Yes, let's get to the bottom of the Dexter Reed killing in a proper trial

& results of my reader survey

4-17-2025 (issue No. 189)

This week:

• Last week’s winning quip

• Results of my recent reader survey

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked, on the Dexter Reed case, plans for a military parade on Trump’s birthday, the latest assault on the press, granny flats, the “pop-up curfew” proposal, the threat to Harvard’s tax-exempt status and, lastly, the most ominous story so far from Trump the Tyrant.

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

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

• 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 — On the proposal to combine the men’s and women’s Final Fours, and more

• Tune of the Week — “Brutal” by Olivia Rodrigo, nominated by Joanie Wimmer

Mary Schmich will return!

Last week’s winning quip

Whenever I see chocolate, I hear two voices in my head. One of them says, “Eat the chocolate.” And the other one says, “You heard her, eat the chocolate.” — unknown

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

Follow-up survey says …

More than 2,100 of you responded to my recent readership survey, up from 1,700 respondents in early 2024. Last year’s results, when applicable, are in parentheses:

Which regular features of the Picayune Sentinel do you enjoy and usually read?

• Takes on local and state news — 93% (94%)

• The quips/tweets — 77% (84%)

• The links (Land of Linkin' and Squaring Up the News) — 75% (65%)

• Posts by Mary Schmich — 59% (64%)

• Correspondence with readers (among Picayune Plus readers) — 58% (38%)

• Good Sports — 25% (25%)

• Tune of the Week — 24% (21%)

I additionally asked this year about:

• The visual jokes poll (among Picayune Plus readers) — 82%

• Quotables — 70%

• Unpopular opinions (among Picayune Plus readers) — 67%

• Mincing Rascals podcast preview — 22%

• The NewsWheel puzzle (among Picayune Plus readers) — 19%

Demographics

Most readers live in the Chicago suburban areas — 62% (63% last year), while another 21% (22%) live in the city proper. A healthy 17% (15%) come from outside the Chicago region. Readership skews slightly male — 53% (50%)

Politically, PS readership leans notably left:

• Liberal — 40% (26%)

• Moderately liberal — 39% (51%)

• Centrist — 13% (15%)

• Moderately conservative — 6% (7%)

• Conservative — 1% (1%)

• Libertarian — >1% (1%)

And, finally, readership here is, like me, of a certain age. I used different age brackets last year so I can’t compare exactly, but this year I found:

• 65-plus — 77%

• 55-64 — 18%

• 40-55 — 5%

• Under 40 — 1%

Takeaways

As I wrote last year when the age demographics were similar and I temporarily changed the name of this publication to “The Pickleball Sentinel,” I wish I had more younger readers. My guess is that my age demographics are similar to those of other legacy media outlets such as daily newspapers and info-talk radio, and it’s frustrating because I do strive for general (not simply geriatric) relevance. I joined TikTok this week, so maybe that will help?

That 79% of my readership is on the left doesn’t surprise me, but I very much value readers and especially commenters from the right and of a libertarian bent. I genuinely appreciate their perspective and their pushback, and I want them to feel heard. Dissents are the lifeblood of Z-mail, and they sharpen everyone’s thinking.

I see that sports, the Tune of the Week, the “Mincing Rascals” podcast preview and the NewsWheel puzzle are underwater, popularity-wise, so I’m likely to adjust the placement, presentation and priority of those in some way to reflect that.

I did not ask about “That’s so Brandon,” “Word Court” or other occasional features, and I should have asked if you find the table of contents at the top useful. Next time!

And deep thanks to all who took the time to fill out the survey.

What would you like to see or see more of in the Picayune Sentinel or Picayune Plus?

More than 700 of you offered comments in this section, some of them quite helpful. I’m going to be going through and responding to some of those in the coming weeks.

News & Views

News: The Chicago City Council Finance Committee balks at paying a $1.25 million settlement to the family of Dexter Reed, who was killed by police.

View: Good. Even though the city is likely to spend much more than $1.25 million on outside counsel to defend this suit, the public deserves to get full answers to all the questions that surround this troubling incident during which Reed died in a shootout with police during a traffic stop. Did police have a good reason to pull Reed over? How often did the crew that pulled him over engage in pretextual stops of Black motorists? Did they make appropriate efforts to deescalate the situation once it appeared Reed was uncooperative? My analysis of the available video suggested the story that police stopped Reed because they saw he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt was not true. But since evidence also suggests Reed fired first at the officers, does it make any sense to pay off his family? My answer has been no, but I’ll keep an open mind.

