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I have an aversion to the admonition “do better,” but I plan to overcome it.
The words are often used by censorious members of Twitter mobs as they pile on someone for some perceived deviation from ideological purity — “you misgendered someone! Do better!” and so on.
But I find myself muttering these words when I come across certain persistent fails, such as the glitchy digital replica editions of the Tribune and Sun-Times that regularly hang on my iPad and that don’t give readers the current issue when they reload the page. Or the flabbergasting lack of consistency across platforms in charging cables. Pick a standard, tech industry!
So I might turn “Do Better!” into an occasional feature at the Picayune Sentinel that incorporates reader suggestions/frustrations.
Or I might not. Many years ago I ran occasional columns under the heading of “The Idea Oven” for which I solicited half-baked notions for inventions or business ideas. Those drew excellent responses from readers. But when I tried to revive the feature just a few years ago, I got crickets.
My explanation for the failure was that, with the advent of social media, those with such ideas no longer need third-party conduits to reach an audience for their notions. And that may prove to be the same with petty gripe. We’ll see.
I will reject any “do better!” scoldings regarding typos in this publication, however.
So… leave your “do better!” suggestions in comments and let’s see if and how this goes.
Notes and comments from readers —lightly edited —- along with my responses
Leonard S. — I couldn't disagree more with your objection to holding protests in front of the homes of U.S. Supreme Court justices. This is not a time to be polite. The rights of citizens to express their constitutional freedom of free speech should not be limited. These justices opened the door to this higher level of protests. If they can't cope with legal protests then they, the defenders of the Constitution, are hypocrites.
Stop worrying about or trying to persuade the justices. I suspect their minds were made up on this years ago and certainly before the leak of the draft memo. If anything, protesting outside their homes will anger them and make even more remote the already remote chance that they will change their minds or even soften this very hard opinion.
I’ll say it again, as a matter of political tactics, residential protesting is not going to win the necessary hearts and minds to change election results and put into power lawmakers who will guard abortion rights. Kinda like how setting fire to random businesses doesn’t advance the cause of civil rights.
Ken S. — While I agree with you about not harassing public officials at their homes, I was disappointed that you spent so much space on that point, and very little on the issue of harassment of abortion patients and providers. The public figures mostly belong to the well-privileged and are well-protected and sequestered in their large homes and offices. The less privileged young women who seek abortion care cannot do so without exposing themselves in public, in order to conduct a very private matter. To violently harass these women of meager means, at a very vulnerable time, is more deserving of condemnation than the picketing of powerful people's homes, and at least as erosive of civil life.
I addressed the issue of harassment of clinic patients in a 2016 column about the complaint of anti-abortion protesters in Chicago that an eight-foot “bubble” around patients entering clinics violated protesters’ First Amendment rights.
I wrote that it’s possible to preach, scold, cajole, shout, condemn, sing and inform at a distance of eight feet. Under normal conditions, even people using their inside voices can communicate at such a distance.
I didn’t like their efforts at harrassment — hectoring, shaming — and I still think it’s an ugly tactic.
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that “persistence, importunity, following and dogging, become unjustifiable annoyance and obstruction which is likely soon to savor of intimidation” because such actions carry “an "implied threat of physical touching.
And, yes, we all get why anti-abortion protesters want to dog patients outside clinics. The more unpleasant and discomfiting they can make the entire experience, the more abortions they stand to prevent.
And we all get why it's important to allow public protests, even when those protests infuriate, embarrass or baffle others.
But most of us also get why people want to be able to move through life and go about their business without being harassed — insulted, patronized, chivvied, pestered.
Most of us agree with the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who in 1928 characterized the right to be left alone as "the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men."
Steve R. — I am staunchly pro-choice on the abortion issue, but yelling and screaming in the streets, residential streets or not, will not change anyone’s opinion. Does anyone honestly think it will?
Protests — these in particular — are not about changing minds so much as they are about activating and energizing those who are inclined to agree with you and about getting the attention of people who haven’t given the issue a whole lot of thought.
They are intended to generate publicity which in turn generates either outrage or curiousity. The media often plays along with this. Gather 20 people in a downtown park holding signs and you might get a news story. Pass a petition and gather 200 signatures expressing the same view and you almost certainly won’t get a news story.
Laurence S. — We have seen numerous stories about school board members and other politicians being threatened by right-wing radicals at public meetings, on their voicemail, in emails, and by damage to their properties.And now conservatives are tied up in bunches because of peaceful protests outside of the homes of Supreme Court justices? Please forgive me if I withhold my tears.
