8-27-2026
This week:
News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked on the trade war with Canada, freshmen at Michigan not getting grades, the appalling stumble at Target, the futile effort to rein in AI music, my skepticism about the O’Hare Flyer 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 — Sports-talk radio shakeups, another union effort the Tribune refuses to cover and more
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 — The Cubs’ division is way better than the Sox’s
Green Lights — A 2019 documentary podcast series on the late, great Dolly Parton
Are the lengthy power outages in Northwest Indiana a preview of what’s to come?
Lengthy storm-related power outages in Northwest Indiana were very hard on some residents and prompted many of us to wonder how we’d fare being in the dark for some two weeks. So now consider The New York Times Magazine story “What if America Went Completely Dark?” (gift link), a thoroughly chilling look at the vulnerability of the U.S. power grid and the prospect of outages that last not weeks but months into years.
With 20 minutes and enough rifles, a crew could potentially turn the lights out nationwide. … A blackout caused by (attacked) transformers … could last 18 months or longer. … Since 2021, the average wait time for a large power transformer — the kind you’d find at a major substation, capable of handling tens or hundreds of thousands of volts — has climbed from less than a year to 128 weeks, with some lead times growing as long as five years. …
It is difficult to overstate how completely the loss of the grid would disrupt life as we know it. In that first hushed moment after the lights went out, we wouldn’t even know that this outage was different from any other. Maybe we would lose power for a few hours. Maybe the ice cream would melt. … At some point, though, the authorities would have to tell the public: The power won’t be restored for a very long time.
During the first phase of a long-term blackout, we’d return, briefly, to the early 20th century, when isolated facilities ran on “private power.” Critical infrastructure like sewage plants, water treatment plants and hospitals could keep running as long as they had diesel or natural gas. … But without electricity, even these backups would begin to fail as diesel ran out and the natural-gas pumps shut down.
The second phase would be harder. The hope of restoring the grid would fade as fossil fuel supplies were exhausted, because so many utilities rely on them to “black-start” their generating units. …
(A report from the U.S.) Energy Department and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. condensed the entire disaster movie that would follow into a single paragraph: “The supply of food, water and fuel would degrade within days. The facile communication of information to the general population would be greatly complicated by the loss of cellphones, internet access and television. The economy would virtually shut down as electronic transactions could no longer be processed. After several days, widespread social unrest and confusion would ensue.” Thirsty, starved, dirty and surrounded by the useless machines we once depended on, we would be lucky if our misery ended at “confusion.”
In case you need something else to keep you awake at night.
A victory for Freedom
Trans rights advocates evidently couldn’t resist reacting vociferously to a pair of what should have been minor provocations, and so, once again, the issue of trans women and girls in sports for female competitors has gained a prominence it doesn’t deserve.
Most recently, former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White announced trollishly that they were now self-identifying as women and submitting themselves as candidates for the WNBA draft. The evident purpose of the stunt was to call attention to the vagueness of the requirement in the league’s collective bargaining agreement that “only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA,” and thus to foreground the “what is a woman?” question.
Conservative activists have been using the “what is a woman?” question as a challenge to liberal politicians and others who argue for no legal, semantic or cultural distinctions between trans women and those assigned female at birth — “Trans women are women, full stop,” as the slogan goes. And one major purpose of this challenge is to try to gain an advantage in the argument against trans women and girls competing in athletic events restricted to women and girls.
Freedom — he legally adopted this last name five years ago after becoming a U.S. citizen — attended Sunday’s WNBA game in Chicago between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever and took a seat under one basket wearing a shirt reading, “Woman, noun, adult human female.”
Someone should explain to me why some find this tautological definition inflammatory. Trans women are also adult human females, full stop, right? But Freedom’s intent to provoke was clear enough that, during a timeout in the third quarter, Sky guard Natasha Cloud advanced on Freedom, yelling at him. He responded by rising and taking a step onto the floor, at which point security guards hustled him out of Wintrust Arena, giving him exactly the attention he was seeking.
“I just got kicked out of a @WNBA game for supporting WOMEN!” Freedom then posted to social media. “Let that sink in, AMERICA!”
Sky owner Michael Alter then gave more life to the story Tuesday by banning Freedom from Sky home games and labeling him a potential threat, as though Freedom had ever been to a Sky game before or has any interest in attending another.
