WBEZ/Sun-Times CEO accepts a 19% raise, then cuts 15% of his unionized staff

... less than three weeks after the conclusion of the spring pledge drive

4-4-2024 (issue No. 135)

This week:

• Big layoffs at the Chicago Sun-Times and public radio station WBEZ-FM

• Tweet Madness ‘24 is wrapping up

• Yes, another national anthem controversy

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked

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

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

• LOL QVC — The funniest thing by far that I’ve seen all year is an old April Fool’s commercial for an enormous kitchen device that folds bologna in half. Listen carefully for the line, “This might be cheese”

• Mary Schmich — If only every day were opening day

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

• Quotables — Including a powerful diatribe from the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer

• Re:Tweets — The Final Fours are with us. One shining moment is just ahead

• Good Sports — Knock it off with the high-fives and hand slaps between free throws. Some fun with Caitlin Clark

• Tune of the Week — “When My Time Comes” nominated by reader Joanie Wimmer

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.

Another brutal round of media cuts

WBEZ political reporter Dave McKinney, formerly of the Sun-Times, has the sad, discouraging and in places infuriating details about the deep cuts announced Wednesday by the parent company of both organizations:

The move to terminate nearly 15% of the 62 unionized content creators at Chicago’s National Public Radio affiliate comes amid a worsening financial crisis for the news organization marked by declining fundraising, listenership and philanthropic support.

The job cuts coincide with the debut of a $6.4 million, state-of-the-art studio at WBEZ’s Navy Pier office and follows a double-digit-percentage pay increase for Chicago Public Media’s top executive. …WBEZ’s podcasting unit will be scaled back dramatically, and its “non-newsroom titles” — including “Nerdette,” “Making” and “When Magic Happens” — will cease production. …

In another cutback, Vocalo will discontinue its radio programming by May 1. The offshoot of WBEZ plays around-the-clock R&B, hip hop and jazz music via the radio and livestream. …

Chicago Public Media did not share any financial details in the statement but made clear staff cutbacks were necessary to cope with a worsening fiscal position that would appear markedly different than just nine months ago, when the organization reported being financially in the black. …

In its most recent tax filings, Chicago Public Media reported revenues had grown by nearly 20% between July 2022 and June 2023 … (and) reported an $8.7 million profit at the end of that 12-month span. …

Financial upheaval at the organization represents a dramatic turnabout from January 2022, when Chicago Public Media’s acquisition of the Sun-Times was finalized in large part through $61 million in pledged contributions from a blue-chip array of local foundations. …

Chicago Public Media’s most recent tax filings showed (outgoing CEO Matt) Moog making $633,310 – a nearly 19% increase from a year earlier. … (He) said that neither he nor other members of his executive team contemplated pay cuts before announcing Wednesday’s layoffs.

Disclosure: My wife worked for the station for nearly 30 years and just recently was the interim editor of “Curious City,” which is being scaled back from a podcast into a news segment. And I have many friends who work or have worked for WBEZ — Brandon Pope, the host of the now-discontinued “Making” podcast, is a regular panelist with me on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast.

That said, and with the understanding that times are tough for media organizations — outside financial support is dwindling and audiences are increasingly fragmented — cutting podcasting and such initiatives as Vocalo is not the answer. To do so while crying poor after just opening a $6.4 million studio and giving the boss a 19% raise on his way out the door (he announced in December that he will step down as soon as Chicago Public Media can find a replacement) is a bad look to those who have just responded to your pledge drive.

Mariah Woelfel, the station’s city government and politics reporter, spoke for many of us with this social media post:

But a tip of the cap to WBEZ and the Sun-Times for posting a highly unflattering story about their Chicago Public Media overlords. The Tribune was not so journalistically forthright when it came to covering troubles at its own shop.

One shining moment is almost here! The Tweet Madness tournaments are down to a pair of Final Fours

The bracket tournaments to choose the best written and visual tweets of the last 12 months are in the final phase. See below for the entrants and instructions on how to vote.

Oh say, can you see another national anthem controversy?

Social media exploded with indignation Monday night when the Louisiana State University women’s basketball team was in the locker room during the playing of the national anthem before LSU’s NCAA tournament quarterfinal matchup against the University of Iowa. It marked yet another silly, hoary controversy about patriotism — flag burning, anyone? — and prompts me to wonder yet again why we cling to the tradition of playing or singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before sporting events.