Pretrial settlements of police misconduct cases are often the most fiscally responsible course of action for a municipality — they avoid taking the chance that a jury will dole out a huge damage award. But at times, they don’t serve the public’s right to know exactly what happened and, therefore, how best to try to prevent it from happening again, as the internal fact-finding process is protracted and opaque.

Consider the Adam Toledo case. It was four years ago March 29 that Adam, 13, was shot and killed by Officer Eric Stillman at the conclusion of a foot chase in the Little Village neighborhood. Disciplinary hearings against Stillman are still pending, as is the lawsuit filed more than three years ago by Adam Toledo’s family.

I tend to agree with criminologist Tracy Siska of the Chicago Justice Project, who wrote:

The Adam Toledo shooting while a massive tragedy was not out of line with Chicago Police Department guidelines and so the (attempted) firing of Eric Stillman smells like politics. Despite how the video of this shooting has been exploiting repeatedly for political purposes the reality is that tragic police shootings can occur and those shootings can also be inline with CPD guidelines.

The fervor over the shooting of Toledo makes sense as nobody really wants to see children die at the hands of anyone, especially law enforcement. This fact however does not allow people to say the shooting of Toledo is unjustified just because of Adam’s age without considering the facts involved in the shooting.

This incident, like the killing of Dexter Reed, demands a full public airing, damn the cost.

News: President Donald Trump wants to hold a military parade in Washington, D.C., on June 14, his 79th birthday.

View: Nothing quite says authoritarian dictatorship like a procession of soldiers and tanks through the streets of the Capitol.

Trump in his first term proposed having a grand military parade in the U.S. after watching one in France on Bastille Day in 2017. Trump said after watching the two-hour procession along the famed Champs-Elysees that he wanted a grander one in Washington on Pennsylvania Avenue. But the event never happened due to expected high costs, with one estimate of a $92 million price tag.

I’ve seen no current cost estimates for Generalissimo Trump’s current whim, but the bill for planning, security, viewing stands, mobilizing and rehearsing military personnel, repairing streets that would inevitably be damaged when traversed by heavy vehicles and other costs would be considerable. And June 14 is just a little more than eight weeks away.

Backers of the idea claim it would serve as a military recruitment tool, but it’s hard to imagine a less efficient way of enticing young men and women into enlisting.

Former Army Lt. Andrew Exum wrote “Military Parades Are a Waste of Time and Money” for The Atlantic in 2018:

It’s military malpractice on Trump’s part to order his troops to participate in something as silly and vain as a parade. … Americans don’t have a problem of appreciating the military too little. Americans have a problem venerating the military too much.

News: “The White House is starting a new media policy that restricts wire services’ access to the president.”

View: Columnist Tom Jones at Poynter nails why restricting the wire sservices is so ominous:

This is not about what a body of water is called. It has never been about that. It’s about the White House wanting to control what news media do and then punishing them when they don’t treat Trump’s word as gospel.

Dan Perry at Mediaite:

Authoritarians thrive not by persuading a majority, but by confusing it. By overwhelming the public with contradictions, distortions, and doubt, would-be strongmen don’t need to win the argument. They just need to break the scoreboard. … Power becomes hard to challenge because facts become fuzzy in the absence of the institution that exists to establish and communicate facts. So this is not just about silencing dissent but reshaping reality.

News: Illinois House Bill 1813 — the Accessory Dwelling Unit Permissibility Act — would allow construction of coach houses and so-called “granny flats” across the state. It unanimously passed the Housing Committee last month.

View: On balance, this is a good idea. Coach houses and basement units — sometimes called granny flats or in-law apartments for how they often facilitate intergenerational living — are a traditional element of urban life. They can help keep families together, provide a little extra rental income for strapped homeowners, allow tenants to live in neighborhoods they might not otherwise be able to afford and alleviate housing shortages.

And yes, with increased density can come parking shortages, and an increase in the number of renters can change the character of a neighborhood of single-family homes.