Cloud and the Sky should have ignored Freedom, and the WNBA should have quietly and quickly revised its regulations to prevent hulking male athletes from cynically declaring themselves to be female for the sole purpose of dominating their league.
There are ways. The NCAA limits participation in women’s sports to those assigned female at birth; the International Olympic Committee requires a one-time genetic screening that detects the presence of a Y chromosome; other sports bodies require suppressed testosterone levels to limit male athletic advantages. Here is a menu showing how various states address this issue for scholastic sports. A key factor determining eligibility is sometimes requiring medical records and evidence, such as legal first-name changes, to establish that the transition is bona fide and consistent with other aspects of the student’s life.
If Freedom’s challenge happens to end up in court, “Freedom and White are simply yanking our chain, your honor,” is not a sound legal argument.
What touched off this latest round of posturing and bickering was over-the-top condemnation and celebration of Fever guard Sophie Cunningham. Toward the bottom of a July 21 ESPN profile of her that ran more than 5,000 words, came this passage:
She’ll weigh in on how to “protect women’s sports,” she says, because she’s in that world and feels qualified to speak to that world. “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” she says. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
Cunningham is not leading a movement here. She’s merely expressing an opinion held by more than two-thirds of the public according to Gallup and the Pew Research Center — an opinion that has become slightly more popular as this debate has intensified and those holding Cunningham’s view have been labeled haters.
Granted, what’s popular isn’t necessarily right, and, like voter fraud, this “problem” is so vanishingly small that it barely deserve our attention. The argument is over a comparative handful of athletes nationwide, most of them young and very few of them athletically gifted. In aiming to keep Enes Freedom from making a mockery of the WNBA, we risk blighting the lives of trans girls who just want to experience the camaraderie and joy of sports with their peers.
I’m not saying this is an easy issue or that there is a solution that will satisfy all sides, but trolling and overreacting to trolling and other provocations aren’t going to bring us any closer to a fair compromise that will put this controversy behind us.
Last week’s winning quip
I still think daily about the time I was at Arby’s and the person in front of me asked what the “healthy option” was, and the cashier responded “leaving.” — @granttanaka.bsky.social
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: Now we’re in a trade war with Canada, eh?
View: Call me a bad American, but I’m rooting for Canada in the unnecessary and ill-advised trade war Donald Trump has instigated against our neighbors to the north. International leaders must stand up to this rash bully and his disrespectful insults, and Canadian leaders are showing creditable resolve.
The New York Times (gift link) reports on how and why the agreement fell apart:
The sticking points were many. In the last few hours, negotiators clashed over Canadian rules promoting French-language movies and shows online, as well as the Trump administration’s demands to dictate Canada’s steel tariffs on other countries. Canada, in turn, insisted on more generous treatment for its autos, electric vehicles and products made with metal — and ultimately backed away from its offer to cooperate on the Keystone XL pipeline that President Trump has long desired
News: Half of incoming freshmen at the University of Michigan next fall will not receive letter grades for their first semester.
View: Traditionalists may be aghast, but I like it, and this pass/no credit system for frosh has been in place at other universities for some time. It not only relieves stress that can lead to mental health crises, but it also allows students to try out various and perhaps challenging fields of study without fear of doing long-term damage to their transcripts.
The pilot program is for students in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts, or roughly half the entering class.
News: Target pulls offensive Halloween costume and apologizes.
View: Generally, when I see a story about retailers wringing their hands and apologizing for selling a product that some have called offensive, I roll my eyes about hypersensitive and performative umbrage. Here, though, wow. The costume itself might not have attracted much notice, but using a Black child as a catalog model and having him strike a vaudeville pose so starkly recalled the days of minstrel shows and blackface entertainers that you have to wonder how this got past any number of managers who reviewed the image. Were all of them white?
“As a company, we got this wrong, and we are deeply sorry,” the chain said in a statement. “We are looking closely at how this happened and what needs to change to ensure this won't happen again.”
News: Chicago will not host the 2028 Democratic National Convention.
View: Too bad. The city acquitted itself well last time and saw an estimated $371 million in extra economic activity. But I still say conventions are boring, and to reduce the security costs borne by taxpayers both parties should hold them back to back in the same city.
News: Among the charges leveled at San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York in a recent prostitution-sting arrest was the “possession of criminal tools” because he used a cellphone to respond to an advertisement.