Tell the truth: When you’re about to watch a game in the privacy of your living room, do you rise from your easy chair when a pregame national anthem comes on the TV? Do you sing along? Remove your hat if you’re wearing one?

I’ve never seen it done at a viewing party or a bar, let alone a small gathering of friends. And the very idea, ideologically consistent though it may be, seems a little obsessive and weird.

Why? Because patriotic rituals are performative. Virtue signaling.

Most of us rise when we’re at the stadium or arena to display to one another a belief in the values we share, not to remind ourselves of our own values. That we can do any time.

We rise upon request in such settings to proclaim to others something about ourselves, similar to the reason some people ostentatiously pray in public. Behind closed doors, we don’t need a prompt or an audience to meditate on our civic or spiritual beliefs.

Traditionally, the idea is that conservatives, liberals and libertarians; believers and atheists; the fortunate and the dispossessed; and hawks and doves can display their love of America’s supreme values — liberty, opportunity, justice — if not necessarily of what the American government has actually given us.

The anthem ritual at its best is a nod to our most comforting and self-flattering national bromides.

Most us conform. We turn our minds toward all that’s wonderful about the United States. Sing along if we have the range. Maybe put our hands over our hearts to show others how sincere we are.

We don’t do it at plays, movies, religious services or concerts. We don’t play it to start the school day or government meetings (but don’t get me started about the equally performative Pledge of Allegiance).

There have always been anthem resisters who’ve taken the opportunity to remain seated or to take a knee to express their disappointment and anger at our nation’s failings, though that evidently wasn’t the case with the LSU team, which was simply going through its pregame routine and wasn’t aware when the anthem was going to be played.

Still, on Tuesday, Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry tweeted, “It is time that all college boards, including Regent, put a policy in place that student athletes be present for the national anthem or risk their athletic scholarship! This is a matter of respect that all collegiate coaches should instill.”

To paraphrase, living in “the land of the free” that the last line of “The Star-Spangled Banner” boasts of does not include the freedom to refrain from participating in an ostentatious ritual celebrating what a free country we live in.

Gotcha, Guv.

But patriotism isn’t a performance. It’s an attitude that’s with you whether you’re in a crowd or alone on your sofa, and it’s perfectly consistent with protest, criticism or indifference to song.

News & Views

Flag flap fizzles

News: Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, made peace with most of his City Council colleagues Monday, some of whom wanted him relieved of his chairmanship of the Housing Committee because he recently spoke to a pro-Palestinian activist group while standing near a charred American flag.

View: To my mind, the right to burn an American flag in protest is settled and not up for debate. The U.S. Supreme Court validated that right in the 1989 Texas v. Johnson decision, and we should all be proud to live in a nation where it’s legal to destroy the flag in anger. Many countries aren’t as free.

The wisdom — the effectiveness — of doing so is another matter, but it’s hard to think of an act more illustrative of the central idea of liberty and freedom of expression than the right to incinerate the symbol that ostensibly represents liberty and freedom of expression. It’s not a terribly difficult concept to grasp.

But also not terribly difficult to grasp is the idea that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are bulwarks against the looming un-American, despotic impulses of a Donald Trump-led Republican Party.

And that the effort to spark violent street protests during the Democratic National Convention here in mid-August will accomplish nothing but to boost the fortunes of Trump.

In “Tawdry story of Ald. Sigcho-Lopez and the charred flag is one of activists struggling to govern,” the Tribune Editorial Board accused Sigcho-Lopez of “behaving like an activist throwing stones” who has “defiantly held to his myopic view that there should be no difference between an activist and an elected official.”

(Mayor Brandon) Johnson should tell Sigcho-Lopez to stop with this immature nonsense and behave like a public official whose constituents and city come first. Chicago is not going to cancel the DNC and the last thing we need is violent disruption from a group that believes reasonable protest doesn’t go far enough.

Should fake child porn be a crime?

News: Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced his office is introducing legislation to clarify that Illinois’ child pornography laws apply to images and videos created by artificial intelligence (AI), saying “even when the technology does not use images of real children, the resulting child pornography nonetheless perpetuates abusive and predatory behavior.”