The result of Chicago’s pilot program that re-legalized the constructions of ADUs in 2020 has been a mixed bag, according to a report published earlier this year by the Illinois Policy Institute:

Despite 71% of Chicagoans being in favor of putting additional dwelling units on existing residential lots – higher than the national average – restrictive and inequitable regulations have ensured very few are built.1 Only 44% of pre-approved applications have received building permits since the program’s inception.2

This low rate of desired residences becoming actual homes points to substantial barriers in the development process. Inequitable restrictions on the West, South, and Southeast zones – such as owner-occupancy requirements, vacant lot development limitations and permit ceilings – limit potential development where it’s most needed. … From the left-of-center Brookings Institution to the libertarian Cato Institute, policy leaders agree additional dwelling units are a prime way to address housing challenges. Cities such as Los Angeles have proven this method works.

News: A curfew proposal before the Chicago City Council would allow police to head off teen takeovers by declaring “situational” curfews for certain times at certain dates.

View: It’s worth a try. The idea of simply lowering the downtown curfew for teens to 8 p.m. was a nonstarter unsupported by research, but the proposal introduced Wednesday by Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, is narrower and more targeted. Per Block Club Chicago:

The alderman is now backing a plan to give the Chicago Police superintendent the authority to declare a curfew “for the applicable public places anticipated to be affected by such mass gatherings.”

The ordinance, which will be sent to the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, defines a mass gathering as a group of 20 or more people in a public place for the “purpose of engaging in, or that is likely to result in, criminal conduct, including reckless conduct.” … Hopkins on Wednesday called his new ordinance a collaborative compromise and more comprehensive than his original proposal, which would have only applied to Downtown. …

Mayor Brandon Johnson did not outright endorse Hopkins’ latest curfew proposal, but said it was “clearly a step in the right direction.”

Jahmal Cole, the founder and CEO of My Block, My Hood, My City, expressed strong opposition to Hopkins’ proposal, fearing it would be used to target innocent gatherings of youths of color.

That’s always a risk, so a time-limited trial rather than a permanent new law seems like the way to go.

News: “IRS making plans to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status” because it’s a “political entity.”

View: Next do churches. President Donald Trump’s war on academia is petty, unseemly, hypocritical and, because it will harm scientific and medical research that will improve and extend lives, thoughtless and cruel. Very on brand for him, in other words.

News: The Trump administration is blithely ignoring the courts

View: I saved this item for last because it’s news that theoretically eclipses every item above, items written under the assumption that we live in a nation of laws governed by co-equal branches of government populated by men and women devoted, at the end of the day, to the Constitution. If and when that’s no longer true, none of the above will matter.

“The Emergency is Here,” (gift link) a truly chilling episode of New York Times columnist Ezra Klein’s podcast, dropped in the early hours of Thursday morning. I invite you to listen to the episode or to read the transcript at the gift link. Klein and his guest lay out the chilling details of the arrest and deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a man denied due process and now mistakenly held in a prison in El Salvador, a prison from which the White House is refusing to facilitate his release as ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court.

If they get away with this, the implications are ghastly. And the evidence right now is that they will get away with it.

Good morning!

Land of Linkin’

• Podcaster extraordinaire Mike Pesca is now offering The Gist List on Substack. He describes it as “a news roundup, interesting things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today’s podcast episode.” Along with his daily podcast, “The Gist,” he also hosts “Not Even Mad,” a very civilized, weekly one-hour debate podcast “dedicated to a joyful disagreement. … Pesca and a rotating panel of two other co-hosts address issues from different political perspectives, but they wear their ideologies loosely and are just as likely to disagree with established doctrine as with each other.” Pesca has also posted “How I Got ChatGPT to Downplay the Holocaust” on his Substack.

• Speaking of artificial intelligence, The New York Times pitted author Curtis Sittenfeld against AI in a short story writing contest (gift link) last August. Sittenfeld clearly won, but the AI effort was disconcertingly decent, and, as Sittenfeld noted, such creations seem likely to get better and better as time goes by.

• I was curious about how school portrait photographers are faring in an age when nearly everyone carries around high-quality digital cameras in their pockets. So I interviewed Chicago photographer Chad Leverenz, and the edited transcript is here. (Leverenz’s viral video, which I wrote about last week, now has nearly 46 million views.)