View: OK, bust him for being a would-be john, but calling a phone a “criminal tool” as though it were a crowbar, lock-picking set or a gun? Yep. This charge, since dropped, was in line with an Ohio law wherein “almost any object can count as a criminal tool if someone intends to use it for a crime. That includes cash meant to buy drugs, a flashlight meant for a burglary, or a screwdriver if the person has threatened by text to stab someone with it,” according to The San Francisco Standard.
News: Australia’s recorded music industry will ban AI-made songs from its charts as Apple Music plans to begin labeling such songs as “Made With AI” and the Sun-Times newsroom union demands that management not eliminate “future jobs to make room for GenAl.”
View: While I share the general alarm and dismay about the ways in which AI threatens the old ways, such fingers in the dam won’t stop the rising waters. Read about what’s already going on in China for a peek at our inevitable future:
Popular college programs in foreign languages have increasingly fallen out of favor as AI-powered translation tools have become more widespread. The share of Chinese industrial enterprises saying they use AI models and “agents” jumped to 47.5% last year from 9.6% in 2024. … Generative AI increasingly is used for creation, production and distribution in China’s short drama industry. The number of live-action short and vertical video series designed for mobile phones fell about 75% in the first quarter of this year from a year earlier.
News: The O’Hare Flyer project hopes to give us a 15-minute express train from downtown to our city’s largest airport.
View: Good luck with that! One of my reservations is that the terminal for this proposed bullet train will be west of the old post office about a mile from the heart of downtown, meaning that most of those who want to use it will have to take some other form of transportation to get to it. Another is that there are no plans for even one stop along the way in the near western suburbs, where a substantial number of customers could be found at the cost of a delay of just a few minutes.
Land of Linkin’
ProPublica: “The True Story of Why Immigration Agents Raided a Chicago Apartment Building.” Agents “arrested 37 immigrants and claimed that two were confirmed members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua — but then never identified any of them. … (and) of all the people they arrested, there was not a single criminal charge filed. Not one. Against anybody.”
On HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” Sunday, host John Oliver discussed how more and more companies are relying on subscription models for revenue, and he made the case for stalled regulations requiring that it be just as easy to unsubscribe from a service as it is to subscribe to it.
Lifehacker lists “30 Movies That Have Definitely Not Aged Well.”
Here is a gift link to a New York Times quiz on modern dating lingo. What is “kittenfishing”? “Wildflowering?” What does it mean to DTR?
I didn’t know this fact, which I found in a Tribune op-ed: “Under both Illinois law and the 2024-2028 union contract, the most junior teachers in a given performance tier must be laid off first. Consequently, because high-poverty schools rely disproportionately on newer teachers, the classrooms that are most likely to be affected are those whose students can least afford the disruption.”
“KFC is releasing an Oreo chicken burger with a cookie bun,” but only, so far, in China. Has science gone too far?
Consumer Reports: “Different Prices for the Same Ride: How Uber and Lyft Use AI to Get More Money Out of You.”
I hope y’all paid mind to me when on July 14 I wrote “Don’t make up your mind yet about the sexual abuse accusations against the Rev. Michael Pfleger.” He was cleared. Again.
On this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast, Brandon Pope, Steve Bertrand and I joined host John Williams to discuss the news of the week and to congratulate Brandon on his new TV gig, which will be announced Monday. He’s staying in town is all we can say for now. 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. Look for the YouTube version that will be posted later in the week. See our traffic-light recommendations below.
From the Picayune Plus:
The infuriating failure of cereal manufacturers to give us easy-open inner bags.
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:
■ Dolly Parton’s passing sparked a pilgrimage of Chicagoans to an Edgewater mural in her honor (Tribune gift link).
■ Trib critic Chris Jones, who’s visited her Dollywood theme park at least 50 times: “Even with all of her money and fame, she was unchanged and unchangeable” (gift link).
■ The AP surveys the many, many ways she used her fame and fortune for good—and rounds up some of her most memorable quotes across nearly five decades.
■ Travel Weekly columnist and University of Illinois alumnus Arnie Weissmann recalls his 1977 Daily Illini interview with her—in which she declared, “I don’t do things that make me miserable.”
■ Her family encouraged fans to honor her memory by leaving a message at DollyParton.com—and by making donations to her charity, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, committed to mailing books to kids from birth to age five.
■ Columnist and self-described queer Army vet Charlotte Clymer: “God keeps taking the wrong 80-year-olds from us.”