View: Child porn is so disgusting and harmful in so many ways that it’s hard to imagine a productive discussion about the merits of the claim that viewing fake child porn is a thought crime so heinous that it demands punishment.

“Disentangling Child Pornography from Child Sex Abuse,” a 2011 paper in the Washington University Law review written by law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick, now at the University of North Carolina, notes that this conclusion assumes “that those who view child pornography want to engage in sexual conduct with children and that possessing the images makes it more likely that they will engage in contact offenses.”

But there are significant reasons to doubt this assumption. There is anecdotal evidence that some child pornography possessors, although they want to view pornographic images of children, actively seek adult sexual partners. And the empirical literature is unable to validate the assumption that there is a causal connection between possession of child pornography and child sex abuse. …

The case against preventative punishment is also supported by a few controversial studies that suggest that access to pornography actually reduces contact offenses. One study—which was based on an anonymous internet survey—found that the vast majority of respondents who had viewed boy erotica reported that viewing this form of child pornography redirected their sexual energies away from actual sexual contacts with boys.

The respondents from that survey also overwhelmingly reported that viewing child pornography did not increase their tendency to seek out children for sexual conduct. Of course, this survey data is of limited empirical value because the respondents were self selected, their responses were anonymous, and the veracity of their answers cannot be verified. … As a general matter, whether viewing any sexually explicit materials encourages individuals to engage in sexually aggressive behavior has long been a contested issue.

No lawmaker is ever going to stick up for any kind of child porn, even AI-generated totally fake images, so my question about how and whether we should ban certain forms of thought crime is largely rhetorical. Where, if at all, should we draw the line at depictions of heinous crimes? And why?

At Pop Culture Squad, Mike Gold wrestles with the same question:

I don’t yet have a position on the matter. This is very complicated and we might as well start the discussion. We cannot un-invent artificial intelligence.

Abortion will be on the ballot in Florida in November

News: In rulings Monday, the Florida Supreme Court green lit a six-week abortion ban approved by the state’s lawmakers in 2023, but also OK’d a referendum question on the November ballot that will ask voters if they want to amend the state constitution to protect the right to an abortion in Florida.

View: This is a huge gift to Joe Biden, who lost Florida by just 3.4% in 2020 and will likely benefit from liberal and Democratic voters turning out in huge numbers to oppose the draconian and deeply unpopular six-week ban. It’s so unpopular that even Donald Trump, who boasts “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade.” has called it “a terrible mistake.”

Abortion-rights supporters will need 60% of the vote to amend the state’s constitution, and that will be tough lift. But Biden will need only 50% of the vote plus one to take win 30 electoral votes, which would spell real trouble for the Trump campaign.

Nationally, a lot of eyes will be on the abortion issue in Florida and the stakes of Republican victories will be quite clear to voters from Hawaii to Maine.

Trump has promised “a statement” on abortion next week, but he promises a lot of things. I’m thinking here of the “big beautiful health plan” to replace Obamacare that he never got around to releasing.

Stadium funding referendum walloped in Kansas City

News: More than 58% of voters in the Kansas City area Tuesday rejected a plan to increase county sales taxes to build a new ballpark for the MLB Kansas City Royals and overhaul the home field of the NFL Kansas City Chiefs.

View: This is a serious boost to former Gov. Pat Quinn’s effort to ask Chicago voters if they want to devote public money to building new homes for the White Sox and Cubs. Mayor Brandon Johnson frequently preens about his devotion to democracy. Here’s his big chance to show it.

Must reading

News: My former Tribune colleague Gregory Royal Pratt’s new book “The City Is Up for Grabs: How Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Led and Lost a City in Crisis” was published Tuesday.

View: Even local-news nerds like me are going to learn a lot from Pratt’s retelling of the Lightfoot years. I’m not finished reading it yet, but this passage referencing Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, is an example of what you have not and never will read in the newspaper:

Lightfoot, in yet another spectacularly obtuse self-destructive act, declined to grant Pratt an interview for the book. The text is not entirely critical, but it contains numerous anecdotes suggesting Lightfoot was an inept executive — touchy, headstrong and rash. She might well have done herself and her long-term reputation good by putting her own spin on the stories or adding some stories of her own.

As it is, this book is likely to be the definitive popular history of her one tumultuous term — not whatever autobiography she might someday write — and an illustration of why “no comment” is seldom a good idea.

