Stifling dissent

Owner Jeff Bezos mandates uniformity of views in The Washington Post's opinion pages

2-27-2025 (issue No. 182)

This week:

• Darkness descends on The Washington Post

• Last week’s winning quip

• Comments on Tribune editorials

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked

• That’s so Brandon! — Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s maladroit mayor, who seems to think he knows all the reasons he was elected but can’t seem to figure out why he’s so dang unpopular

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

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

• Mary Schmich — An email to Elon Musk

• There is no accounting for the taste of people who don’t like fake meat!

• Speculating about the face tattoo on Robert Crimo III

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

• Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

• Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists

• Good Sports — Butt out, tush push!

• Tune of the Week — A sweet cover of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” as nominated by Kathy Hirsh

Darkness descends on The Washington Post

Wednesday morning, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos posted to social media that the newspaper’s opinion section will no longer present a range of views, but instead will be “writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” adding that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job. … I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.

Opinion editor David Shipley resigned Wednesday rather than oversee the section under the new conditions.

Former Post executive editor Marty Baron announced he “could not be more sad and disgusted” at Bezos’ edict:

It was only weeks ago that The Post described itself as providing coverage for “all of America.” Now its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does. … There is no doubt in my mind that he is doing this out of fear of the consequences for his other business interests, Amazon (the source of his wealth) and Blue Origin (which represents his lifelong passion for space exploration). He has prioritized those commercial interests over The Post, and he is betraying The Post’s longstanding principles to do so.

Here’s Amanda Katz, former senior opinion editor at the Post:

RIP, WaPo. … An absolute abandonment of the principles of accountability of the powerful, justice, democracy, human rights and accurate information that previously animated the section in favor of a white male billionaire’s self-interested agenda.

Here’s Gene Weingarten, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning feature writer who left the Post in 2021:

From a very quick survey by me of WaPo staffers: This is the worst thing to happen to The Washington Post ever in its 147 year life, including the Janet Cooke scandal. … Jeffrey Bezos is a businessman with zero interest in newspapers, zero understanding of their culture, their mission, their responsibilities, their vital historical role in a democracy. … I can tell you that the entire newspaper is in shock, not just the Opinions staff. This is just the beginning. Coverage of the news will come next.

Fellow Pulitzer winner David Maraniss, now an associate editor at the Post, wrote this:

One pernicious step after another, Bezos encroached on the editorial policy of the Post. Today he seized it fully. The old Post is dead. I’ll never write for it again as long as he's the owner.

NPR noted:

Bezos personally paid $1 million toward Trump's inaugural fund. He and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez traveled to Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, to socialize with the Trumps. And, along with other digital chieftains, Bezos sat behind the president as he was sworn in for a second term.

I’ll be curious to see what the left-leaning columnists at the Post will do. They’re all employable elsewhere, though probably not at any of the vanishing number of newspapers in America.

I’m also curious to see what subscribers to the Post and to Amazon Prime will do. We’re cancelling both subscriptions, futile as that gesture might be.

Bezos’ notion that conservative “viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion” is just bullshit. Those viewpoints are everywhere. I’m reminded of the piteous bleatings of Christians that they are somehow marginalized and powerless in the United States despite their suffocating cultural and numerical dominance. Right-wing talk, commentary and online screeds are ubiquitous.

And I don’t mind reading some of them. In fact, I look to responsible newspaper opinion sections to offer me a sampling of views that occasionally differ from my own. As much as I may disagree with some of the op-eds and editorials in the Tribune and Sun-Times, for example, I am better — smarter — for the exposure to contrasting arguments. A population aware of and challenged by a variety of views is central to the informed voting upon which democracy relies.

The Tribune put it well in an editorial posted Wednesday afternoon:

The owner of the Post apparently thinks the internet is the new best venue for ensuring that Americans are exposed to a wide variety of diverse viewpoints.

We think the opposite is true and are surprised that an executive who built a huge business in part through his algorithmic mastery does not agree.

Social media channels that once fostered such opinions have now become polarized; you now find progressives on Bluesky and conservatives on X, unless someone is intellectually curious enough to read both sides. So no, Mr. Bezos, the internet does not now do the job of “a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views.”

That’s the entire raison d’etre of such a section in a newspaper like the Chicago Tribune or The New York Times or The Washington Post, where standard operating procedure is (or at least should be) to curate informed, readable, intelligent and provocative points of view and present them to readers without regard to political favor.