I’m not asking anyone to weep over this, only to consider the inevitable consequences of countenancing home-based protests. In the end, if everyone from school board members to Supreme Court justices are having fear shape any part of their views, democracy itself is at least on the way to being lost.
Melissa H. — Anti abortion protestors have blown up clinics with explosives, murdered doctors who performed abortion, protested outside of clinics holding huge photos of aborted fetuses, and they have screamed and yelled in the faces of women who are in a very vulnerable state of mind. These actions did nothing to sway public opinion against the anti-abortion lobby. Tone policing peaceful protests is not helping. I would hope that in a few weeks time we won't be more concerned about the decorum of a few protesters than the loss of the fundamental right to personal agency of half the population of our country.
I suspect that the zealotry of the anti-abortion fanatics has contributed to keeping their true motives front and center and maintaining the popular support for abortion rights. It’s not “tone policing” to object to protests in front of judges’ homes — tone policing is “a conversational tactic that dismisses the ideas being communicated when they are perceived to be delivered in an angry, frustrated, sad, fearful, or otherwise emotionally charged manner” — but tactic policing.
I and many of those objecting to such protests aren’t dismissing the idea being communicated at all.
Bruce L. — Two competing Constitutional rights, the right to privacy and the right to life, are in tension when we consider abortion. Roe never did resolve that, but neither does Alito in his draft opinion. All he is saying is that no one seems to know the answer to this particular philosophical question and that it is not resolved in the Constitution so the best and only place for it to be is in the States as a legislative decision to be decided by the people by the vote.
I’m not a legal scholar, but I can’t find either a right to life or a right to privacy in the text of the constitution. There are good arguments that they are implicit, though our long history of capital punishment is one indication that the right to life is far from absolute, and law enforcement frequently violates any theoretical sweeping right to privacy.
Jake H. — I highly recommend Akhil Amar's excellent appearance on Bari Weiss's podcast as an antidote to the rampant fears about what's next from this Court. I agree with Amar — a political liberal, unconvinced by the legal reasoning in the original Roe, among America's sharpest and most accessible legal scholars— that this does not portend a reversal on gay rights.
Gay rights involves the explicit right to equality before the law in a way Roe does not. And Justice Brett Kavanaugh was former Justice Anthony Kennedy's law clerk and will likely be concerned with maintaining the gay rights decisions Kennedy authored.
In addition, Amar is not very worried about contraception being outlawed again. He notes that only one state -- Connecticut -- outlawed it at the time of Griswold, the decision that struck down such laws, suggesting that there was indeed a tradition of respecting privacy in this area, while almost no state's 1973 abortion laws were constitutional after Roe. He thinks even Alito accepts privacy rights, but would not extend them to abortion.
I listened to that episode and thought Amar fell short in explaining why all of Alito’s legal reasoning would not apply to marriage equality, something that Alito was strongly, indignantly opposed to in his 2015 dissent. Amar (and you) seem to suggest that justices will put their fingers to the wind when it comes to gay marriage, gay sex, contraception and so on. But they’re going to have to twist themselves into pretzels to explain why the reasoning in Dobbs doesn’t apply to marriage equality and ban on at least certain forms of contraception.
Amar seems blithe and naive in his view of the dominant cultural conservatives on the court. What really happens when some red state legislature passes a ban on same-sex marriage and relies on the legal reasoning in Dobbs? Alito’s “we won’t uphold such a law because I said so” would be the height of flimsy logic for which some scholars criticize Roe.
Also left unaddressed by those purring “not to worry” is the fate in deep red states of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) as a technique for helping couples conceive:
In 2006, while (U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney) Barrett worked as a law professor at Notre Dame, she was one of hundreds of people who signed a full-page newspaper advertisement sponsored by St Joseph County Right to Life, an extreme anti-choice group located in the city of South Bend.
The advertisement, which appeared in the South Bend Tribune, stated: “We, the following citizens of Michiana, oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death. Please continue to pray to end abortion.” …
In an interview with the Guardian, Jackie Appleman, the executive director of St Joseph County Right to Life, said … the discarding of embryos during the IVF process was equal to the act of having an abortion… “ We would be supportive of criminalizing the discarding of frozen embryos or selective reduction through the IVF process.”
Lisa C. — I’m disappointed that you are pursuing the notion that abortion opponents are troubled over women’s sex lives. I’m sure some of them are, just as some on the other side are clearly deranged, but people’s emotional problems and inability to absorb real arguments don’t seem to me to have anything to do with the fundamental issues involved.