When journalists are writing about you, you can be sure they have other sides they are reporting. Not taking the chance to give your side is seldom smart and never makes you look better.

Land of Linkin’

• “Do only sadists kill for fun? A debate about the ethics and aesthetics of hunting”— a vintage installment in my Rhubarb Patch collection of online debates.

• Johanna has been touting Fix the News to nearly everyone she meets lately. “Every week, we find stories of progress from around the world, and send them to 56,000 readers from over 180 countries. You can find all those stories here. If you'd like to receive more of this in your inbox, you can sign up for free.”

• “Cleaning Is Something I Can Do.” This Chicago Magazine essay was written by Stateville Correctional Center inmate Mark Dixon for author Alex Kotlowitz’s narrative nonfiction class at the prison. In it, he writes, “In prison everyone has a coping mechanism. Cleaning is mine. With every cleaning, I am regaining some control. Wipe by wipe, I also feel like I’m cleansing some of the bad choices of my past.”

• “The election was (not) rigged! Fever swampers go from raging to taking credit” from Tuesday’s Picayune Plus. This item wag of my finger at those who were yapping that a delay in counting votes in the Cook County States Attorney’s race signaled that the Democratic Party was going to steal the election for its endorsed candidate.

• “I saw another right-wing cheap-shot artist describe Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker as a child of privilege. That would be true if money was the only thing that mattered,” begins Mark Jacob’s Twitter thread. Later he writes, “So it rankles me when a bitter, twisted fascist like Trib ex-columnist John Kass ridicules Pritzker’s weight and calls him a ‘rich kid born on 3rd base thinking he hit a triple.’”

• Proactively fronting this: Yes, I did lead the singing of the national anthem at a Northwestern University basketball game in 2012. My love of group singing overcame my uneasiness about the custom itself. I admit to having been a bit pitchy.

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:

■ Law prof Joyce Vance flags “a powerful story about why Donald Trump is unfit to be president.”

■ Wisconsin voters have OK’d a couple of election rule changes championed by Trump’s acolytes.

■ Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri rewrites the Bible for the age of Trump.

■ Popular Information lists 50 companies that’ve donated more than $23 million to election-denying politicians since Jan. 6, 2021.

■  “The scariest film I’ve seen in a long time”: Variety’s Owen Gleiberman reviews “Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s War on Democracy.”

■ American Prospect columnist Rick Perlstein mourns not the death of former Democratic ex-Sen. Joe Lieberman: “I’m grateful it happened before he could do any more damage.”

■ Puck’s Dylan Byers goes waaaay behind the scenes to detail “Ronnaghazi,” the clusterf*ck that was NBC’s aborted hiring of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna (Romney) McDaniel.

■ The Trace does a deep dive into the facts about gun injuries and deaths in the U.S.: “You’re more likely to be shot in Selma than in Chicago.”

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

This is the funniest thing I’ve seen all year

I chuckle and snort fairly often at amusing things I see online, but it’s rare that I laugh until I literally weep, which I did at this pitch-perfect, two-year-old QVC April Fools joke/parody.

It is big. You're going to want to clear off your counter, you're not going to be able to store it. Now, a bologna folder solves multiple problems, it's going to organize your bologna. It's going to save you more space in the refrigerator and on your shelves, wherever you store your bologna. … You've got to grease this machine, you're going to want to grease this twice a day. … Ah, isn't bologna so good? It's been such a pain up until now though. Now we put it on the folder, thin slice of bologna, it's folded. It's folded. It's sort of folded. … This is the learning curve that we all go through. … Don't miss out. What are you going to use all this folded bologna for? Well, maybe if you're new to charcoots— you know, if you're new to the world of dinner on a board — little fancy charcuterie — we call it charcoots in the biz. …Then you get these little fancy bologna sandwiches that you can serve to your friends. … Let's make a bologna salad. There's no bologna about the freshness of this salad. … Bologna's back y'all.

Luckily, the price includes a subscription plan for the oil, so you never have to worry about running out. Because there is nothing more problematic in the kitchen than a sticky bologna folder.

ImageFX

Mary Schmich: If only every day were opening day.

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a recent offering adapted from a 2012 Tribune column:

If only every day were opening day.

The blank slate. The fresh buzz. Hope as sweet as a baby’s burp.