Yes, my postings in the Picayune Sentinel are fairly consistently left of center, but I regularly and enthusiastically publish and respond to dissenting readers in the Tuesday Picayune Plus, even though I could simply direct readers to the internet for other opinions, as Bezos suggests.

The Post’s opinion section will now be a propaganda sheet, comforting the comfortable and smooching the behind of President Donald Trump. It’s as though Bezos is trying to demonstrate the truth of the newspaper’s slogan, one that he himself came up with: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

Last week’s winning quip

Pluto is no longer a planet. It is now part of America. — @JoePontillo

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

No notes: Tribune editorial on Ukraine nails it!

Wednesday’s Tribune editorial on Ukraine exhibited great moral clarity:

When the U.S. voted with Russia against a United Nations General Assembly resolution Monday that was criticizing Russia for its aggressions against Ukraine of three years ago, we say “for shame.” All peace-loving people should want to an end to this war, and the realities of Realpolitik means that will come with a price we will have to swallow, but it’s a bridge way too far for the U.S. to formally balk at the notion that Putin started this war.

So let’s be clear. Again.

Russia invaded a sovereign nation. Period. Any zeal to end the war must not compromise a fair and full acknowledgment of how this particular war began. If this was a tactical appeasement decision on the part of Trump, Rubio or anyone else, and there can be no other explanation not too terrible to contemplate, it was both a dangerous and a morally bankrupt one.

All Americans with actual, functioning memories know that. So do the Ukrainian and Russian people. And so do we.

I posted a similar take in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, but I prefer their expression “morally bankrupt” to my “morally vacuous.” I ended with the pertinent question, where are the patriots in the Republican Party? (And where are the deficit hawks? The budget bill that just passed through the House is likely to drastically increase the national debt, but if that’s what the Dear Leader wants …)

But about that Pritzker editorial …

Last week’s “now, now, Trump isn’t looking like a Nazi yet” Tribune editorial was, in contrast, disconcertingly weak:

The chances of keeping critical federal support coming may not have been aided by (Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s) harsh criticism of Trump in his speech, making over-the-top comparisons of Trump’s MAGA movement to the early stages of the Nazi takeover of Germany. We don’t find that rhetoric productive; it fails to acknowledge that Trump was duly elected, winning both the electoral and popular votes for president, and it ignores the need for Illinois’ governor to find ways — as difficult as that might be — to work with the new administration. Such language also represents the premature detonation of a rhetorical nuclear option, leaving Pritzker nowhere to go should evidence evolve to make that a fair comparison.

The idea that a “duly elected” leader can’t also be an authoritarian with dictatorial impulses and highly dangerous nationalistic impulses is manifestly false. I’m not sure what norm-shattering, destructive act of Trump’s — which stiff-armed salute from his acolytes, which flagrant violation of the Constitution — will cause them to pull the alarm. But let’s just hope this editorial ages better than the Feb. 8, 1928, Tribune editorial headlined “A ‘welcome’ mat for Mussolini:”

We encourage the ambitions of the gentleman who has just sent more than 100 members of the Sicilian Mafia to prison and hard labor. We can use that sort of government here. Fascism administers a kind of justice not possible under our American code, in accordance with the law of retributive severity not to be found in our statute books. If the Italian ambassador and the Italian consuls are unable to handle their compatriots in America who go in for banditry, bootlegging, bombing, blackhanding and the more brutal forms of bloodshed, we should welcome an army of invasion of black shirt policemen, black shirt judges, black shirt crown attorneys, and black shirt jurors to administer law according to Fascist principles.

(Hat tip to former Tribune metro editor Mark Jacob, who found this editorial in the archives)

To be fair, the Tribune editorial page long ago escaped the gravity of its reactionary past, but since it has lately been publishing excerpts from vintage editorials, it’s only fair to surface regrettable offerings.

News & Views

News: The chief of staff for ostensibly progressive 25th Ward Alder Byron Sigcho Lopez booted Block Club Chicago reporter Francia Garcia Hernandez from a public meeting held at a public school last week.

View: This is just wrong and deserves censure from the City Council. We lefties who deplore President Donald Trump’s childish, petulant decision to keep Associated Press reporters away from his media availabilities because the wire service’s stylebook doesn’t recognize his churlish effort to rename the Gulf of Mexico must be just as strong in condemning Sigcho Lopez.

News: Voters in suburban Dolton buried Mayor Tiffany Henyard Tuesday, giving her opponent an 88%-12% victory.