I’ve been interacting with a number of people since the Dobbs draft leak and encountering all the familiar arguments and alleged arguments. I am convinced that if people could take the concerns of both sides seriously we could actually make progress in limiting the number of abortions and helping bring unplanned pregnancies to term. If only everyone could agree that that is a good goal! What you wrote about Republicans playing the victim, etc., is disheartening to me. This is such a divisive topic with so much anger. I wish we could all keep our eyes on the prize, but it seems to come down to the fact that both sides have their own ideas about how to help women and children, and these have just about no overlap. I regret that so much, since all the shouting ends up distracting from the real work.
Marc M. — The core issue for the religious right is not female sexuality, but the belief that life begins at conception. There are many religions and cultures that share the belief that the soul is created at conception, that it is the essence of life. and that this is not a matter for science to define. It’s wrong to claim that these beliefs are secondary or a cover for fear and repulsion at female sexuality.
The lack of overlap between the opposing sides in this debate is a huge obstacle to making sustainable progress because there really isn't a compromise position that would make it recede into one of those issues where we quibble on the margins.
Those in favor of abortion rights are of the belief that demands for them to compromise on a threshold gestational period after which abortion would not be permitted under all but the most grave circumstances -- 15 weeks, 20 weeks, 22 weeks, whatever -- are insincere; that as soon as they concede, say 20 weeks, the next demand will be 15, 12 or 6 weeks, followed by a ban on morning-after medication, IUDs and so on.
They recognize that principled opposition to abortion rights has to be predicated on the belief that there is no continuum, that there are no milestones along the gestational way when the embryo/fetus/baby acquires new and greater rights. If a one-minute old, microscopic embryo in the uterus of a 12-year-old girl who has been raped by an intruder doesn't have the same right to life as a one day old infant, then it's simply a line-drawing exercise.
And if abortion is tantamount to murder, there is absolutely no logic to not prosecuting women who obtain abortions as well as their doctors and those who facilitated the abortions for murder. There is only the insight that admitting this would horrify people. Now.
And those opposed to abortion rights, if I may hazard to speak for them, think they can't simply agree to leave this decision between a pregnant woman and her doctor, her family and her clergy because that flings open the door to the termination of viable, healthy fetuses/babies for the sake of convenience or revenge or whatever nearly at full term.
Agreeing to a threshold date would also concede to the pro-abortion-rights side a key argument about prerogatives and acquisition of moral weight along the developmental spectrum. And it would invite constant demands to push the threshold back all the way to 40 weeks.
The extreme examples -- the raped, possible pregnant pre-teen and the pregnant woman deciding at 39 weeks that, eh, she doesn't want this baby so let's kill it -- are so vanishingly rare as not to actually belong in the debate. But the worst-case hypotheticals at either end do demand explanations of those who would deny the raped pre-teen abortion care and those who would allow the near-term mother to have an abortion of convenience.
I believe most people are intuitively in the middle on this, and that polls do a terrible job at defining what public opinion actually is — which is in that mushy middle where folks see a continuum, they recognize that abortions at any stage aren't as neutral as, say, wart removal, that it would good if there were fewer unintended pregnancies and fewer abortions, and they think that, up to a certain point, it's not society's business, but after that it IS society's business.
The history of opposition to abortion is deeply rooted in sex and the wish to limit or marginalize sex for fun. It’s connection to the Catholic Church’s prohibition on contraception is fairly obvious, at least to me.
If it was about babies, we’d have excellent and free universal maternal care. You wouldn’t be charged a cent to give birth, no matter how complicated your delivery was. If it was about babies, we’d have months and months of parental leave, for everyone.
If it was about babies, we’d have free lactation consultants, free diapers, free formula. If it was about babies, we’d have free and excellent childcare from newborns on. If it was about babies, we’d have universal preschool and pre-k and guaranteed after school placements.
If it was about babies, IVF and adoption wouldn’t just be for folks with thousands and thousands of dollars to spend on expanding their families.
It’s not about babies. It’s about punishing women (and all people with uteruses) and controlling our bodies.
Aurora mayor and Republican gubernatorial hopeful Richard Irvin is testing the proposition that a wind sock can get elected governor
Sanctuary city refers to municipal jurisdictions, typically in North America, that limit their cooperation with the national government’s effort to enforce immigration law.
Irvin said that Aurora joins with Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in, “prohibiting the use of our resources to aid or support ICE in its enforcement activities.”
I do not support sanctuary cities. Aurora is not a sanctuary city. And when I’m governor, Illinois will not be a sanctuary state.
I’ll be discussing WTTW-Ch. 11’s scoop on Irvin’s anti-Trump texts in Thursday’s issue. John Williams and I chatted about this story in Monday’s regular colloquy on WGN.
What the hell, SNL?
