Step off, Ruth Bader Feinstein!

& two things I don't understand about the Bud Light controversy

4-20-2023 (issue No. 84)

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 — … and some close runners up

• News and Views — Don't stand in the doorway, Sen. Feinstein. Don't block up the hall

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

• Kass strikes back — Sort of

• Mary Schmich — Regrets her error

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

• Results of the reader poll on pennies and nickels — They make a lot of cents

• Tune of the Week — “Georgia Hard” nominated by Mark Guarino

Last week’s winning tweet

Last week saw the closest top 3 finish in the nine-year history of the Tweet of The Week poll. With more than 1,700 votes cast, it was nearly a dead heat at the top:

One of my favorite tweets ever — “If you're not happy single, you won't be happy in a relationship. True happiness comes from watching a seagull shoplift snacks from a convenience store, not from another person,” by @roxiqt — finished dead last.

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

News and Views

News: ‘Ruth Bader Feinstein’ refuses to step down, imperiling the Democrats’ long-term agenda.

View: The lure of power is obviously very strong, but these superannuated political figures need to check their enormously swollen egos and step down when the job gets too much for them. Feinstein is 89 and suffering from shingles as well as cognitive decline. As Slate reports, “Because of Feinstein’s absence, Democrats have lost their majority in the Senate Judiciary Committee and have been prevented from advancing Biden’s judicial nominees—arguably the most important thing Democrats can be doing right now, especially without control of the House.”

Republicans are blocking Democrats’ efforts to replace Feinstein on the committee with a series of transparent excuses, so the only solution appears to be for Feinstein to resign and allow California Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a replacement. But she won’t quit, giving liberals flashbacks to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was in her 80s yet refused to retire during Democratic President Barack Obama’s second term. She was still on the high court when she died in 2020, and President Donald Trump then appointed conservative Amy Coney Barrett, who is likely to undo much of the good Ginsburg did.

I was pleased with myself for thinking up “Ruth Bader Feinstein,” until I did a little search and found I was by no means the first person to use it.

Powerful octogenarians in government: Your cause, your party, your nation needs new blood, young blood. You’re not as critical to success as you think you are. Pass the baton. And yes, with respect, I’m also looking at you, President Joe Biden.

News: Mayor Lori Lightfoot says she’s handing Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson a city with rosy financial future

View: It feels a bit like a trap, doesn’t it? Lightfoot leaves her successor with projections for a comparatively small budget gap of $85 million (if he consents to a property tax increase he has forsworn) and tells him “don’t screw it up.”

This compares to the $636 million shortfall Mayor Rahm Emanuel left for Lightfoot and the $838 million Mayor Richard M. Daley left for Emanuel, and leaves Johnson vulnerable to charges that he ballooned the deficit or that he is asking for tax and fee hikes on businesses when they’re not necessary to fund current programs.

News: About the chaotic, destructive, frightening teen disturbances downtown and at an area beach, South Side Democratic state Sen. Robert Peters tweeted: “I would look at the behavior of young people as a political act and statement. It’s a mass protest against poverty and segregation.”

View: I didn’t see any signs or hear any “hey-hey, ho-ho!” chants in the coverage of these troubling gatherings, so framing the exuberant mayhem as a “protest” is unpersuasive to outrageous. The impulses to attack bystanders and commit vandalism may well be rooted in poverty fueled by segregation — though that claim is at odds with the claim that the vast majority of kids who gathered over the weekend were not causing trouble and are being unfairly lumped in with a small number of bad actors.

I posted my take on the mayor-elect’s tone-deaf response to the violence in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus.

News: Conservatives are boycotting Bud Light over the beer’s partnership with trans actress Dylan Mulvaney

View: Two things here I don’t understand.

One, why the very existence of trans individuals seems to agitate, offend and threaten so many people. Grant them grace, dignity and their legal rights. Then mind your own business. What is so damn hard about that?

Two, why anyone would ever choose to buy Bud Light when there are so many better, more interesting beers on the shelves and on tap. The only thing that could make me buy a Bud Light would be to counter the efforts of right-wing idiots now saying they’ll never buy it again.