■ Election chaos: That’s what Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson foresees arising from the court’s decision preliminarily clearing President Trump’s authority to restrict mail-in voting. The Sun-Times explains how that affects—or doesn’t—Illinois voters. Check your registration here.
■ Journalist Jonathan Alter sees a trio of things that can spare Republicans a blowout in November.
■ Columnist Christopher Armitage makes the case for impeaching Justice Clarence Thomas.
■ Evan Hurst at Wonkette: “You think Natalie Harp is a weird home health aide Bible nurse? Wait until you meet Jennifer Hegseth!”
■ Columnist and Tribune alumnus Charlie Madigan: “The president is clearly nuts” …
■ … which makes all the more timely Science magazine Nautilus’ special Stupid Issue, including pieces such as “What Makes Humans Stupid” and “When Stupid Was a Diagnosis”—a thing “in danger of returning as support for people with disabilities withers.”
■ Your Local Epidemiologist offers a guide to vaccines for this fall.
■ Ahead of a new Illinois law designed to curb health insurance companies’ ability to cut fees for doctors—beginning in 2028—Blue Cross Blue Shield is … cutting fees for doctors.
■ Columnist Al Katz shares a personal memory from the city’s infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention: “In the middle of one of the ugliest nights in Chicago history, when I couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe, a Chicago policeman saw a frightened 18-year-old kid.”
■ The Citizens Utility Board explains which customers are good candidates for ComEd’s “Time of Day” pricing program—offering lower rates to those who can shift electricity use to cheaper times of the day.
■ Jack Wallen at ZDNET: “I dumped Firefox, but these five features finally won me back.”
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Media notes
Jarrett Payton takes over for the fired Mike Mulligan on the WSCR morning show.
I’m into sports but not sports-talk radio — my appetite for speculative blather and endless post-game analysis is fully sated by University of Michigan sports podcasts — so I have no idea if there was a good reason for “The Score” (AM 670 and FM 104.3) to have dismissed veteran morning co-host Mike Mulligan.
It was shitty — but typically shitty in the radio industry — for the station to deny him the opportunity to say goodbye to listeners, some of whom have been with him since he joined the morning team in 2008.
Sun-Times sports columnist Jeff Agrest has some sharp-elbowed observations, however, in “Jarrett Payton-David Haugh pairing on The Score’s morning show is evidence of dried-up pipeline.” Predictably, former Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti is even harsher in his Substack post, “Don’t fire Mike Mulligan in Chicago — take down Mitch Rosen, his wretched radio boss.”
The Tribune’s Paul Sullivan concluded his column on the firings with a list of seven suggestions to improve sports-talk radio.
The station also fired midday host Marshall Harris in the shakeup.
Jarrett Payton will be the new morning co-host on The Score. The son of the late NFL superstar Walter Payton struck me as an agreeable and charismatic personality when anchoring sportscasts on WGN-TV.
Daily Herald editorial staff announces unionization effort
The move to unionize “comes after 12 of the paper’s staffers were laid off” recently, according to a full-page story in Tuesday’s Sun-Times. That moved marked “the ninth time the staff has seen cuts since October 2017, with eight rounds of buyouts and three rounds of layoffs, including those in November 2024.” The recent “cuts come as wages have been reduced by at least 15% and the work week cut to less than 37 hours over the last decade, the union said.”
The unionization push was also covered by WTTW-Ch. 11, Crain’s Chicago Business and WBEZ-FM 91.5 (a media sibling of the Sun-Times). But the Tribune, which owns the Daily Herald, did not consider the development newsworthy, just as it did not consider the one-day strike by its own unionized journalists in 2024 to be newsworthy.
Washington Post forced to rehire a columnist who was fired for being insufficiently sensitive about the murder of Charlie Kirk.
Here’s a good reason why a newsroom needs a union. On Sept. 10, as many were reeling from the assassination of right-wing provocateur and organizer Charlie Kirk, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah posted to BlueSky, “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is … not the same as violence,” and “Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence.”
Her sharp-edged remarks in response to the hagiographic tributes from Kirk’s supporters that were flooding the social media zone were, arguably, ill-timed but not the “unacceptable … gross misconduct” her bosses cited in firing her. She took the Post to arbitration, as was allowed under the union contract, and was restored to her old job with back pay.
Media notes from Chicago Public Square
■ Middle Tennessee State University Free Speech Center director and former USA Today editor-in-chief Ken Paulson sounds an alarm about Trump’s unprecedented assault on the press.