I’ve been a fairly regular viewer of “Saturday Night Live” since its debut in 1975, and I’ve also been a fairly regular defender of the show against those who claim it’s no longer funny. The current cast is really strong. Kate McKinnon and Bowen Yang, in particular, are first team all-SNL, and many of the other players have great range.
But two recent episodes have been dreadful — last Saturday’s show with guest host Selena Gomez and the April 16 show with guest host Lizzo.
The opening to Saturday’s show was shit. Really. It was an excruciating five-minute skit in which the cast made numerous jokes about the allegation that Amber Heard once defecated in her ex-husband Johnny Depp’s bed.
Steve Martin appeared in a pre-taped mockumentary about the inventor of the whoopie cushion, which gave the writers many chance to make fart jokes. The ”Three Daughters” sketch ended with a weird variation on a fart joke — McKinnon revealing a prosthetic bare backside from which bubbles were emanating.
And “Irish Play” was basically one long penis joke. I won’t blame Gomez’s wooden acting style and lack of comedic range — this stinker was on the writers.
At The Atlantic, critic Amanda Wicks referred to Saturday’s episode as “one big yawn” and said the “diminished energy and half-hearted sketch work revealed that the show, like so many of us these days, is limping to the finish line.”
Was the Lizzo show ever more poorly written? Lizzo is a more versatile actor, but the writers let her down with such sketches as “Six Flags” in which she brings home a date and he learns that her grandfather, her grandmother, their friends and indeed Lizzo herself all like to dress up and dance like “Mr. Six,” the bald, bespectacled mascot of Six Flags amusement parks from 2004 until 2010.
And if that gag wasn’t dated enough, there was “Black Eyed Peas,” an aimless riff on how the 2009 song “Boom Boom Pow” may have been crafted in the studio. And "Steve's Beanie Babies,"in which the joke was that a guy had staked in financial future on the enduring value of collectible toys that hit their peak in the 1990s.
In “Orchestra” the joke was that Lizzo couldn’t play flute in an orchestra unless she was twerking at the same time, so the entire orchestra decided to twerk with her. But “Throne Room,” in which party planners in 2000 B.C. were planning a depraved orgy for the amusement of — punch line alert! — a pre-teen boy, was the rock bottom of the entire show if not the season.
Can this show make it to its 50th anniversary? At this rate, I don’t know.
Ya gotta see these tweets!
I often run across tweets that are too visual in nature to include in the Tweet of the Week contest (the template for the poll does not allow the use of images). Here are a few good ones I’ve come across recently:
Thank you for supporting the Picayune Sentinel. To help this publication grow, please consider spreading the word to friends, family, associates, neighbors and agreeable strangers.
Do better, easy-open bag tops! Your claims are fraught with lies. When I pull at the notch on the side, about a quarter of the way across, the strip tears off, leaving me with a bag that's impossible to open without getting the scissors. If we can put a man on the moon, you can make a better way to open your packaging!
Do better printers! I don't print all the time, but, when I do, there's almost always a problem. The printer says it's on the network, but it isn't. The computer can't communicate with it. To even get a response requires reinstalling something, or remembering some ancient password, or ... STOPPING EVERYTHING just to get the machine to spit out the paper with the thing on it you want. And, even when you get it working, if you have an ink jet printer, you're out of ink. I guaranty it. You just are. Where did it go? Nobody knows. If you have a laser printer, you get streaks and blips and dots and no color. I have three printers. None of them work reliably. This is the stupidest damn thing in this age of electronic wonder. It's like they're harassing me for wanting to print anything. If Elon Musk wants to improve humanity, he should forget about Twitter and Mars and all that crap and get on this.
Do better, easy-open bag tops! Your claims are fraught with lies. When I pull at the notch on the side, about a quarter of the way across, the strip tears off, leaving me with a bag that's impossible to open without getting the scissors. If we can put a man on the moon, you can make a better way to open your packaging!
Do better printers! I don't print all the time, but, when I do, there's almost always a problem. The printer says it's on the network, but it isn't. The computer can't communicate with it. To even get a response requires reinstalling something, or remembering some ancient password, or ... STOPPING EVERYTHING just to get the machine to spit out the paper with the thing on it you want. And, even when you get it working, if you have an ink jet printer, you're out of ink. I guaranty it. You just are. Where did it go? Nobody knows. If you have a laser printer, you get streaks and blips and dots and no color. I have three printers. None of them work reliably. This is the stupidest damn thing in this age of electronic wonder. It's like they're harassing me for wanting to print anything. If Elon Musk wants to improve humanity, he should forget about Twitter and Mars and all that crap and get on this.