Zorn: Brandon Johnson and his terrible, horrible, no good very bad days

& Jesse Jr. begs our pardon

9-19-2024 (issue No. 159)

This week:

• Another day, another d’oh! for Chicago’s feckless rookie mayor

• Last week’s winning quip

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked on Jesse Jackson Jr.’s bid for a pardon, another delay in the Real ID program, my nemesis at Northwestern and more

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

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

• Mary Schmich — The return of the TrumPoem

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

• Point of local pride: Chicago architecture firm’s design for the Fallen Journalists Memorial unveiled — Why the Zorn family has an extra bounce in its step

• 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 — Will the White Sox let us down again?

• Tune of the Week — Lyle Lovett’s “If I Had a Boat” nominated by reader James A. Guzauskas

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 day, another d’oh! for Chicago’s rookie mayor

The Chicago City Council Wednesday delivered a sharp rebuke to Mayor Brandon Johnson, voting 33-14 to strip him of the power to unilaterally pull the plug on the controversial gunfire-detection technology known as ShotSpotter.

I did a deep dive on the alleged value of ShotSpotter in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, and since then the Sun-Times Editorial Board got behind “The case for keeping ShotSpotter,” echoing an earlier Tribune editorial headlined, “Chicago must keep ShotSpotter. The data leaves no doubt,” and, advancing the other side of the debate, WBEZ’s Chip Mitchell posted a story headlined, “Research finds ShotSpotter slows police responses to 911 calls.”

But this ain’t over ‘til it’s over. As Fran Spielman reported in the Sun-Times:

Johnson has steadfastly maintained that he, alone, has contracting authority. He is expected to maintain that stand and direct his hand-picked superintendent to ignore the ordinance, just as the mayor did an earlier Council “order” prohibiting Johnson from discontinuing ShotsSpotter in wards where the local alderperson still wants it without City Council approval.

Both stances set the stage for a potential legal battle pitting the executive branch against the legislative branch of city government.

And indeed Johnson announced after the meeting that he intended to veto the measure, which will mark the first mayoral veto in Chicago since 2006.

The Tribune’s Jake Sheridan reported:

After the meeting, city Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry said the ordinance violated the separation of powers in city government because it would constitute the legislative branch compelling the executive branch to take action. Johnson will therefore veto it, Richardson-Lowry said. … Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, said Wednesday the coalition of aldermen backing the technology is willing to sue to enforce the ordinance.

“If we wind up in front of a judge, we have a very strong case to make, and ultimately we will prevail,” Hopkins said. “But the easy course of action is for the mayor to do the right thing and renew the ShotSpotter contract.”

It remains unclear to me why Johnson is so dug in on this particular issue. Yes, he campaigned on eliminating ShotSpotter, but he also preened frequently about what a collaborative mayor he intended to be, and the public as well as police officials have been loudly telling him to keep the system in place. Proponents cite such research as the recent report from the University of Chicago Crime Lab suggesting that, by improving the response time of police and paramedics to incidents of gunfire, ShotSpotter saves the lives of roughly 85 Chicagoans a year.

The crime blog CWBChicago noted on social media Wednesday that canceling ShotSpotter “is sure to generate ‘what if’ headlines when people die alone on the streets.”

Johnson’s on a downhill roll. His progressive “invest in people” agenda has been stymied by his inability to locate significant sources of new revenue to plug this year’s $223 million city budget gap, and he seems to have no option but to raise property taxes in order to put a dent in the projected $982 million budget shortfall next year.

Chicago Public Schools officials say they can close this year’s $505 million budget gap with district-level cuts and other efficiencies, but they don’t yet have a contract with the Chicago Teachers Union, whose salary and other demands stand to increase the deficit to $3 billion in the next fiscal year, as Chalkbeat Chicago reports. Meanwhile, the CTU, which largely funded his campaign last year, is blithely suggesting the city try again to raise money in ways that have already failed.