■ Mark Jacob at Stop the Presses: “Trump wants the media to ‘low-key’ the war. Let’s not.
■ Media monitor Simon Owens doesn’t get why the creative community sees the migration of TV and movie production out of Los Angeles as inherently bad—especially when the concentration of journalism jobs in New York City is “widely treated as a problem.”
■ “Trump plans to silence CNN, Jon Stewart, and John Oliver (the same way he silenced CBS News)”: Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich warns that “Trump buddy Larry Ellison … and his son David are a hair’s breadth away from being able to decide what many Americans learn about what Trump is doing to America.”
■ Wrapping up a week as Jimmy Kimmel’s sub, Rosie O’Donnell gave the president a nod: “It’s kinda weird to think he spent more nights with me this week than Melania.”
■ The Atlantic (gift link): “Trump comedians are tired.”
■ Stephen Colbert’s back—with a beard: “Give my best to TV. I miss it.”
■ News watchdog and former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan: “Polls, pundits and horserace coverage are NOT what we need for the midterms. What if the media were to get obsessed about things that really matter?”
■ A Trib editorial (gift link) celebrates the shutdown of conservative radio host Dan Proft’s political action committee, which has tipped the scale in favor of Illinois Republican losers over the last two cycles.
Quotables
A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Jeff Tiedrich — So, the world’s oldest toddler finally got to have his big boy vroom-vroom car race, and like everything this underwhelming fuck does, it was underwhelming as fuck. Like his half-baked birthday party on the National Mall, like his roid-rage cage match, like his botched reflecting pool, like everything, it was a big bowl of who gives a shit.
Stephen Marche, Toronto-based journalist — For Canada, the choice came down to either accepting severe but temporary economic instability or binding itself to a pseudodemocratic fiscal basket case of a nation whose only apparent foreign policy objective has become domination for the gratification of its president’s slapdash vanity.
Doug J Balloon — Doctors say that sunscreen can reduce your chances of getting skin cancer. A guy who snorts cocaine off toilet seats and drives around with dead bear cubs in his car says it can give you autism. For busy beachgoers, it can be hard to know who to trust.
Jack Boot — I couldn’t tell you the eye color of almost anyone I know. Is this something most people take note of?
Betty Bowers — Everyone questioning whether Darline Graham is smart enough to be in the Senate is making me smile. You mean in comparison to the intellectual powerhouses already there? Like Tommy Tuberville? Marsha Blackburn? Ron Johnson? John Fetterman?
Middle Age Riot — School nurse: If you fill out this 20-page form and have it signed by a pediatrician and notarized with three witnesses, I can give your child a Tylenol when they have a headache. Republicans: Schools are secretly turning children trans.
John Fugelsang — My dad was a public school teacher; and he always said the toughest parts of the job were: 1. Having to pay for your own classroom chalk, and 2. Performing gender-reassignment surgeries during class hours w/out parents finding out.
How’s that makey-greaty stuff workin’ out for ya’?
The New York Times: “Under Trump, Protected Wild Horses Are Going to Slaughter.” (gift link) “A legal loophole allows the government to sell mustangs on the cheap, stripping them of protections and clearing their path to destruction.”
Associated Press: “U.S. consumer confidence falls to lowest level in 7 months.” “The U.S. job market stalled unexpectedly in July as employers cut 23,000 jobs. To make matters worse, Labor Department revisions erased 103,000 jobs from previously reported May and June payrolls.”
Associated Press: The U.S. has now seen five measles-associated deaths in the last two years — more than the combined total of reported deaths over the previous three decades — and is enduring its worst year for measles since 1991. With 2,777 cases as of Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this year already has surpassed 2025’s measles count.
NBC News — “Navy discusses renaming aircraft carrier after Trump instead of heroic Black sailor.”