• Is my sense of humor too dark? Readers are fairly evenly split in Tuesday’s click survey about “Casket Catastrophe.”

• Neil Steinberg interviewed Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias about the May 7 deadline to upgrade driver’s licenses. “Without Real ID, no American plane has been hijacked since 9/11. The only terror being inflicted is by Real ID, stressing already traumatized communities.”

• Steve Chapman: “How DOGE Thugs Enlisted the Police to Takeover a Private Building Belonging to an Independent Agency.” He calls it “coercive vandalism.”

• Former Northfield resident Elizabeth Weingarten — daughter of former Tribune writer and editor Paul Weingarten and writer Marla Paul — is the author of the non-fiction book “How to Fall in Love with Questions — A New Way to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty,” out this week from HarperCollins Publishers: “Weingarten offers a fresh approach for dealing with … seemingly unsolvable questions. In her quest, Weingarten shares her own journey and the stories of many others, whose lives have transformed through a different, and better, relationship with uncertainty.”

• Alleged drunk-driving Cook County Board of Review Commissioner Samantha Steele gave an interview to NBC-5’s Mary Ann Ahern. She said that the accident she allegedly caused while allegedly under the influence was because medication she was taking for a pituitary tumor impacted her peripheral vision. She also denied belittling the size of an arresting officer’s penis.

• WTTW-Ch. 11 announces another intriguing offering from ace local video historian Geoffrey Baer, who “explores the history, the hidden gems and the unique character of (the Chicago lakefront). From secluded beaches to bustling harbors, from architectural wonders to vibrant green spaces, discover the stories that have shaped this iconic waterfront and the people who bring it to life.”

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:

■ “Deadly consequences”: A Sun-Times investigation into four—in retrospect, preventable—unprovoked killings and two nonfatal attacks in downtown Chicago since 2021 points to big gaps in care for severely mentally ill people who cycle through jail, prisons and hospitals.

■ Among those cases: A cheerful day on North Michigan Avenue that turned into a young flight attendant’s “nightmare.”

■ One veteran reporter tells Square he’s “never seen a murder story where everyone is so closed-mouthed” as they’ve been in the still-unsolved killings five years ago this month of beloved Oak Park attorneys and philanthropists Tom Johnson and Leslie Jones—stabbed to death in their home.

■ Travel reservations: Trump critic Mona Charen’s “planning a business trip to Europe. I don’t scare easy, but despite the fact that I’m an American citizen and have committed no crime, I am worried about what might happen when I attempt to come home. … Even citizens do not have the same Fourth Amendment rights at the border that they (theoretically) enjoy inside the country.”

■ Ready to travel? Here’s what the TSA says you need at checkpoints.

■ WBEZ’s analysis finds a nearly three-year upswing in Chicago robberies ended last summer.

■ The family of a Chicago man in an El Salvadoran prison spotted him in U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s stunt video—but has no idea how to reach him.

■ Fox talking head Jesse Watters: “Everyone knows” wearing a Chicago Bulls hat “means you’re MS-13.”

■ “Home-growns are next”: President Trump’s joke-not-joke with El Salvador’s dictator-president Nayib Bukele is what “Pod Save America” co-host Dan Pfeiffer calls “the beginning of … a constitutional crisis.”

■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Rather than being appalled … Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pam Bondi … erupted in laughter.”

■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst marvels at Vance’s “lonely late-night lying Nazi tweets.”

■ Columnist Brian Beutler says a memo circulating among Capitol Hill staffers outlines procedural steps Democratic representatives can take to “make life painful for Republicans as they prepare to slash taxes for the rich, take health care away from tens of millions of Americans, and abet Trump’s efforts to establish an American dictatorship.”

■ As the free press faces unprecedented assault from the Trump administration, Square has joined the Press Freedom United campaign—a national community of journalists and concerned citizens sending an open letter to Congress and the White House demanding immediate action to uphold the First Amendment. We invite you to sign by April 30 at noon for delivery May 1.

■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: “Every move is in the same direction, boosting outlets that cheerlead for Trump while booting outlets that impartially cover him.”

■ Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling and “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver are at war.