The alders rejected Johnson’s pick for Zoning Committee chair, he’s under fire from certain progressives allies for how police frog-marched two fired Black female staffers out of City Hall, and he’s sticking by his new head of governmental affairs, Kennedy Bartley, even though she called police “slave catchers” and “fucking pigs” in online interviews, and is such a polarizing figure that key staffers from the Intergovernmental Affairs Department — including highly valued and widely respected Deputy Mayor of Intergovernmental Affairs Sydney Holman — quit rather than report to Bartley

Then, Southwest Side Alder Silvana Tabares, 23rd, a former Democratic state representative, wrote an op-ed for Wednesday’s Tribune that tore the hide off the mayor:

As we approach the closing days of Chicago’s utilization of the gunshot detection technology ShotSpotter, we see again the willful exclusion of aldermen, public safety experts and, most importantly, residents who live in communities plagued by senseless violence. Instead, the administration has silenced these voices and remains in the echo chamber of slogan-based demands from “advocates” whose suburban upbringing has apparently gifted them the wisdom to know what’s best for Chicago’s Black and brown residents. …

Time after time, Johnson has shown the guiding concept of his politics and governing is not one of addition but of subtraction and division. Missteps and miscalculations are shaping up to be the defining features of his tenure. However, unlike school, it is not the student that failed when he gets the bad grade. When you’re the mayor, it’s the city. Leadership sets the course, whether toward prosperity or hardship.”

Whether Johnson is getting bad advice or simply not listening to good advice, I don’t know. But it’s still early. He’s almost exactly a third of the way through his first term, with plenty of time to turn things around.

Last week’s winning quip

Hey, remember in first grade when we were all just chilling and then some kid would throw up out of nowhere? — @LorazeKim

To this day, I remember the name of the girl who puked suddenly and spectacularly in our first grade classroom, which is so unfair! I will not mention her name here as she has probably gone on to lead a full and wonderful life and has no memory of her malodorous technicolor yawn, just as the boy Johanna remembers peeing his pants in first grade likely does not recall it.

And I’m guessing that there are people out there whose only memory of me is something mortifying that I’ve suppressed.

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: Former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Chicago is seeking a presidential pardon. He pleaded guilty in 2013 to illegally using three-quarters of a million dollars in campaign funds for personal use and related tax violations.

View: His slate is simply too dirty to wipe clean. Jackson and his then-wife brazenly, almost comically broke the law in order to finance a luxurious lifestyle. Politico reported that the Jacksons’ “personal expenses” included “a $43,000 Rolex watch, fur coats and memorabilia associated with Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Bruce Lee.”

Federal investigators sank their teeth into the couple, even conducting an apparent sting operation in August 2012. An undercover employee bought two mounted elk heads that Jackson Jr. had bought from a Montana taxidermist with campaign funds.

The $750,000 in alleged misspent campaign funds included thousands of individual transactions that ranged from airplane tickets, booze and cigars to groceries.

Jackson Jr. repeatedly used campaign funds to pay down the couple’s credit-card balances. In one instance, Jackson Jr.’s campaign paid Sandi Jackson’s business $36,000 for “billboard expenses.” A week later, prosecutors say, Sandi Jackson transferred the same amount from her business to the Jacksons’ personal account, from which it was used to pay down personal debts.

The Jacksons used campaign funds to cover even the most basic of necessities, including cleaning supplies, bathrobes, underwear, toilet paper, toothpaste, soap, vitamins and stuffed animals, among other things, according to prosecutors. They also spent freely on luxuries, including home electronics, a trip to a Martha’s Vineyard spa for a member of Sandi Jackson’s family, Walt Disney World transportation services and charges of more than $4,000 on a 2006 cruise, court documents allege.

At the time of his plea, Jackson released a statement saying, “I fully accept my responsibility for the improper decisions and mistakes I have made.” He served nearly 17 months in federal prison before his release in the spring of 2015. Now he and an impressive set of allies including current and former members of Congress and a set of suburban mayors want us to forgive and forget, most likely, Laura Washington speculates in the Tribune, so he can have a brighter political future. Convicted felons can run for federal offices — Congress or the presidency — but not for state and local offices in Illinois.

Congress.gov’s annotated U.S. Constitution says:

A full pardon granted by the President and accepted by its subject prevents or removes any of the penalties and disabilities consequent upon conviction. …In several nineteenth-century cases, the Supreme Court suggested that a pardon broadly obviates all legal guilt of the offender, effectively erasing the crime from existence. Subsequent cases appear to have backed away from this understanding, suggesting instead that, although a full pardon precludes punishment for the offense in question, a prior and pardoned offense may still be considered in subsequent proceedings.

Sentence commutations — such as the get-out-of-jail card then-President Donald Trump handed to then-imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich — are acts of mercy, not forgiveness. Here, we can say that Junior paid his debt to society but does not deserve special treatment based on his fame or lineage.