News: Ranked-choice voting seems to have a bit of traction in Springfield

View: Huzzah! The state Senate held a committee hearing Wednesday on Senate Bill 1456 — legislation that would require Illinois presidential primaries to use a ranked-choice system for voting. It is companion legislation to House Bill 2807.

Land of Linkin’

• Prominent Republicans as drag queens. Thank you, AI!

  

• LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik writes, “Hate Fox News? Too bad — you still have to pay for it.” He notes, “In traditional theories about consumer behavior, people who don't like or don't trust a product can vote with their feet, simply by choosing not to buy. That's not how things work with cable television (where) consumers typically don't have a choice. Fox News is one of the channels that cable systems treat as a must-have offering and, therefore, bundle it into their basic cable subscriptions” costing every subscriber about $2 a month. Esquire columnist Charles Pierce tweeted his prediction that Fox will now raise its carriage fees to cover the cost of its settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over flagrant lies the network promulgated about the company. And shortly thereafter Vanity Fair media columnist Brian Stelter reported, “In the negotiations that are taking place this spring between Fox and the likes of Comcast, Fox wants to break past the three-buck mark—meaning $3 per cable household per month.”

• A respectful but vigorous conversation about the Adam Toledo case was in Zmail, a regular feature of the Picayune Plus. It continues in the comment thread, where it touches on the Trayvon Martin and Kyle Rittenhouse cases as well.

• I’m starting to think that I’m in a tiny minority of city residents who are indignant that Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson has indicated he’s going to fire Chicago Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady because she was at odds with the Chicago Teachers Union about when and how to reopen schools during the pandemic. The change.org petition “Tell Mayor-elect Johnson to keep Dr. Allison Arwady” has a paltry number of signatures at this writing.

• The Picayune Sentinel preview: Tuesday 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.

U mad, bro?

Hey, I thought I was pretty nice to John Kass last week in my item about him seeking to trademark “The Chicago Way.” Explained why I thought it was a good idea. Reminded readers of my conclusion that he was the first to use in print the word “dibs” to describe the practice of saving on-street parking places with household junk after a snowstorm. Even said that, despite our political differences, I was glad to see he’s on the mend from some recent health setbacks.

But one day later (above), he ripped me on Twitter as a suck-up to (I assume he meant) establishment Democrats as part of a thread in which he bleated about “the broken legacy media (particularly the Chicago Tribune) that protect “corrupt Soros-backed ‘prosecutors’” and opined that “corrupt left wing media & left wing Democrats have killed Chicago. It’s done.”

The other local journalist he singled out as a “suck up to power” was Tribune political reporter Rick Pearson, whose lunch Kass is not fit to pack.

“Corrupt” is not a word that a good journalist throws around lightly.

Maybe Kass was sore because I incidentally linked to “The truth about John Kass’ dispute with the Tribune and the Tribune Guild,” a point-by-point refutation of his bullshit complaints about the paper where he and I worked for many decades. Or maybe he’s irked about being called out on social media for ignoring the scandalous financial shenanigans of arch-conservative U.S Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas even though he was perpetually in high dudgeon over Barack Obama’s comparatively mild financial interactions with Tony Rezko. Could Kass still be peeved that I threw cold water on that alleged scandal 15 years ago?

Who can tell with that guy?

Mary Schmich: ‘Mea Culpa’

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is her most recent offering, based on the voluminous (but good-natured) criticism she received when she posted the above photo of her winter coat on April 10, when the high temperature was a balmy 68 degrees, and asked “Is it safe to put this beast away for good?” Then on Monday morning, with temperatures in the 30s and a dusting of snow on the ground, she posted this:

I put my winter coat away
The wise folk shouted: NO!
They said you’ll jinx our perfect spring
You’ll bring the April snow!

Today I must concede they’re right
It’s OK if they gloat
But, friends, I will not, will not, won’t
Bring back that winter coat.

I put my winter coat away
I will not get it out
This measly snow will vanish soon
Of that I have no doubt.

The snowflakes on the fresh green leaves
Look pretty from afar
Why, gosh, they look like dogwoods
And perhaps they really are!

Look, springtime is an attitude
When hope begins to stir
Let’s cling to that fresh hope, my friends
But in the meantime: Brrr.

—Mary Schmich

Re: Tweets

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor and so can’t be included in the classic Tweet of the Week contest in which the template for the poll does not allow the use of images. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

Review the entries here.

