my old friend autocorrect. — @frovo.bsky.social
Vote hereand check the current results in the poll.
For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.
Marj Halperin, Austin Berg, and I joined host John Williams onthis week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. Most of the conversation dealt with the federal immigration enforcement actions in Chicago, though we moved at the end to talk about Mayor Brandon Johnson’s budget address Thursday — given all that he’s promised and sworn not to to, how’s he going to close a budget gap of more than $1 billion while still “investing in people”?
Traffic lights:
John: A green light for the new movie “One Battle After Another,” which was green-lit last week by Brandon Pope and seconded this week by Austin.
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.
Read the background bios of some regular panelists here.
Good Sports
Room-inating
I kept hearing football commentators talk about position “rooms” when referencing a group of players with similar designations: “They have a good wide-receiver room,” for instance, or “they’re going to need to make some additions to the linebacker room.”
Online consensus seems to be that the term originated from coaches referring to the meeting spaces where position groups meet to study film and strategize, and was first popularized by HBO’s “Hard Knocks” series of behind-the-scenes looks at football teams that debuted in 2001.
But I can’t figure out when and why announcers started saying that a player carrying the ball without defenders around him is “in space.”
Moody Blue
The University of Michigan’s former placekicker Jake Moody — pulled off the scrapheap by the Bears after being released by the 49ers — was the hero of Monday night’s Bears victory over the Commanders. After he kicked four field goals, including the last-second game winner, his temporary teammates hoisted him on their shoulders.
I say “temporary” because he was playing only because the regular kicker, Cairo Santos, was injured. It’s a feel-good story, sort of. Moody returned this week to the practice squad. And we’re reminded of how fragile life is for an NFL placekicker — miss a few or even have one blocked, and you may be working a construction job next week. But hang around, and you may just get another chance on the big stage.
Green Light
Green Light features recommendations from me and readers not only of songs — as in the former Tune of the Week post — but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on.
One day Mark Zuckerberg arises from his sarcophagus and he says, “Hearken to me, brothers and sisters, for I’ve had a vision. I know I told you that your future consisted entirely of arguing with your racist uncle using the primitive text interface that I created to non-consensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergraduates. But it turns out that the true future is for me to convert you and everyone you love into a legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon character so that I can imprison you in a virtual world. …” And that is when Facebook turns into a pile of shit. And that is end stage in shitification.
Info
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. Browse and search back issues here.
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“It might not make any difference, but chilling out at home certainly won’t,” is enough to get my lazy rear-end in gear to join the throng in nearby Elmhurst. Bemusedly applauding the growing protests on the evening news is no longer sufficient.
I’m a disabled grandmother with severe osteoporosis. I’ll be carrying a two-sided sign: 1) Less ICE, More NICE! 2) Brittle bones! Arrest with care!
“It might not make any difference, but chilling out at home certainly won’t,” is enough to get my lazy rear-end in gear to join the throng in nearby Elmhurst. Bemusedly applauding the growing protests on the evening news is no longer sufficient.