Opening day.

All you have to do is say the words and you feel the shutters thrown wide, the room air out, the light pour in.

In baseball, no other day is so pure with possibility. No scores yet, no losses, no blame or disappointment. No hangover, at least until the game’s over.

On opening day, the past is not proof of the future.

We need opening days, not only in baseball, but in the rest of life. They’re the days we feel we’re starting fresh. It’s why we celebrate New Year’s Day. It’s the theme of Easter. It’s the appeal of the first day of school or summer.

Opening day is any day when you can believe that the past doesn’t count against you, that the future is yours to make.

Minced Words

Cate Plys and Marj Halperin joined me and host John Williams to discuss the news of the week so far on the new episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast..

The most interesting exchange was our debate about the ShotSpotter gunfire detection technology. Halperin cited numerous studies indicating it doesn’t work to reduce or solve crime to defend Mayor Brandon Johnson’s decision to phase it out. Plys cited police statistics suggesting it’s effective in saving lives, and I asked why, if it’s so lousy, Johnson extended the contract through the summer and why the alders in the wards where it’s operating and Police Superintendent Larry Snelling would like to keep it. (See the Tribune editorial, “Brandon Johnson faces a full-blown City Council rebellion over ShotSpotter.”)

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

The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

This is not subjective. We all saw it. Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive. (If leaders began a yearslong campaign today to convince us that the Baltimore bridge did not collapse Tuesday morning, would you ever believe them?) Trust your eyes. Trump on Jan. 6 launched the most serious threat to our system of government since the Civil War. You know that. You saw it.

The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.

As for those who equate Trump and Joe Biden, that’s false equivalency. Biden has done nothing remotely close to the egregious, anti-American acts of Trump. We can debate the success and mindset of our current president, as we have about most presidents in our lifetimes, but Biden was never a threat to our democracy. Trump is. He is unique among all American presidents for his efforts to keep power at any cost.

Personally, I find it hard to understand how Americans who take pride in our system of government support Trump. All those soldiers who died in World War II were fighting against the kind of regime Trump wants to create on our soil. How do they not see it? — Chris Quinn, Editor, cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer

We live in a world where the only US president ever to attempt a coup has a too-close-for-comfort chance of being re-elected on a platform of overt fascism. That changes everything. We do not have the luxury of indifference. We do not have the luxury of being “just” journalists, lawyers, elected officials, educators, students, co-workers, entertainers, parents, family members, or citizens. At this moment, we must be defenders of democracy in everything we do. If not, we betray and abandon the Constitution. There is no in-between. The question has been called. — Robert Hubbell

As a Christian, I’m outraged that Joe Brandon declared March 31st “International Transgender Day of Visibility.” My faith is so weak that I can no longer celebrate Easter. It’s one of the two days I actually go to church, and now I can’t even do that. — Brent TerHune

ImageFX

Re: Tweets — The bracket tournaments are coming to their exciting conclusion

At the suggestion of readers, I’m going to break the bracket format here at the end of Tweet Madness and ask readers to rank the following four finalists from most to least favorite. Voting will close Monday shortly before midnight. Winners will be announced in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus and again Thursday, when the regular Tweet of the Week competition will resume.

1. Doctor: Your parents were in a car accident. Me: How are they? Doctor: They're extremely critical. Me: So they're awake, that's good. — @Browtweaten 

2. When I was a kid you could go to a store with just a dollar and come home with four comic books, three candy bars, two packs of trading cards, a bag of chips and a cold drink. Now they have cameras everywhere. — Unknown 

3. I love when my husband says, “Correct me if I’m wrong,” like I would pass up that opportunity. — @MumOfTw0 

4. Me: it's not about how many times you fall, it's about how many times you get back up. Cop: That's not how field sobriety tests work. — @HenpeckedHal 

Click here to vote. It won’t take long!

Below are the Final Four in the visual Tweet contest — the top two vote getters in each of the semifinal rounds.

I don’t have the template to offer ranked choice on the visual tweets, so you’ll have to choose one.

Review the previous rounds here.  

THE FINAL FOUR

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Good Sports

Congrats! You missed a free throw!

