The time to contextualize the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk is ... not now

& reflections on the emergence of a real-life Babel fish

9-11-2025 (issue No. 209)

This week:

• Let’s pause for a moment before rushing to our partisan ramparts to opine about the slaying of Charlie Kirk

• Apple’s Air Pod Pros will allow for instantaneous audio language translation

• Last week’s winning quip

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked about the shrinking National Guard threat, a challenger for Toni Preckwinkle and more

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

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

• Media notes — CBS News is more dead to me than ever

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

• Cheer chat — It’s beginning to feel a lot like the time of year when I begin flogging December’s “Songs of Good Cheer” shows! I have the dates for you

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

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

• Good Sports — Why do we honor athletes for their “fame” instead of their skill?

• Green Light — An endorsement of the song“Happy Together” in memory of The Turtles co-founder Mark Volman who died Friday

Let’s pause for a moment before rushing to our partisan ramparts to opine about the slaying of Charlie Kirk

The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Wednesday at an event at Utah Valley University is frightening and deplorable. It marks yet another ominous escalation of political violence. All decent people must condemn it today without reservation or qualification. All decent people must at least for the moment resist the temptation to blame, contextualize or engage in whataboutism. There will be time for that later. What needs saying now is that physically attacking people for their political beliefs is always wrong, and countenancing it in any way will likely lead only to more violence.

I followed social media intently in the aftermath of the shooting and was additionally sickened by the finger-pointing and fury from both ends of the political spectrum. There are hypocrites and heartless ghouls on the left and the right, but they should knock off the ululations and accusations for a bit. Now is the time to lower the national temperature and de-escalate the tensions that threaten democracy itself.

David Graham put it well in The Atlantic:

Employing force is actually an admission of defeat. A person who resorts to violence has concluded that he cannot change the terms of debate with words or arguments. Might may not make right, but it can end the conversation. … Political violence is terrifying in part because it is self-perpetuating. … Attacks inspire copycats and reprisals.

Former Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois offered these thoughts in a video:

Democracy is a way to figure out how to live together peacefully. And politics is the mechanism we created to prevent violence. Because back in the caveman days, without the ability to do politics, it was just whoever had the biggest stick — and you see that in dictatorships. A democracy is the opposite of that. Everybody gets a chance to have a say. And you fight as hard as you can on the field of thought, and then you win or lose. And you're going to win some and lose some. But the second somebody turns to violence, it basically shows that that has failed. If you're using violence, it shows that the political system has failed.

Chicago Teacher’s Union President Stacy Davis Gates also met the moment:

No one should lose their life, have their family shattered, or see their community thrown into chaos simply because of what they believe That is not democracy. That is terror. … This is yet another wake-up call — a blaring siren telling us that if we don’t stop this spiral, if we don’t recommit to our shared humanity, our children will inherit a nation where difference equals danger. That cannot be our legacy. Not on our watch.

Inevitably, President Donald Trump failed another test of leadership by again driving a toxic wedge into our partisan divide rather than attempt a unifying message condemning all such violence:

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he said in a video address Wednesday. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”

I have some thoughts about that. But they can wait.

Apple goes Babel fishin’

In Douglas Adams’ late 1970s comic science-fiction novels “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” the Babel fish is a tiny creature you can stick in your ear that instantly translates any spoken tongue into a language you can understand.

Babel is a reference to the story in Genesis 11 that explains why there are so many languages in the world by advancing the myth that there was once just one language, but that God was concerned by the efforts of humans to build a mighty tower in Babylon and said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

The fictional Babel fish undid this purported divine act of confusion, and now modern technology is catching up with Adams’ vision.

Earlier this year we read of Meta AI’s effort at instantaneous translation.

Meta has developed an AI system called SeamlessM4T that can translate speech and text in up to 101 languages. Specifically, it can support speech-to-speech translation for 101 to 36 languages, speech-to-text translation for 101 to 96 languages, text-to-speech translation for 96 to 36 languages, text-to-text translation for 96 languages, and automatic speech recognition for 96 languages.