Admittedly, the well connected are often known to receive pardons for offenses greater than Jackson’s. Still, pardoning him would send the message to corrupt pols that if you’re connected enough and can wait a few years, we can all just pretend you weren’t an odious grifter.

News: “The state of Alabama asked a judge Friday to deny defense lawyers’ request to film the next execution by nitrogen gas in an attempt to help courts evaluate whether the new method is humane.”

View: I see no reason why the public should not be able to witness a government act ostensibly carried out for its benefit. Sunlight and all that.

The hand-wringing from Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm that such a recording “would severely undermine the solemnity of the occasion” is nauseating. Executions aren’t “solemn.” They are violent acts of retribution, and though I don’t favor capital punishment, a little more than half the population supports it in poll after poll.

I continue to fail to understand, however, how veterinarians regularly, humanely put mammals great and small to death, yet doctors seem to have great difficulty effecting quick, painless death on human beings.

News: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has pushed back by two more years the deadline for airline passengers to have to present updated “Real ID” driver’s licenses to pass through Transportation Safety Administration airport checkpoints.

View: Real ID is a solution in search of a problem and a lousy idea that was hatched in 2005 as part of a series of legislative moves aimed at fighting global terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks,in which the hijackers used fraudulent driver’s licenses to board the doomed airplanes. I wrote about this bit of security theater five years ago:

The shift to a more comprehensive, secure identification system was supposed to take effect in 2008, but deadlines were extended and extended again in large part because of controversy over the idea. In 2007, the Illinois General Assembly passed a joint resolution calling for the repeal of the Real ID Act on the grounds that it creates a de facto national identity card that threatens privacy interests, that it will be part of broadened efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and that it will burden the states with the costs of implementation.

Lawmakers in 25 other states ultimately registered similar or even stronger objections.

Barack Obama, who opposed the Real ID Act when he was U.S. senator, did little to enforce it when he was president from early 2009 to early 2017. And why would he have? The post-9/11 enhanced airport security measures were working just fine.

From Sept. 11, 2001, until today, with domestic airline passengers being allowed to board with ordinary driver’s licenses, there have been zero hijackings.

So it was more than baffling when, in June 2017, President Donald Trump’s then-Homeland Security director John Kelly announced that Real ID “is a critically important 9/11 Commission recommendation that others have been willing to ignore, but I will not. I will ensure it is implemented on schedule — with no extension — for states that are not taking it seriously.”

Why now? And why, if a passport will still be good enough to board an airplane, do Real ID applicants have to show several additional documents in order to get their special cards? Even though I have a passport, I don’t want to bother extracting it from our fireproof safe, or risk forgetting it at home or losing it on the road every time I travel.

Is this a stealth weapon in the fight against illegal immigration, or a genuine safety measure?

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to my request for comment.

The Trump administration’s no-fly deadline is Oct. 1, 2020. This date is so close to the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election, and so certain to cause interminably long lines at driver’s license facilities, and tens of thousands of headaches and fits of pique at airports, that I’d put money on another delay.

In the meantime, though, the Illinois Secretary of State’s office has reportedly earmarked up to $15 million for the transition. Those costs will include TV and radio advertising warning the public about the woe that will befall those who don’t heed the call to go spend hours of their lives that they’re never going to get back obtaining a needless and personally invasive prop for security theater.

I followed up with this:

Q. Since a passport is among the documents that can substitute for a Real ID, can you simply show your passport to be issued a Real ID?

A. Of course not, silly! And a Real ID can’t be used as a passport. This is the government we’re talking about here. To get a Real ID you need to assemble a small cache of documents that includes proof of identity (such as a passport or birth certificate), proof of Social Security number (such as a Social Security card, tax form or pay stub), proof of current residency (such as utility bills or bank statements) and proof of signature (such a driver’s license or canceled check).

The Illinois Secretary of State’s office offers a comprehensive, interactive checklist at realid.ilsos.gov/ to prevent you from making the now common mistake of showing up to apply without your papers in order.

Why the delay? Thrifty Traveler reports:

Just 56% of IDs in circulation nationwide were Real ID compliant as of January 2024, according to TSA data. In 22 states, that number falls below 40%.

And the federal government only has itself to blame. Extension after extension and delay after delay has convinced the traveling public that Real ID requirements will be delayed again or may never take effect, removing any sense of urgency to head to the DMV and get one.