Ol’ Fusspot here, calling for basketball coaches to forbid their players from slapping five with a free-throw shooter between foul shots. I’m not sure when this tradition started, and I acknowledge that, cumulatively, it probably delays the game by less than a minute, but it’s silly and — my guess — makes it less likely that the shooter will hit the next shot. Free-throw shooting is about focus, routine, repetition, rhythm and muscle memory. Make or miss, shooters should keep their feet set and remember the exact feeling of the previous shot and strive to duplicate or adjust it accordingly.

I can’t find any studies on this, but I’m willing to bet that if you put 10 players on the line and have them each shoot 30 free throws with no interruption and then 30 free throws with high-fives all around in between every shot, the no-interruption shooters would hit a higher percentage.

In 2015, The New York Times reported on the custom:

Nobody seems to know how, when or why the practice began, most players said they would feel lost without it — an expression of bonhomie and a psychological boost for the teammate at the line. …

Jon Barry, an analyst for ABC and ESPN … made 84.8 percent of his free throws (during his 14-year NBA career). At the line, Barry was a man of hard routine. He went to his spot and refused to budge between attempts. …

Isiah Thomas, a two-time champion with the Detroit Pistons, said high-fives at the free-throw line were highly uncommon during his playing career (1981–1994).

“People weren’t thinking about it,” he said. “You really were just playing the game, and the foul line was a place for concentration and trying to make the shot.”

Thomas said he could at least appreciate why players today would offer high-fives after successful free throws. As for reaching in and providing consolation after a miss?

“I don’t understand that,” said Thomas, an analyst for Turner Sports. “They reward you now and clap for you when you miss. You get congratulated when you miss a free throw! Everybody comes in, and they slap your hand and say, ‘Hey,’ or whatever they say. What are you high-fiving him for?”

A high school hoops teammate of mine was the basketball coach at Falmouth Academy on Cape Cod for many years, and he banned the practice from the start. “Why would the shooter want anything except the ball back while he can still remember the feeling of the previous shot?” he wrote in response to a text query from me about how it went. He said his players not only were fine with the idea, but they also began ridiculing opposing players who did it.

Caitlin mania

I loved this tweet:

Caitlin Clark wears No, 22 for the University of Iowa’s women’s basketball team and she dropped 41 points against Louisiana State University in the NCAA quarterfinal game Monday night. And Chicago’s Clark Street bus is the 22.

This “What are you gonna do?” meme featuring LSU guard Hailey Van Lith’s reaction to Clark draining another bomb was an instant classic.

How popular is women’s college basketball right now? At this writing (early Thursday morning) the cheapest ticket for this weekend’s Women’s Final Four in Cleveland is $707. For the Men’s Final Four in Glendale, Arizona, the cheapest ticket is $518.

And here’s a bit from the AP’s report on the boffo ratings Clark has been drawing:

Iowa’s 94-87 victory over LSU in the Elite Eight of the women’s NCAA Tournament on Monday night averaged 12.3 million viewers on ESPN, according to Nielsen. That makes it one of the most-viewed games in any sport other than NFL football over the past year.

Iowa-LSU outdrew all but one of the five games in last year’s NBA Finals, along with the clinching game of last year’s World Series (11.48 million). … It was also the most-watched men’s or women’s college basketball game ever on ESPN, more than doubling the prior largest audience. …

Only one men’s NCAA Tournament game this year had bigger viewership: North Carolina State’s win over Duke on Sunday in the men’s Elite Eight on CBS averaged 15.1 million. … The 60 women’s tournament games are averaging 1.5 million, a 127% increase over last year.

Bonkers?

Jon Hansen on Twitter:

The strangest rule in all of sports is having to appeal to an umpire if a runner properly tagged up on a fly ball. Dude just stands there thinking “I know something you don’t know” and will just stay quiet about a rule violation unless the defensive team asks nicely? Bonkers.

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’ve asked readers to use the comments area for paid subscribers 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 reader and frequent comment board contributor Joanie Wimmer:

“When My Time Comes” by Dawes came out in 2009. The lyrics really spoke to me at a time when I was struggling in my relationships with some family members after I transitioned from male to female.

Plus, it’s got a quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche!

“Now, it seems like the unravelling started too soon.
Now I'm sleeping in hallways and I'm drinking perfume.
And I'm speaking to mirrors and I'm howling at moons
While the worse and the worse that it gets.
Oh, you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks.
Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it's starin' right back!”

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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