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• Dentist: You need to floss. Me: No. Dentist: My other patient who wouldn’t floss lost all his teeth. Me: Really? Dentist: In a fistfight. Me: That sounds unrelated. Dentist: It was my fist. Do what I say. — @clichedout

• “Share” size peanut M&M’s puts way too much pressure on me to be a good person. — @SCbchbum

• In today’s episode of “How strong is your marriage?”we take a trip to Home Depot to pick out a shade of white. — @daddygofish

• The crematorium has no business sounding that delicious. — @ilovepie84

• Everyone is fighting a battle you don’t know about. Except for me. I am complaining loudly about my battle. Everybody knows about it. — @TheAndrewNadeau

• And there I was, at 21, broken that I'd never hear my sister laugh again. I held her limp hand, my eyes playing cruel tricks as I swore I saw her breathe. In that moment, all I could think about was the lava cake we'd bake together. For this recipe, you'll need a double boiler… — @elle91

• She broke up with me but said we could "still be friends" as if I wanted to keep having all of the arguments but none of the sex. — @MelvinofYork

• I tried starting a new world religion where you can be a complete shit to everybody and blame it on some words in an old book, but apparently it's already been done. — @wildethingy

• Sorry for referring to your baby as “ominous.” I didn’t realize you would hear me through the monitor. — @hansmollman

• The older I become the more I think Oscar the Grouch should just be called Oscar. — @Social_Mime

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

Rejection sustained! PS voters say we should get rid of pennies and nickels

In response to last Thursday’s item making the case against the nickel as well as the penny coin, a strong majority of more than 800 Picayune Sentinel readers said no thanks to both denominations.

Tune of the Week

This week’s guest nominator is Mark Guarino, Chicago-based producer for ABC’s “Good Morning America” and other shows. He also writes for The Washington Post, New York Times, The Guardian, Crain’s, the Tribune and other publications. His book, “Country and Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival,” will be published later this month by the University of Chicago Press. So I gave Mark the impossible assignment of coming up with just one song to give readers a feel for this massive topic. Here’s the result:

“Georgia Hard” is a song that I consider within a set of records — “Couples in Trouble” (2001), “Georgia Hard” (2005), “Gone Away Backward” (2013) and “Upland Stories” (2016) — that represent the evolution of Robbie Fulks’ second act as a songwriter.

Early in his career, Fulks gleefully subverted the country genre while at the same time operating within its strict parameters. Those songs made a splash, and rightfully so: He made classic country sound modern and more than often, wickedly funny.

These albums go far beyond that. True singer-songwriter records, they’re rooted in storytelling that explores the psychological realities of everyday people.

“Georgia Hard” follows a theme familiar to songs such as Merle Haggard’s “Big City”: The homesickness of the Southern transplant in the big city — in this case Chicago.

Working in a mailroom and living in an apartment facing a bleak alley, the song’s protagonist could well be living in Uptown, among the thousands of Appalachians who moved here for work but discovered upon landing that city living was louder, dirtier, denser, colder, and more violent than life back home.

There’s no Carolina moon over Chicago
No bluegrass growing out of my backyard
No fields of sugar cane
No soft Virginia rain
But damn if this livin’ ain’t Georgia hard

By the song’s end, he’s calling home hustling for work on a pecan farm.

Robbie Fulks was born in North Carolina, educated in New York City, but it was in Chicago where he found a musical home. He became a member of Special Consensus, the long-running bluegrass band that was among the first to play that music outside the South in the early 1970s.

While seeking work as a songwriter for hire in Nashville, he became a solo act for Bloodshot Records at a time when a subgenre — alt-country — was getting mainstream attention. He helped define that trend, but as the years went on, he transcended it by collaborating with people as diverse as Steve Albini, Linda Gail Lewis and Sam Bush.

To me, Fulks is a definitive artist who could only come from Chicago, a city where musicians are restless collaborators and where playing outside your musical lane is expected. As a masterful musician, singer, songwriter and vocalist, he’s tough to beat in any city and in any era.

But in Chicago, he also connected musical partners to help blur genre lines and created an environment — audiences, clubs and a record label — that happily followed along and didn’t push back. — Mark Guarino

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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