How about you?

News: Fall classes scheduled to be taught by Northwestern journalism professor Prof. Steven Thrasher have been canceled as the school investigates his involvement in pro-Palestine protests on campus earlier this year.

View: Thrasher is an idiot and a coward, an activist pretending to be a journalist who never should have been hired by NU’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. See below why I argue this.

But canceling his classes because he regularly tramples on the ideals of journalism and allegedly peacefully obstructed police officers trying to break up a protest encampment goes too far. After all, the Cornell University professor who called the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel “exhilarating” and “energizing” was not punished and is now back in the classroom.

Over the summer, Cook County prosecutors dropped misdemeanor obstruction charges against Thrasher and several others, and the Daily Northwestern reported that “Rima Kapitan, an attorney representing Thrasher, said the University’s conduct violated basic due process and the NU Faculty Handbook, which allows for temporary suspension only when ‘a faculty member poses an immediate threat of harm’ to themselves, others or the University.”

To paraphrase a quote misattributed to Voltaire, I disapprove of what Thrasher says, but I will defend in my Substack his right to say it.

The background:

In 2021, I wrote a column for the Tribune about the police slaying of 13-year-old Adam Toledo in the Little Village neighborhood saying that, before bodycam video was released and more evidence was available, it was still too soon to conclude, as activists had, that a racist officer had murdered an innocent child of color.

Thrasher tweeted at the time that he was canceling his subscription to the Tribune over the column because “there is no space in a newspaper for arguing for the murder of a child, and that it’s ‘never too early’ to think they are worthy of murder.”

Idiotic.

Of course, that’s not what I wrote. So a month later, after the hubbub surrounding that column had died down, I emailed Thrasher to ask if he’d be interested in “a more nuanced exchange by email” about his accusation against me and the proper role of columnists in such situations.

I wrote that “one of the jobs of a journalist is to question and challenge emerging narratives and conventional wisdom, to be clear about what we know for sure and what we suspect.”

He responded simply, “Your words make the murder of children more likely, and I have no interest in you, your unethical nature, your cynical worldview, or in communicating with you.”

Cowardly.

On May 1 of this year, a Tribune editorial lit into Thrasher:

A good example (of the need for faculty accountability) is the outrageous conduct of Steven Thrasher, professor at the Medill School of Journalism. Thrasher has acted more as an ardent activist than a professor in the five years he’s worked at Northwestern. He appeared to treat the Deering Meadow encampment as a crowning moment, giving a speech over the weekend to students there in which he stated, among other things, “To the Medill students and journalists within earshot, I say to you: Our work is not about objectivity. … Our work is about you putting your brilliant minds to work, and opening your compassionate hearts, and linking your arms together understanding all of our fates are connected.”

Those are rousing words — for an activist. They are inappropriate for a professor at one of the nation’s foremost journalism schools. If the Medill School cares for its reputation — and it well knows how many alumni work as journalists here in Chicago — it will instruct Thrasher to find a job more suited to his interests. We have too many reporters in this city and elsewhere behaving essentially as activists rather than pursuing the facts wherever they lead, which represents this profession at its finest. Professors encouraging — indeed embodying — that former approach do a disservice to journalism.

Thrasher’s presence on the faculty of a school of journalism is a disgrace and an affront to the ideals of a profession ideally rooted in facts and truth. And making a straw man of “objectivity” betrays a misunderstanding of the mission. “Objectivity” doesn’t mean neutrality; it means calmly considering all the facts and arguments before making the case for a particular conclusion.

But Medill hired him and is going to be stuck with him.

News: Senate Republicans again blocked legislation to guarantee the right to in vitro fertilization.

View: The campaign ads just write themselves, don’t they? Donald Trump and the Republican insist they are totally in favor of IVF, even though it’s very difficult for ardent anti-abortionists to square with their insistence that a fertilized embryo is a human life worthy of full legal protections.

The bill would establish a nationwide right for patients to access IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies and a right for doctors and insurance companies to provide it, an effort to pre-empt state efforts to limit the services. It would also require more health insurers to cover it and expand coverage for military service members and veterans. … Republicans argued that the federal government shouldn’t tell states what to do and that the bill was an unserious effort.