Other, similar efforts are underway, but Apple’s announcement this week that Air Pod Pros will incorporate an instant-translation feature when linked to the newer version of iPhones looks like it could be a game-changer, given the ubiquity of Apple devices. Two or more people with iPhones will be able to have real-time conversations even when they don’t speak the same language.

The utilitarian reasons for studying foreign languages stand to dramatically recede. We all know people who studied Mandarin, Spanish, French or other language for professional reasons — including the ability to become a translator. The value will be in understanding the subtleties of other cultures and the intricate beauty and nuances of language itself. Will that be enough to sustain foreign language departments in high schools and colleges?

See:

• “Lost in translation: AI’s impact on translators and foreign language skills”

• “Instant language translation can help us talk. But will it help us understand?”

• “Use of machine translation in foreign language education”

Last week’s winning quip

My wife: You need to do more chores around the house. Me: Can we change the subject? My wife: OK. More chores around the house need to be done by you. — @ThePunnyWorld

I received a complaint that this quip and some others in earlier contests are sexist for how they rely on Lockhorns-like stereotypes of nagging and oversensitive women and indolent, obtuse men. I try not to use quips that punch down, and I don’t think this one does. I could have edited this to change “My wife” to “My spouse” without losing any of the bite of the punch line. Should I have?

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

News & Views

News: President Donald Trump again appears to be backing off his threat to send National Guard troops to Chicago.

View: Predictable, really. ““We’re going to be announcing another city that we’re going to very shortly, working it out with the governor of a certain state who would love us to be there, and the mayor of a certain city in the same state that would love us to be there. “We’ll announce it probably (Wednesday), and it’s going to be something we will do like we did (in Washington, D.C.”

Trump doesn’t want the court fight that he’d probably lose over a National Guard occupation. Any claim that there is an emergency that the Guard needs to address in Chicago grows weaker by the day. And as of late Wednesday, I’ve seen no news that Trump has announced which city he’s going to send the Guard to.

News: Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, announces a challenge to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle in next year’s Democratic primary.

View: Good. I don’t yet know who I’ll vote for, but Preckwinkle, seeking her fifth term at age 78, hasn’t had a serious primary challenger in the last three election cycles. Reilly, 53, who has represented his downtown ward since 2007, calls himself a centrist Democrat and will run at least slightly to Preckwinkle’s right. The debates will be interesting.

News: Saudis are paying tens of millions of dollars in investment fees to presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner

View: When Hunter Biden took advantage of his family name to make money from a foreign concern, Republicans lost their shit. But when Jared Kushner does it … crickets.

News: City crews are removing homeless encampments in Chicago

View: I’m reminded of the Anatole France quote, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges.” We must give the dispossessed a better option, not just move the problem along to some other neighborhood, park or viaduct.

Land of Linkin’

• “How Charlie Kirk Became the Youth Whisperer of the American Right,” a lengthyNew York Times profile published in February.

• “Donald Trump as Lt. Col. Kilgore from 'Apocalypse Now.' Yes, that tracks” in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus.

• “It Ain’t Gonna Go Away” — a new folk song about the Epstein files. I’m afraid this is wishful thinking.

• Bob Goldsborough has a ripping good yarn in the Tribune: “Hunt for two escaped horses in west suburbs threatened a town’s biggest industry.”

• The Elevate Oak Park coalition has formed to counter Activate Oak Park in a battle between old-line liberals and modern, highly progressive liberals in the near west suburban community that mirrors the national divide among Democrats. Bob Skolnik reports.

• The prediction/gambling site Polymarket has California Gov. Gavin Newsom way out in front in its ranking of potential Democratic presidential nominees in 2028. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is 13th, and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is 14th, behind Jon Stewart, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Stephen A. Smith. Stephen Colbert, whom I’d vote for in a heartbeat and who teased a run on his show Monday, is not (yet?) on Polymarket’s list.