View: Whew! Henyard was manifestly dreadful — brash, defensive, fiscally irresponsible and totally sure of herself -- Trumpy, in short. My fear was that voters would re-elect her anyway or maybe even because she was so brazenly irresponsible. The overwhelming primary victory by Trustee Jason House goes a little way toward reaffirming my faith in the electorate.

News: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration have set a May 7 deadline for air passengers to show a Real ID.

View: Oh, please! How many times have we heard this cry of “wolf!” from enthusiasts of this bit of security theater? The 2008 deadline contained in the Real ID Act of 2005 has been pushed back many times already for various reasons, and ultimately I expect this new deadline to be pushed back as well. Politicians and the TSA don’t want the confusion and chaos that will result from an enforcement of the requirement that air passengers have updated Real IDs or valid passports to pass through security.

That’s So Brandon!

Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s mayor

This week, in responding to reporters’ questions about the possibility that he’ll have to dip into Chicago’s reserve funds or borrow heavily to cover educational expenses, Mayor Brandon Johnson said any such move would be —

—about creating the ideal circumstances so that parents actually feel confident that the education that their child will get will reflect the education that children in certain parts of the city have gotten. That’s the ideal situation that we’re fighting for, and that’s why I’m mayor of this city.

Italics mine. Johnson is forever citing his 4.4 percentage point victory in the 2023 mayoral runoff election as some sort of popular mandate. Some examples:

“I’m going to continue to do what I was elected to do, which is to respond to decades-old processes and failures by repairing the structural damage by actually paying into our pensions while making critical investments.” (Source)

“Bringing structure, calm and a more collaborative approach — that’s what people elected me to do.” (Source)

“We want an equitable school district that speaks to the needs of the people of the city of Chicago. That’s what the people of Chicago elected me to do.” (Source)

“I was elected to disrupt the status quo.” (Source)

“The people of Chicago elected me to address public education and public transportation, public health.” (Source)

“I was elected to transform this city.” (Source)

“The people of Chicago elected me to invest in people.” (Source)

“What the people of Chicago elected me to do is to bring people together.” (Source)

“I am not going to accept cuts. I’m not. That is not what the people of Chicago elected me to do, to cut our school district. I am not going to do it.” (Source)

“Part of my responsibility, of course, is to address the age-old systems of failure and to build a better, stronger, safer Chicago, and that is something that I’m committed to doing. That’s what the people of Chicago elected me to do.” (Source)

“I was elected to fight for the people of the city and whoever is in the way, get out of it." (Source)

“I was elected to invest in people. Guess what I’m doing? I’m investing in people.” (Source)

“The people of the City of Chicago elected me to make sure their government invests in and addresses their needs.” (Source)

This bears repeating: Johnson won in large part because he was not his opponent, Paul Vallas, whose Republican adjacency did not appeal to a largely Democratic voting bloc. Reading into this result some sort of mandate or emphatic will of the people is a categorical error.

The rejection of incumbent Lori Lightfoot in the general election did express dissatisfaction with the status quo, and Johnson’s victory in the runoff election revealed progressive inclinations in the electorate. Beyond that, Johnson reads far too much into his victory when he claims the people want him to break the bank to fund schools or “invest in people.”

Recent polling shows that he’s lost whatever “mandate” he might have had:

M3 Strategies “surveyed 696 likely Chicago voters from February 20-21, 2025” and found “79.9% of voters disapprove of Johnson, with just 6.6% holding a favorable view.”

This low number inspired local Fraternal Order of Police president John Catanzara to greet Johnson as “Mayor Henyard” at the beginning of his remarks during the public comment portion of Wednesday’s City Council meeting, a reference to the dramatic defeat Tuesday of Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard.

Before launching into his critique of the controversial $830 million bond issue, Catanzara said:

Somebody already talked about the 6 1/2% approval rating. I wanna remind you, you were elected by half — roughly 52% — of 600,000 Chicagoans, that’s about 12% of the population. You are literally at 6 1/2 %. Donald Trump could run for mayor of Chicago right now and beat you, that’s how unpopular you are, and ridiculous this city has become. (1:04:48 in the video of the Feb. 26, 2005 City Council meeting)

He might be right. In M3’s 2027 mayoral preference poll, Johnson finished fourth with 8.2% support, behind Vallas with 27.4% support, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias with 21% support and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza with 11.7%. My current personal favorite, state Rep. Kam Buckner, is in fifth place with 6.3% (though 35% of respondents said they’d never heard of him).