News: House Republicans want to tie a funding bill to keep the government running with a requirement that people show proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

View: Since very few people carry around notarized birth certificates or U.S. passports, implementing such a requirement amounts to vast voter suppression that Republicans evidently feel would advantage their voters more than Democratic voters. And there is scant evidence that noncitizens are taking the risk of facing felony charges for trying to vote in U.S. elections.

Land of Linkin’

• ProPublica: “Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.” The story says, “Though Republican lawmakers who voted for state bans on abortion say the laws have exceptions to protect the ‘life of the mother,’ medical experts cautioned that the language is not rooted in science and ignores the fast-moving realities of medicine. The most restrictive state laws, experts predicted, would pit doctors’ fears of prosecution against their patients’ health needs, requiring providers to make sure their patient was inarguably on the brink of death or facing “irreversible” harm when they intervened with procedures like a D&C.”

• This Craigslist ad for a 1999 Toyota Corolla is amusingly candid: “It's got a transparent rear window. … This isn't the car you want, it's the car you deserve: The fucking 1999 Toyota Corolla.”

• Justin Kaufmann at Axios: “Chicago media shifts after summer of departures in TV, radio and print” and “Quiz: How well do you know Chicago's columnists.” I scored 10 out of 10 on the quiz and was pleased to be among the wrong multiple choice answers.

• Slate: “The GOP’s New Tactic to Block Abortion Votes Is Startlingly Successful.” That tactic is to go to court to prevent abortion referenda from appearing on the ballot because, you see, they don’t really believe in letting the people decide this issue state by state. They want their highly partisan state legislatures to decide.

• Eighty-eight percent of couples always sleep on the same side of the bed, according to an unscientific Picayune Sentinel poll, but those who do occasionally switch sides have told me they do so in hotel rooms and other unfamiliar locations so that one spouse can have easier access to the bathroom at night.

• Because the fat-shaming Hoosier is bleating again about how poorly he was treated by the “Marxist” Tribune newsroom union, I am contractually obligated to resurface “The truth about John Kass’ dispute with the Tribune and the Tribune Guild.”

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:

■ You can now renew a U.S. passport online—no stamps required.

■ “They really are out to hurt us because we welcomed Kamala into our store where she hugged our customers”: Wisconsin-based Penzeys Spices is fighting back against a Trump-fueled boycott.

■ Wonkette’s Robyn Pennacchia on the recent presidential debate: “Trump’s abortion answer was so stupid we had to make a flowchart about it.”

■ Trump + Springfield + Dogs + Cats = A meme jackpot.

■ Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin: “Trump’s mental capacity is now Topic 1.”

■ “I hate Taylor Swift”: The second assassination attempt on Trump came—apparently coincidentally—not long after Trump posted that to his Truth Social sewer.

■ Popular Information: Megyn Kelly owes Swift an apology.

■ An Ohio sheriff has told people to “write down all the addresses of the people who had [Harris campaign] signs in their yards!”

■ Hundreds of social media posts attacking Blacks, Muslims, immigrants and members of the LGBTQ+ community could cost a veteran Chicago cop his job.

■ Columnist Neil Steinberg—a self-described collector of slurs: “We’ll pin ‘They’re eating dogs’ next to ‘There’s leprosy in Oak Park.’”

■ The Reader’s Ben Joravsky appeals to the vice president: “Please, please, please do not offer any more specifics about fracking.”

■ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: One of Missouri’s “gaggle of … nepo-dingus babies.”

■ Are you registered to vote? 30 seconds here can set your mind at ease.

■ Wirecutter spotlights “the best new features” of Apple’s (free) new iPhone software.

■ Update or not, keep your Apple gear away from helium.

■ The AP: “A bag of Cheetos created a huge impact on a national park ecosystem.”

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

Retribution 2024

This Truth Social post Tuesday from Donald Trump should both disgust any patriot and chill the blood of anyone who believes in democracy. The infantile narcissist says he’s going to target lawyers, political operatives and donors as well as phantom illegal voters and corrupt election officials.

He’s out of his damn mind. Sorry, those of you who admire some of his “policies,” but voting for a man so nakedly willing to attempt to abuse the justice system to salve his wounded ego is a traitorous act.

Mary Schmich: Waxing poetic during the presidential debate

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a recent offering, a resurrection of her TrumPoems feature:

My rallies they are very huge
And Kamala’s are small
My rallies are ginormous 
They’re the biggest of them all!