• Axios Chicago: “Aldi ditches self-checkout at many local stores.”

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:

■ TV critic Bill Carter: After five weeks away from “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart went right for the president’s jugular—masterfully comparing Donald Trump to a classic “Twilight Zone” episode in which a 6-year-old boy terrifies a town by sending anyone who angers him “to the cornfield.”

■ The comparison proves spot-on. See for yourself.

■ Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic: Trump’s creepy “wonderful secret” sketch for dead sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein “is far from the most disturbing or lecherous of the book’s contents,” which you can see it here.

■ Public Notice columnist Noah Berlatsky: Trump dreams of making Chicago a colony … and Berlatsky’s colleague, Liz Dye, sees in the Supreme Court’s decision “allowing ICE to snatch any non-white person off the street and lock them up until they ‘prove’ their citizenship” Justice Brett Kavanaugh explaining “that SCOTUS really IS doing racism. He showed his whole hood.”

■ The Washington Post (gift link, possible because readers support Square with a buck or two): The National Guard’s own internal documents show troops’ “shame and alarm” over their domestic deployments.

■ Riding along with ICE in Chicago: A confrontational social media troll.

■ McSweeney’s ridicules those using Chicago as a talking point for the nation’s problems.

■ Also from McSweeney’s: “ICE’s training manual for determining who to terrorize.”

■ Interested in accompanying at-risk people to court or ICE check-ins? Volunteer here.

■ What First Amendment? Homeland Security says recording video of immigration agents constitutes a prosecutable act of “violence” …

■ … as Trump complained that domestic violence is counted as a crime: “Things that take place in the home they call crime. … If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this is a crime.”

■ The only way Democrats can resist “the Trump catastrophe”: Count ex-U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich among those calling for a government shutdown.

■ Columnist Christopher Armitage says Democratic-led states should “cut the failed red states loose.”

■ HuffPost: What alarms docs the most about COVID right now.

■ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: Author and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell, “whose work has been repeatedly debunked by legions of exhausted social scientists, but who somehow still gets heralded as a genius.”

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

Media notes

CBS is dead to me, a story in four parts

Part I of my disaffection with CBS News came in July when CBS’ parent company Paramount paid $16 million to President Donald Trump’s future presidential library to settle a blatantly and brazenly phony lawsuit that the network would have won easily. That suit claimed that the news division had committed “election and voter interference” in how it edited a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris.

The extortion payment — how else can you possibly frame it? — was to grease the way for government approval of Paramount’s merger with Skydance.

Part II was this story: “CBS forbids editing of ‘Face the Nation’ interviews after complaints from Kristi Noem.” In response to whining from the right, the network has agreed to run every “Face the Nation” interview without the normal sorts of tucks and trims that allow them to keep segments on track and prevent guests from lobbing wildly unfounded accusations, as Noem did about Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Part III was newly merged Skydance/Paramount’s announcement that the company had hired Kenneth Weinstein, former head of the conservative Hudson Institute think tank, to be the ombudsman for CBS news. Agreeing to hire an ombudsman was part of the merger deal.

Weinstein has no experience working in a news organization and is “a frequent critic of the Biden administration, once comparing the Biden White House to the bumbling characters of the television show ‘Veep,’” according to The New York Times. Weinstein was Trump’s ambassador to Japan and “donated roughly $40,000 to Republican and pro-Trump political groups last year.”

And Part IV are reports that Skydance/Paramount is close to a deal to purchase Bari Weiss’ right-leaning news site “The Free Press” and install her in a leadership role at CBS News, editor in chief or co-president of the network, according to the New York Times. Weiss, 41, preens as a free-speech, tell-it-like-it-is journalist, but her site feels more and more Trump-friendly by the day. Quoting The Unpopulist:

The publication has always had a clear editorial slant: opposition to the woke left. No matter how bad the right gets, the site’s editorial stance remains firm: the left is worse. While The Free Press occasionally publishes articles critical of Donald Trump and the right more broadly, its overarching message is that the MAGA movement isn’t as bad as the lying liberal media would have you believe—and that the errors of Trumpism are largely a reaction to the much more serious sins of the left.