The pollster’s word cloud on Johnson was brutal:

M3 Strategies is a Republican pollster, and Johnson did somewhat better in a December Harris Poll of 1,007 Chicago and Cook County residents that was the subject of a Tribune op-ed this week:

Only 23% of Chicago residents approve of Johnson’s performance as the city’s chief executive and think he deserves to be reelected. … Two-thirds of Chicagoans say they disagree with Johnson’s priorities, and 72% yearn for a moderate mayor, rather than a progressive or conservative.

Johnson needs to stop comforting himself looking at election results from nearly two years ago and start asking why he has lost the support and confidence of the public.

Land of Linkin’

• Those who are supportive of the United State’s betrayal of Ukraine and the Trump administration’s sucking up to Russian leader Vladimir Putin might want to brush up on the history of appeasement.

• “It's God's Fault We Lost the Game.”

• Mincing Rascal Austin Berg of the Illinois Policy Institute is starting a Substack, “The Last Ward,” which he describes as “a newsletter that rips open the machinery of corruption and demands a city government that serves the governed.”

• Play the NewsWheel Tuesdays in the Picayune Plus: Inspired by the WordWheel puzzle in the Monday-Friday Chicago Tribune and other papers, this puzzle asks you to identify the missing letter that will make a word or words — possibly proper noun; reading either clockwise or counterclockwise — related to a story in the news.

• “What is it about DEI that has conservatives so PO’d?” — Reader Jake H. offers an answer to my question.

• “Elon Musk Offers to Guest With Jon Stewart on ‘The Daily Show,’ Show Accepts.” Read a portion of the Stewart monologue that seems to have inspired Musk to want to debate in Quotables below.

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:

■ Wired takes a critical look at Dan Bongino, the Infowars alumnus who’s now Trump’s No. 2 guy at the FBI: “A Trump sycophant whose focus has been delegitimizing any and all legal steps taken against the president.” And Axios lists 10 problematic things Bongino has said in the last year.

■ “They’re scared shitless”: A veteran of Donald Trump’s first administration tells Vanity Fair the fear of political violence—“death threats and Gestapo-like stuff”—is keeping Republican lawmakers in the president’s thrall.

■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: Trump’s posting of an AI-generated video envisioning “an ethnically-cleansed Gaza … checks every fucking crazypants box imaginable.”

■ Someone hacked monitors throughout the Housing and Urban Development Department’s D.C. headquarters to loop an AI-generated video of Trump kissing Elon Musk’s feet, with the caption “Long live the real king”—a thing that delighted Stephen Colbert: “Warning: If you have kids … get them in here to see how great this is.”

■ Rolling Stone: Musk’s getting a flood of “very rude” replies.

■ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “Trump no longer needs MAGA voters, so he’s gutting Medicaid and laying off veterans.”

■ The Sun-Times details how the cuts are playing out at the Chicago area’s biggest wild space, the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie.

■ Columnist Andy Borowitz shares a list of things “keeping me sane during Elon Musk’s flaming Cybertruck of a presidency.”

■ He just can’t wait to be king: As his administration struck down New York City’s congestion pricing traffic controls, Trump crowned himself, declaring “LONG LIVE THE KING,” giving new life to a classic “Schoolhouse Rock” cartoon.

■ Columnist Evan Hurst: “It’s time to make fun of JD Vance”—who, HuffPost explains, told a conclave of regressives that America’s “broken culture” wants a world full of “androgynous idiots.”

■ “Gravedigger of American democracy”: That’s New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie’s assessment of Sen. Mitch McConnell, who says he won’t seek reelection next year.

■ John Oliver’s out with a guide to making yourself less valuable to Meta/Facebook/etc.

■ Apple says it’ll stomp an iPhone bug that briefly suggests the word “Trump” when someone dictates the word “racist”—a thing an Apple alumnus tells The New York Times “smells like a serious prank.”

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

Mary Schmich: A memo to Elon Musk

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a recent offering:

Hello, Your Royal Highness.

In compliance with your recent email, I wanted to inform you of 5 things I accomplished last week!

1. I de-cluttered two kitchen drawers, which mostly involved getting rid of cords to electronic devices I no longer own.

Oh, and I hope you won’t mind my asking, sir, but how many pointless cords do you own?

2. I traipsed down three flights of stairs to the basement of my ancient six-flat carrying four dirty rugs. I traversed an icy gangway. I stuck the key in the basement door—while holding the dirty rugs!—then opened the door to the freezing basement and walked all the way to the communal washing machine, whereupon I washed those rugs!

Please, sir, do not make me explain why doing laundry in my building resembles an Arctic hiking expedition.