Those immigrants are very bad
They’re eating dogs and cats!
I really wish they’d eat the scum—
I mean the Democrats.

And babies, all the precious babes
The left wing’s killing them!
Yes, executing babies!
That’s the platform of the Dems.

I’m innocent of all my crimes
Those cases are all fake!
Just ask my favorite justices
And sassy Kari Lake.

Dear God, this Harris makes me nuts
Her nasty smile, her glee!
I never thought I’d say it, but
I’m missing Hillary!

Minced Words

Host John Williams was absent for this week’s recording of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast, so I stepped in to guide the conversation about Mayor Brandon Johnson’s run of bad news lately, Jesse Jackson Jr.’s bid for a pardon, Jussie Smollett’s bid to have his conviction overturned and the latest in the race for president. Perhaps the best episode in the nine-year history of this podcast, even though I got the day of the week wrong in the intro.

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.

Point of local pride: Chicago architecture firm’s design for the Fallen Journalists Memorial unveiled

This week, drawings were released of the proposed memorial plaza in Washington, D.C., honoring journalists who have lost their lives covering the news. A team from Streeterville-based John Ronan Architects is behind the project.

A point of family pride for us is that architect Hayden Van Slooten, my daughter Annie’s life partner, is on that team.

Quotables

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

Dropped back, threw it to the other team. — Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix asked to describe a play in which the Steelers intercepted him in the end zone

Kamala Harris is not a communist! Democrats aren’t communists. The Democratic Party is a mainstream political party that works within a capitalist system and supports democracy. Sure, we push for things like healthcare reform, education funding, and environmental protections, but that’s not the same as communism. Communism is all about getting rid of capitalism, private property, and class divisions, and we don’t want that! — @joe_jo4

There’s no putting lipstick on this pig. Mr. Trump was crushed by a woman he previously dismissed as “dumb as a rock.” Which raises the question: What does that make him? — Karl Rove

The reason why people say Trump is a threat to democracy is because Trump says he won’t accept the results of the election if he loses. If Trump wants people to stop saying he’s a threat to democracy, Trump should say that he will respect the outcome of the democratic process. — Judd Legum

(ABC is) a news organization. They have to be licensed to do it. They ought to take away their license for the way they did that. — Donald Trump on the presidential debate moderation

I don’t think the Secret Service is up for the task at hand. It’s time to switch over to thoughts and prayers. And, just in case, I think we should also post a copy of the Ten Commandments at all the golf courses and rally events. — unknown

Democrats don’t want Trump dead. We want him held accountable for his crimes. There would be nothing more satisfying than watching Trump lose everything, including his freedom. Now ask yourself who has more to gain if Trump was out of the picture? The answer is not Democrats. — @SassyKadiK

Lost in all the lies and conspiracies is the fact that large potion of Americans believe there’s a group of people so desperately hungry they’ve resorted to eating household pets, and their response is “deport them!” or “lock them up!” rather than “let’s get them some food.” — Zach Lambert

The baby-killing, election-stealing, child-molesting, kid-butchering, satanic communists who support Kamala Harris need to tone down their inflammatory rhetoric. — Betty Bowers

Quips

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

The new nominees for Quip of the Week:

1. Everything becomes normal eventually. Think of the most beautiful spot on Earth, the place you would give your left arm to see just once before you die. There's a tour guide who works there, and he wakes up every morning thinking, "Oh God, not this shit again." — @Writepop

2. Friend: When did you fall in love with your husband? Me: When he called it, “Wash-your-sister sauce.” — @difficultpatty

3. Just saying, if anyone wants to start disappearing the geese on my block, I won’t mind. — @arielfab

4. That moment of panic when they invite you inside at the start of the kids’ birthday party you thought was a drop off. — @IHideFromMyKids

5. Acme had a pretty awesome product line, but ultimately couldn't overcome the liability issues. — @scott_towel

6. We're only a short time away from being arrested for crimes we haven't yet committed based solely on an analysis of our Google search history. Or at least I am. — @wildethingy

7. Pro tip: Turn any sofa into a sofa bed by telling your partner to calm down. — @dexteristwisted

8. Hey, sorry I can’t make it tonight. I am beset on all sides by foes — @DrakeGatsby

9. Who started calling the Tesla Cybertrucks “Deploreans?” I owe you a drink. — @franklinleonard

10. “Do you have a flavor?” La Croix: “I have the concept of a flavor.” — @Tietje