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

Minced Words

Cate Plys, Brandon Pope and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We discussed the Dexter Reed case, “pop-up” curfews for teens and the debate over legislation in Springfield that would impose some regulations on home-schoolers. Pope, who was partially home-schooled, was strongly in favor. We concluded with a conversation about the Trump administration’s battle with the courts.

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.

Quotables

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

Nobody wants to build a factory or invest when the market can be — will be, judging from the recent past — whipsawed again and again by the whims of an idiot. — Neil Steinberg

Don't tell me Mahmoud Khalil standing with Jewish people for justice for Palestine is antisemitic when you pardoned the Nazi terrorist wearing a "Camp Auschwitz" shirt as he violently stormed the Capitol to hang Mike Pence and kill Nancy Pelosi. — Qasim Rashid

About the specific issue of trans women in sports, I confess that my default stance at this point is exhaustion; it’s just such an incredibly small bore issue, of relevance to a tiny minority of trans people, that I struggle to see it as something worthy of expending great political resources. This is particularly true given that the public genuinely is not on our side here. Hell, 45% of Democrats say that trans athletes should be “required to compete on teams that match their sex at birth.” One of the great weaknesses of contemporary liberalism is the absolute inability to take an L on any issue; scroll around on BlueSky and you’ll find, for example, vast throngs of progressives who are completely unwilling to admit that mass immigration of unskilled labor into the United States is deeply unpopular. I think the left’s control of our arts, culture, and ideas industries have left too many of us thinking that we can’t lose a culture war. But in the broad sense, we currently are. — Freddie deBoer

The U.S. wrongfully deported a man to El Salvador. The Supreme Court said the U.S. should “facilitate” bringing that man back home. The president of the United States, sitting next to the president of El Salvador, gave no indication that he would facilitate bringing that man home. An American journalist simply asked what was going on, and the response she got was full of insults, falsehoods and nonanswers. — Tom Jones of the Poynter Institute

(Trump’s) well-being is also due to a cruel, indifferent universe where hardworking people are diagnosed with terminal illnesses, but an objectively evil monster who only eats cheeseburgers and fried chicken lives forever. The world is chaos, there is no God. — Stephen Colbert

The same group of people that think Anthony Fauci is a liar and want him arrested hear that Donald Trump—a person they can see with their own eyes—weighs 224 pounds. They go, “Finally, an honest doctor.” — Jimmy Kimmel

What happened to Biden after the first 2024 debate could happen to Trump just as fast. Biden went from “He’s the sharpest he’s ever been” to “He’s a senile old man” in a matter of hours. Today, MAGA thinks Trump is playing 4D chess. Soon, they may realize he’s just playing golf. And the faster they realize that, the faster this country moves forward. — Vitaliy Katsenelson

If Kristi Noem was able to fly to that torture camp in El Salvador and film a photo op in front of hundreds of caged prisoners, she or the president can certainly get on a goddamn plane to that same prison right now and retrieve a father they sent there by “mistake.” — Sean Colarossi

Don’t give in: It won’t stop here — slogan on shirts worn by faculty and student at Northwestern University protesting threatened funding cuts by the Trump administration

Funny how all of a sudden no one's eating cats and dogs anymore, no one's performing sex-change operations in schools anymore, no one's aborting babies after birth anymore, the price of eggs doesn't matter anymore and a recession won't be a bad thing anymore. — unknown

When Andrew Tate was charged with rape and human trafficking, Trump intervened to fly him back to the US. When a working-class father of a disabled 5-year-old child was wrongfully deported, Trump refuses to lift a finger. — Brian Tyler Cohen

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:

• In Hell, every sandwich is made with Miracle Whip. — @sweetmomissa

• Sometimes, you meet someone and you know from the first moment that you want to spend your whole life without them. — unknown

• I enjoy arguing with people online to distract from the fact that I am one of seven billion people circling around one of 200 billion stars in our galaxy in a universe with potentially infinite amounts of galaxies. — @wildethingy

• Here's an idea: If you're cremated after you die, you can be put into an hourglass and continue to participate in family game night. — unknown

• I’ve found that if you tuck one part of your pantleg into your sock, people expect less of you. — unknown

• How do they know an animal is extinct? Like, have they looked everywhere? — @ReddCinema

• The trick of life is to get the sports car before you have to grunt getting in and out of it. — @ThePaigeRandall