Jay Michaelson’s lengthy “Bari Weiss’s Remarkably Successful Shell Game —The Right's favorite reactionary centrist prepares to take over a major news organization” is worth a read:

For over two decades, her perspectives and editorial choices reflect a garden-variety moderate-conservative who hates the welfare state, supports Israeli policies no matter what, and has no patience for uppity minorities seeking anything more than color-blindness. There has never been anything heterodox about these views — people who hold them currently control all three branches of the federal government. The views are just conservative. It’s misleading to call them otherwise, or to pretend that one has commitments one does not in fact possess.

So, once again with even more gusto, here’s me to CBS:

Trib turmoil

Lizzie Kane quits

Reporter Lizzie Kane, who was doing outstanding work covering housing for the Tribune, was laid off July 24 and rehired Aug. 11. Last Friday (Sept. 5), she posted to social media, “We thought we had reached a mutually beneficial agreement for my return. We had not. I think it's time for me to move on. I accepted a buyout and today is my last day with the Chicago Tribune.”

ONLINE UPDATE — Kane’s byline appeared Thursday morning on a housing story at the Chicago Sun-Times.

Newsroom union accuses management of anti-Muslim bias in layoffs

In a thread on Twitter,

Nine of our Chicago Tribune Guild colleagues have left our newspaper since our owner, Alden Global Capital, initiated a series of layoffs, buyouts & reassignments two months ago. Three of them were laid off. Each of our laid off colleagues is Muslim. Alden’s decision to shrink the newsroom, motivated by greed, harms readers. That harm is made even worse by the way these cuts decimate the number of Muslim journalists working here. We condemn the Chicago Tribune’s decision to lay off a majority of its Muslim journalists. The fact that the company’s layoff only hit Muslim journalists is incredibly troubling to us. And it severely harms our work. Our laid off Muslim colleagues brought to their work perspectives that made their journalism irreplaceable and our entire paper better. They helped the city better understand different experiences. They created dignified representation for people who too often don’t get that from media. Over and over, they told stories that other reporters just can’t tell. Cutting that hurts Chicago. Our readers and these journalists deserve better. We call on the Tribune to finally explain these layoffs. And we demand the newspaper show greater respect for Muslim journalists in the future.

“Alden” refers to Alden Global Capital, the vulturous and secretive hedge fund that owns the Tribune. From a previous union post, the laid-off employees were:

• Shanzeh Ahmad — has held multiple roles over her time with the Tribune, contributing features about life, food and religion and holding down Saturday shifts in first-appearance court (formerly known as bond court) to make sure readers are informed throughout the week.

• Ahmed Ali Akbar — went deep on all angles of Chicago’s vibrant food scene way beyond the plate — the economic, cultural and political winds that power it, but also the fun and community that springs up around it.

• Pinar Istek — anchored the night shift on the photo desk, directing after-hours visual coverage of breaking news. She is a proactive leader who looks out for the whole photo desk and was an essential part of dozens of breaking stories.

So what gives?

Kane declined further comment when I reached out to her. And, as is his wont, Tribune editor Mitch Pugh did not respond to my request for comment.

Four FM music stations top the most recent local radio ratings

WLIT, WDRV, WXRT and WTMX* are the top four stations in the August Nielsen Audio ratings (hat tip to media blogger Rick Kaempfer). As a former radio columnist, I can tell you that the overall ratings that Nielsen allows to be published are far less important to broadcasters and advertisers than the demographic and day-part cross tabs.

*corrected from the email version.

Disclosure: My wife is on temporary assignment as a news editor at Chicago Public Media (the Sun-Times and WBEZ).