3. I thought several times about doing my taxes.

4. I went to the dentist! That alone deserves a raise, don’t you think?

5. I answered a crazy amount of email. One of them was yours!

P.S. Can I be honest, Your Royal Highness? At first I was p.o.’d that you ordered me to make this stupid list. Why should I have to prove my laundry chops to a guy who's probably never done a load? But now I’m proud. You've helped me realize I got a lot done last week!

With gratitude,

Your humble and highly productive servant

P.P.S. Is anyone still working at the IRS?

Surveys reveal the foods that most divide us as a nation

The results of the Picayune Sentinel’s follow up food preference survey resulted in the following ranking from most- to least-liked foods by percentage of 896 respondents saying they liked it:

• Asparagus — 82%

• Cauliflower — 67%

• Coconut — 63%

• Blue cheese — 62%

• Beets — 57%

• Eggplant —44%

• Tofu —30%

• Fake meat (Impossible and Beyond burgers) —19%

I was surprised by the popularity of blue cheese and beets and saddened by the lack of affection for plant-based meat substitutes, though 33% of respondents said they’d eat it if it were served to them, the highest such score.

In this survey eggplant and tofu — bland, innocuous tofu! — came out as the most divisive foods, even as last week sushi was the closest to a 50/50 food.

No, the ‘47’ face tattoo on the accused Highland Park parade shooter is not a show of support for Trump

Truly, I wondered. Did Robert Crimo III — currently on trial in Lake County for the mass shooting at a July 4, 2022, parade in downtown Highland Park that left seven dead — get “47” tattooed on his right temple hoping that, maybe, somehow, our 47th president would find a way to confer mercy upon him? Sure, it’s a state case over which Donald Trump has no jurisdiction, but you never know.

I put this to my canny Facebook pals and they pointed out that questions about Crimo III’s “47” tattoo go back to the week of the shooting, well before the 2024 election. Among their many guesses, two seemed the most plausible:

One, that it’s a variation on the Wolfsangel symbol that was adopted by the Nazis —

Two, that it’s an allusion to Agent 47, the contract killer controlled by players of the Hitman video game.

Minced Words

Cate Plys, Austin Berg, Marj Halperin and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We discussed suburban Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard’s thumping in Tuesday’s election, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s dismal poll numbers and the passage Wednesday of his $830 million infrastructure bond plan and pending legislation in Springfield to allow for medical aid in dying (assisted suicide) and to ban student cellphones in schools or in the classroom. We also touched on Jeff Bezos’ bombshell edict at The Washington Post Wednesday morning.

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

Quotables

A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

I'm starting to think that we as a country don't understand where the real waste, fraud and abuse in our system really is. Maybe the savings we gleaned from cutting VA nurses and iguana STD studies isn't where the real money is. … How about we just take $3 billion in subsidies we give to oil and gas companies that already turned billions in profits? … How about we just close down the carried interest loophole on hedge funds? That's $1.3 billion a year. How about we stop the $2 trillion we've given to defense contractors to build a fighter jet that blows, when everybody knows the next war is going to be fought with drones and block chain? … I just saved us billions of dollars in 11 seconds. … See, this is where the real money is. The real money. The money our free market-ish system uses to prop up corporate profit at the expense of the taxpayer. Pharmaceutical companies get everything from our government: Tax breaks, research grants, patent extensions worth billions of dollars. And what do we the people get for it? The highest drug prices in the Western Hemisphere. … We live in the upside down, and don't blame the corporations. They are profit seeking psychopaths that need the lowest wages and the cheapest raw materials to drive their highest profits. But why do we, the taxpayers, subsidize their psychopathy? That's the waste, fraud and abuse in our system. That's it. That's what we should be going after. — Jon Stewart

This ridiculous “did you get offended?”/“did you get triggered?” trope is so tired. You’re not a political badass because you upset someone. You’re not a patriot because you bully people. Behaving like human garbage doesn’t make you a renegade. It just makes you a jackass. — The Sassiest Semite

Only an idiot would think we should eliminate emergency response in a natural disaster, education and healthcare for disabled children, gang crime investigations, clean air and water programs, monitoring of nursing home abuse, nuclear reactor regulation and cancer research." — Gov. JB Pritzker

Donald Trump replacing a black four-star general with a white three-star general as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is everything MAGA claims they hate about DEI: Giving a less qualified person the job based on their race, not their resume. — Betty Bowers