• Welp, these tariffs have priced me out of the mail-order bride market. — @WilliamAder

• We just sort of drifted apart and never saw each other again. After that, I wasn't allowed to teach kayaking lessons. — @SuitSentient

• I bought my girlfriend a fridge for her birthday. I can't wait to see her face light up when she opens it. — @GGsDadJokes

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

A stupid tradition like no other

Last weekend’s Masters golf tournament was epic, as Tribune sports columnist Paul Sullivan artfully explained here in comparing it for drama and thrilling resolution with Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. But I have issues with the fussy guidelines that the TV announcers have to follow, and I weighed in on that in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus.

Combine the Final Fours!

Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman says the NCAA should have the men’s and women’s basketball Final Four in the same venue over the same weekend. Currently the Friday semi-final women’s games and the Sunday championship game are played in one city (Tampa, this year) in a basketball arena, while the Saturday semifinal men’s games and the Monday final are played in another city (San Antonio this year) in a football stadium.

Ackerman said:

There's a symbolism there that shouldn’t be overlooked, which is, we’re trying to build women’s basketball. We need everybody on board to do that. We need the athletic directors here (at the women's tournament). ... We’re losing that sort of spiritual support, if you will, for women’s basketball because it’s head to head with the men’s Final Four, which is a magnet for all the networking and business activity. … If the NCAA is looking for growth — and it is — and is looking for revenue growth — and it is — I can’t think of many ways you could accomplish that in a significant way versus in an incremental way than combining the two Final Fours.

The women’s game has soared in popularity, and having it be part of a hoops extravaganza weekend would certainly draw more fans and more media attention.

I have friends who, like me, have become fans of women’s college hoops, but, unlike me, they don’t like this idea because it fixes something that ain’t broken. Your take?

OKC’s SGA as NBA MVP?

Jay Mariotti makes the case that Toronto-born NBA superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder, this year’s leading scorer, will lead his team to the championship in the upcoming playoffs and take home the Michael Jordan Trophy awarded to the league’s most valuable player.

Check out the silky fakes and jab steps in one of his online highlight reels and see if you don’t agree.

No, last names do not get a Roman numeral or Jr.’s

I got grouchy seeing this in the Sun-Times’ coverage of the trial of state Sen. Emil Jones III:

When using his full name, yes, Emil Jones gets the Roman numeral to distinguish himself from his father, Emil Jones Jr., the former president of the state Senate. But his last name is not “Jones III.” The reason I put this gripe in the Good Sports section is that athletes are major offenders of this rule.

Sox watch

I will keep track for you whenever the Chicago White Sox fall below the .250 winning percentage mark.

After Wednesday night’s loss to the A’s, they stand at 4-13, a winning percentage of .235. For a 162-game season, that works out to a record of 38-124. Last season they went 41-121 (.253).

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 Joanie Wimmer. She writes:

“Brutal” by Olivia Rodrigo was released in 2021. I love this song’s powerful intensity in its description of relationship angst, and the way the tag line—“it’s brutal out here”—seems to make it all less devastating and more manageable.

This may be the angsty-est song ever recorded, and while heavy metal isn’t my thing, I agree with Wimmer that this is a compelling, even catchy song, coming in at a spiffy 2:23. (I prefer the above, spare performance video to the “official” video.)

Where's my fucking teenage dream?
If someone tells me one more time
"Enjoy your youth," I'm gonna cry …
They say these are the golden years
But I wish I could disappear
Ego crush is so severe
God, it's brutal out here

American Songwriter:

If you were a teen when this one came out, odds are Rodrigo tapped a direct line to your soul with “brutal.” … Rodrigo lets her insecurities, complaints about the world, and anger fly freely on this up-tempo track. It’s the breakdown we all need from time to time. … Other topics include fake friends, hating her own songwriting material, and even parallel parking. Nothing is particularly dire, but that’s the pressure of coming of age: even the most minute issue feels world-ending.

After the release of “brutal,” some accused Rodrigo of lifting the signature guitar riff from Elvis Costello’s 1978 hit “Pump It Up,” but Costello came to her defense:

This is fine by me. It's how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That's what I did.

"Brutal" hit No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and debuted at No. 1 on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart.

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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