Quotables

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

We’ve heard far too much of (Donald Trump’s) disgusting, unhinged and irresponsible nonsense. — The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board

(When) Trump first ran for president I was metro editor of the Chicago Tribune … and one of my bosses instructed us not to describe Trump’s lies as lies. We were ordered to state what Trump said, state what the truth was, and then let the readers sort it out. We’ve seen how that turned out. The media should be using words like “fascism” and “authoritarian” and “dictatorship” much more often. Instead the threat to our country is treated as if it’s Voldemort – He Who Must Not Be Named. — Mark Jacob

It’s been disorienting to live through these years as our country turns against itself — as some predict or even call for a second Civil War — and having no clear idea what it’s about. I mean, say what you will about the Confederacy, at least they had an ethos. What are we fighting about? Pronouns? — Peter Sagal

When you listen to the president, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don't use those words to name-call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We've never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country who’s ever been charged with substantial responsibilities. … The man who said he would make the country great again (has) brought death, suffering and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. — Steve Schmidt in 2020

The American public doesn’t support anything Trump is doing. Yet he has been governing as if he has an overwhelming mandate to do whatever he wants, and to a large extent has been getting away with it. How is he managing that? … Cowardly elites and a compliant Supreme Court that keeps granting emergency powers. — Paul Krugman

I refer to Robert F. Kennedy’s wife, Cheryl Hines, as The Marvelous Mrs. Measles — unknown

After Secretary Kennedy accused Democrats of being shills for Big Pharma, I told him I was going to leave his hearing and bring my bill to the floor allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices on medications. … Thirty-three minutes later … Republicans blocked it. — U.S Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vermont

I agree that the guy who snatched the hat from the kid is a prick, and I'm glad he's getting blasted. But let's relax a little. The kid wasn't exactly Oliver Twist with an empty porridge bowl. He was in the front row at the U.S. Open. — Jack Boot

According to the New Testament, both Mary and Jesus were refugees, people Donald hates and undermines. They sought safety in Egypt when Herod threatened the lives of children. Trump would have turned them away, allowing Jesus to die, and Christianity along with him. Let that sink in, Evangelicals. — Betty Bowers

I heard a MAHA woman complain that most of the vaccines for babies were for diseases she’d never even heard of. Yeah do you know why you haven’t heard of them? — Ginny Hogan

I’ve come to a point in my life where I need a stronger word than “fuck.” — unknown

Cheer chat

Update on preparations for the 27th annual “Songs of Good Cheer,” the winter holiday singalongs at the Old Town School of Folk Music hosted by me and Mary Schmich.

The dates for this year’s shows are Thursday, Dec. 11 through Sunday Dec. 14, with two shows on Saturday. Tickets are not yet available, but watch this space.

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:

The new nominees for Quip of the Week:

• The first wheel was invented in 3500 B.C., and somehow they put that wheel on my shopping cart. — @UncleBob56

• Cars these days have too many gadgets. I tried to put my car into reverse and it played a video of someone being run over. — unknown

• Today's assignment: If anyone asks you to do something, say "That's not even a real thing." — @jakevig.bsky.social

• You know who else was ready for some football? *flips chair around and sits down* — ‪@buckyisotope.bsky.social

• I wish people were more accepting of my lifestyle choice as an escaped convict on the run, stealing food and cars, breaking into summer houses, abducting folks and telling them if they do as I say no one’s going to get hurt and eventually being gunned down by a rookie cop on his first day on the job. — @wheeltod.bsky.social

• There were a few songs that asked, "Y’all ready for this?" I always said I was ready for this. But deep down, I knew I wasn't. — ‪@jakevig.bsky.social

• The moment someone starts talking to me, I start the "wrap it up"/"move it along"/"faster" finger spin. — ‪@jakevig.bsky.social‬

• It's so perplexing that others are following their silly, made up God when my completely real God is available to be followed. — @wildethingy

• Whoever named them Red Delicious apples has never actually eaten a delicious apple — @AbbyHasIssues

• Just tell people you have a podcast, nobody’s going to check. — @PonchoRebound

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Why “quips”? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.” Also, I’m finding good stuff on BlueSky now as well.