I’m reluctantly switching out my Harris/Walz yard sign today for a MAGA one, since I have to do a couple of murders later and I’d hate to think I might be arrested for it. — Frank Ray Whitehouse

Quips

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest:

That’s two recent winners making fun of the banjo! My skin is thick enough to allow it:

Alex and Eric Zorn, 1992

The new nominees for Quip of the Week:

• I would have renamed the Gulf of Mexico Sea Señor. — @BobGolen

• The sign at the zoo says, “Don’t stick your hand in the alligator cage.” Thanks, but I’ll do my own research. — @CooperLawrence

• Oh so no death cab for ugly? Ugly has to walk? — @ThefirstJonk

• Going forward, I’m replacing “I don’t know” with “Unfortunately the answer would drive you to madness” in all work emails. — @ipodmacbook

• I used to think I opposed the metric system, but it doesn’t even matter to me. I don’t believe in measuring things. How long or fat or cold something is, well, that’s none of my business. — @DamonHunzeker

• People singing “Happy Birthday to You” feels like a real life unskippable ad. — @CloudxRaven

• My toxic trait is being irritated that I’m the only one who does the laundry, but also not trusting anyone else to do the laundry. — @sweetmomissa

• I like to go to people’s anniversary parties and say things like, “Your wife would never sleep with your brother. I don’t know why people say that.” — @MomOnFire

• Hey, man, the void is kind of upset about all the screaming. — @michikoconuts

• I always say thanks to ChatGPT so when the robots take over they remember who was nice to them. — @KevinBuffalo

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Why the new name for this feature? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.”

Good Sports

Yes! Ban the ‘tush push’

The NFL is considering a proposal to ban the “tush push” as favored, in particular, by the world champion Philadelphia Eagles. From The Associated Press:

The play ... is a modified quarterback sneak where two or three teammates line up behind (the quarterback) and push him forward to help him try to gain the yardage necessary for a first down or touchdown.

It’s usually used on fourth down with a yard or so to go for a first down, and because of the Philadelphia connection, the play is sometimes referred to as “The Brotherly Shove.”

But, as I’ve argued before, football ain’t rugby and it’s not in the spirit of the game to have ball carriers propelled forward by teammates.

I asked readers for their view in October 2023, and they agreed:

Meanwhile, I’m cheered by reports that the NFL is again rethinking its overtime rules. The college game has it almost right, but to make opportunities perfectly even, they ought to eliminate the kicking game from overtime: Touchdowns and two-point conversions or bust!

When winning isn’t the only thing, it’s a bad thing

Tribune basketball beat writer Julia Poe posted an amusing though somewhat dismaying piece about why it was really bad for the Bulls that they beat the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday:

Strengthening their advantage over the 76ers only worsened the Bulls’ potential draft position.

The issue was compounded by the result of another game 135 miles down the road in Washington, where the Nets upheld their tanking duties by losing to a Wizards team that had won only nine games heading into Monday. The Bulls now lead the Nets by 1½ games and the 76ers by 2½ for 10th place in the East — despite being 12 games under .500 (23-35).

The Bulls have two more games against those teams: March 13 against the Nets and the April 13 regular-season finale against the 76ers. If they show a similar level of effort, they likely will clinch a spot in the play-in tournament for the third consecutive season — and perhaps hamper their rebuilding efforts in the process.

Maybe a better solution to the tanking problem would be to establish draft position midway through the season, when nearly every team still has legitimate playoff hopes and is still trying their hardest to win. Either that, or reward the last few teams to make the playoffs with superior draft positions.

Better ideas, anyone?

Tune of the Week

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

The following nomination is from Kathy Hirsh, who praises the “riveting performance by all involved” in this 2022 cover of Neil Young’s 1992 “Harvest Moon” by The Brothers Comatose and AJ Lee:

When we were strangers
I watched you from afar
When we were lovers
I loved you with all my heart ...
 
Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon

It’s admittedly hard to top the original of this yearning, romantic song, but AJ Lee, one of the few Asian-American women in bluegrass, has a stunning voice that wrings all the feels out of Young’s lyrics.

The Brothers Comatose, who provide the harmonies here, are “a roots-infused bluegrass band known for their infectious blend of Americana, folk, and traditional bluegrass. Based in San Francisco.”

Lee usually plays with AJ Lee and Blue Summit, a Santa Cruz, California-based “energetic, charming, and technically jaw-dropping band quickly rising on the national roots music scene,” according to publicity material. See also, “AJ Lee: Homegrown bluegrass star” in Tahoe Guide.

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.

Contact

You can email me here:

I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.

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