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

The No-No Sox

It will be the most White Sox thing ever for this abysmal team to start winning now — as they won three games in a row over the long weekend — and end up not breaking the major league record for losses in a season, a record that four out of five of us are hoping they’ll break, according to this recent Sun-Times click poll:

With nine games to go — where we are right now — the 2003 Detroit Tigers stood at 38-115 (.248) and looked like a very good bet to at least tie the 1962 Mets’ record of 120 losses. That bet looked even better when the Tigers lost their next three games and owned a record of 38-118 (.244) with six games left. But, somehow, they won 5 of their last six, beating the Kansas City Royals twice and the Minnesota Twins three times (both teams had winning records that season) to finish 43-119.

The 1962 New York Mets also stood at 38-115 after 153 games but played only seven more games due to rainouts that weren’t made up. They went 2-5 down the stretch and set the mark that many of us are hoping the Sox break next week

The 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, the worst team in baseball’s modern era (20th century on), played in the era of 153-game seasons and finished their season at 36-17 (.235), which, you’ll note, is the Sox record after Wednesday’s extra-inning loss to the Angels.

So, graphically, after 153 games:

Out to another decimal place, the 1916 Philadelphia A’s finished with a winning percentage of .2353. The Sox, who have an identical record at this point in the season as the A’s did at the end of their season, are scheduled to play 162 games. If they go 38-124, that will be a winning percentage of .2346. So the magic number of victories needed for the Sox to end up with 39 wins and a better winning percentage than the 1916 A’s is now three with nine games to go. They’re on pace to win just two of those games, however.

I will repeat here the asterisk advisory that I haven’t seen any other media pick up on: The fact that the dreadful Mets played just 160 games means that their record number of losses would probably have been 121 or even 122. To hold the record free and clear, no qualifiers or caveats, the Sox will have to finish 39-123, meaning a 3-6 record in the next week and half.

The headline on the ESPN story — “How White Sox clubhouse is coping as worst team in MLB history” — is premature, but the article itself is nicely written:

Nothing compares to the march of doom that is a cursed baseball season: 162 opportunities to plumb the reaches of ineptitude. These White Sox are not powerful, and they are not fast, and they field poorly, and they throw recklessly, and they pitch inconsistently, and they bungle fundamentals. They are a bad baseball team. … Losing at anything takes a toll. It irradiates self-worth. It evaporates motivation. Athletes in particular spend their entire lives building up psyches strong enough to spare them from the vagaries of failure. Every major league player has been felled and gotten back up. Anyone who reaches the big leagues has inherently won. Which makes this all so particularly diabolical.

The So-So Sky

Tribune headline: “The Chicago Sky still have a shot to make the playoffs. Here’s what needs to happen on the WNBA’s Decision Day.” The story says, “The only thing to focus on Thursday night is that the Sky can advance only with a win — and the (Atlanta) Dream and (Washington) Mystics lose.”

But c’mon. What’s the point? The banged-up 13-26 Sky will be buzzard meat in the playoffs if somehow they squeak in.

Results of last week’s click survey:

296 votes

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 James A. Guzauskas, whose nomination included a link and simply the words “Great tune.”

If I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
I said me upon my pony on my boat

The tune is indeed catchy. The lyrics made no sense to me — riding a pony on a boat seems ill advised — but this take makes sense:

The boat is a classic metaphor for getting away in America (see: Moby Dick) and the horse equally or more so in Lovett's native Texas.

The first verse is about not wanting to be tied down to a wife, referencing Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, the celebrity cowboy couple (as well as Roy's horse Trigger).

The second verse reveals that it's not just about being single, as the perspective shifts from the Lone Ranger to Tonto, and Tonto sticks it to the man. Basically, he sums up the song "Take This Job and Shove It" in the line, "Kiss my ass, I bought a boat, I'm going out to sea."

The third and final verse gets even more abstract in the pursuit of independence. Rather than be human ("I wouldn't need no sneakers"), the narrator would rather be a bolt of lightning that comes and goes wherever he pleases.

So, the chorus is about longing for escape and each verse specifies another step in his emancipation: from marriage, from work, from humanity. And he writes all this with imagery and childish logic that makes it all seem so innocent.

Intentional or not, this is a song about the narrator (a kid?) contemplating growing up and making his way out in the world by himself. Well, not entirely alone -- he loves his horse, even when he is in lightning form.

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