Minced Words

Cate Plys, Austin Berg and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. News of the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was breaking as we began recording, and we discussed that as well as other stories in the news.

Traffic lights:

• John: A yellow light for Kamala Harris’ upcoming book, “107 Days.” Here is a gift link to an excerpt published in The Atlantic.

• Austin: A green light for “The Battle of Algiers,” a 1966 movie about the Algerian war of decolonization against France. A version edited for the classroom is free on YouTube. You can also watch on HBO Max.

• Cate: Antique Taco, a Mexican restaurant with outlets in Bridgeport and Wicker Park

• Eric: Union Dumpling House, a fabulous new restaurant in Lincoln Square. Austin offered an enthusiastic second.

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

Yep

“I hate that this game basically feels like every Bears game I've ever watched” tweeted CBS Sports’ social media producer Monday night as the Bears’ seemingly inevitable collapse against the Minnesota Vikings was underway.

Tough business, football

The San Francisco 49ers waived placekicker Jake Moody after he missed a 27-yard field goal during Sunday’s victory over the Seahawks. News reports said he made both extra points but was 1 for 3 from the field — unfairly blaming him for an offensive line breakdown that saw a 36-yard attempt blocked in the third quarter. True, he did miss a chip shot during the game and also true that he had a fairly rough year last season. But he did make two outside of 50 yards in the 2024 Super Bowl (and missed one of two extra points), and the Niners had decided to stick with him this season.

Stray thought

“Hall of Fame” is an odd term. Great athletes are famous, yes, but famous athletes are not always great. Jeremy Lin, Tim Tebow, Bill Buckner, Mark Fidrych and Johnny Manziel are some names that come to mind of athletes who were plenty famous in their time but will not be inducted into their sport’s hall of fame. Why not “Hall of Honor” or “Hall of Excellence”?

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. Email me your nominations, and please include a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links, perhaps including excerpts from reviews or background articles. For TV shows, please include links to trailers/previews on YouTube and advice on where to stream them.

The death Friday of Mark Volman, 78, co-founder of The Turtles, inspires me to feature the band’s signature hit, “Happy Together,” which made it to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1967. I was not yet 10 at the time and just getting interested in pop music. I remember distinctly calling the request line at WAAM-AM 1600 in Ann Arbor — then a music station, now a conservative talk outlet — and asking the deejay to play “Imagine Me and You,” which is the first line of the song, not its title. The deejay wearily corrected me. I then waited by the radio for several hours until “Happy Together” came on.

The lead singer was Howard Kaylan, also a Turtles co-founder and still alive today at 78. Volman sang harmony. The song is so bouncy it almost makes you forget it’s about unrequited love. The lyric “I can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you” is directed at an apparently indifferent object of affection.

“Happy Together” hit the top of the charts in March 1967, knocking off the Beatles’ “Penny Lane.” It stayed there for three weeks before being deposed by Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s “Somethin’ Stupid.” *

The band had several lesser-known Top 40 hits and broke up in 1970.

What I didn’t know back in 1967 was that most pop music radio stations didn’t see themselves as jukeboxes — they used their request lines for audience research purposes — and “Happy Together” was simply in the rotation. WAAM was going to play “Happy Together” when it played “Happy Together,” whether squeaky, prepubescent, ill-informed Eric wanted to hear it or not.

What I don’t know today is if people are still calling radio stations to request songs, and, if so, why. Just about anything they could want to hear is instantly available on YouTube, Spotify or any number of other sites. And if a song is too obscure for the internet, it’s going to be too obscure for a radio station.

*Apologies if I put the excruciating “Somethin’ Stupid” in your head

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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