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:
Anyone can vote in the contest, but to have it delivered fresh to your email inbox each Tuesday morning along with the rest of the Picayune Plus, to participate in the comment forums and to ease your conscience, you can become a paid supporter:
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
Someone in a meeting today referred to a conversation as an “information share,” and I believe this may be my supervillain origin story. — @technicallyron.bsky.social
Treat your body like a data center: Consume as much water and literature as possible. Upset local city council with your existence — @oldstocky
I don’t understand why “like a dream” means something is really awesome. Dreams suck. The bad ones stress you out and disrupt your sleep and the good ones all end in disappointment when you wake up. Fuck dreams. — @ohnoshetwitnt.bsky.social
I see a lot of people on here making fun of the running robots but I’d like to let any robots reading this know that I think your running is very nice and if you need someone to betray humans for you in the future war, I’m your man. — @pixelatedboat.bsky.social
One way to tell if you own too many snakes is if you own a snake. — @wheeltod.bsky.social
I looked up from crying and my therapist was doing the jerk-off motion. — @viktorwinetrout.bsky.social
You make one mistake at work and all of a sudden you’re “the guy who released the virus.” — @viktorwinetrout.bsky.social
Wife: What’s wrong? Me: I just got diagnosed with dyslexia. Wife: WTF. Me: No, actually this is bad. — @danmentos.com
Me: Has anyone ever told you how much we appreciate you around here? Coworker: (blushing) Um, no. Me: Did you ever wonder why that is? — @MelvinofYork
BREAKING NEWS: Scientists at MIT achieve first-ever transfer of wet laundry to dryer without dropping any damn socks on the fucking floor — @jadomian
Yes, the dyslexia quip requires some deep knowledge of internet slang. Vote here and check the current results in the poll.
Good Sports
As of Wednesday morning, the combined record of the teams in the AL Central where the 69-63 White Sox are in first place was 321-343, a winning percentage of .483.
The combined record of the teams in the NL Central, where the 76–57 Cubs are in second place, was 350–315, a winning percentage of .526.
In other words, the NL Central is 28 1/2 games better than the AL Central.
Another argument for getting rid of separate leagues and divisions.
Green Lights
Green Lights features recommendations from me and readers of songs, TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts, products and other diversions that, with only rare exceptions, can be enjoyed at home.
The somewhat unexpected news Tuesday afternoon that country/pop icon Dolly Parton had died at 80 prompts me to recommend “Dolly Parton’s America,” a 2019, nine-episode podcast documentary hosted by Jad Abumrad. Abumrad, long a co-host of the popular “Radio Lab” podcast, was drawn to the story because his father, Dr. Naji Abumrad, is a Nashville surgeon who befriended Parton after treating her for injuries suffered in a 2013 car accident.
We begin with a simple question: How did the queen of the boob joke become a feminist icon?
Abumrad wrote about Parton in Wednesday’s New York Times.
You have already read, heard and seen a lot about Parton this week, so I’ll simply add my personal favorite song of hers, the ultimate breakup ballad:
She wrote “I Will Always Love You” in 1973 for her former singing partner Porter Wagoner, and, according to the BBC and other accounts, she declined to allow Elvis Presley to cover the song because his agent was demanding that she relinquish half her publishing rights. In 1992, Whitney Houston’s cover became a smash hit.
From The Mincing Rascals:
Steve Bertrand — A yellow light for “Best Medicine,” a streaming TV series available on many platforms. “Cheesy as hell,” Bertrand says.
John Williams — A green light for the singer Daniel Pitout, a South African-born country music singer and songwriter who performs as “Orville Peck.” He will be playing Chicago in early November.
Brandon Pope — He had to click out of the podcast before we gave our recommendations, but earlier in our discussion, he was enthusiastic about this from Dolly Parton:
If you would like to offer a traffic light for the Rascals podcast, email a voice memo to johnwilliams@wgnradio.com.
Info
I am a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. I began publishing the Picayune Sentinel on Sept. 9, 2021, roughly two and a half months after I took a buyout from the newspaper. 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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Thanks for reading!
AI eliminates a job. Woman is fired. AI pays no taxes, including payroll taxes for her. The amount of money going to education, welfare, and other social goods is diminished, Fired woman needs (a) unemployment benefits and (b) re-education for another job. Multiply by millions of women and men and guess what? (Apart from Altman and others bwah-hahing all the way to the bank.)
The obvious answer is to make the AI companies pay in full for all the electricity and water they use and to pay the amount of taxes previously paid by the fired workers. What a beautiful dream!!!
Yes, the Halloween costume was rather obviously offensive. But what Target said -- "As a company, we got this wrong, and we are deeply sorry" -- was the correct response, and as corporate apologies go was all too rare. None of that "we apologize if anyone was offended" nonsense. This was a straight-out admission of fault, an acknowledgment that the product was indeed offensive, and a promise to do better. So kudos to Target for its mea culpa. Other corporations take note.