Zorn: Dan Proft dances the mock-arena and his sidekick pays the price

Folk singers and others mightily disapprove

8-29-2024 (issue No. 156)

This week:

• Last week’s winning quip

• Right-wing radio host and political consultant Dan Proft made fun of Gus Walz, and some hell broke loose

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

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

• Why Willie Wilson wants you to be uncomfortable at the end of his columns

• Mary Schmich — A review of summer resolutions

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

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

• Regrettables — A new occasional feature showcasing bad takes. I’m going first!

• Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists

• Good Sports — “Sky”-high prices and another update on the intriguingly dreadful White Sox

• Tune of the Week — “"People Get Old," by Lori McKenna, nominated by reader Tim O’Brien

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.

Last week’s winning quip

I come from a family of failed magicians. I have two half sisters. — @ThePunnyWorld

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

Dan Proft dances the mock-arena

Last Thursday morning on WIND-AM 560, conservative local radio talk show host Dan Proft made fun of Gus Walz, the 17-year-old son of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, for how the boy wept openly and was seen mouthing the words “That’s my dad!” as his father spoke to the Democratic National Convention.

What's the deal with this kid? Can somebody get Gus Walz some Ritalin? You know what it reminded me of? [Here, Proft plays an audio clip from an old “Saturday Night Live” sketch that made fun of how the antics of his 7-year-old son upstaged Rudy Guiliani’s inauguration as mayor of New York City in 1994] … That's exactly what that Walz kid did. I mean he's not 11, he's 17 years old. He's out of his seat. He's bawling “That’s my dad. I love you dad!” … What the hell was that? For me, come on, that is, I mean, I don't, like, go after family members unless they invite themselves into the arena. But I mean, it's just weird. … What the heck? Bizarre. “Dad!” (mock cries)

Tribune political reporter Rick Pearson clapped back on Twitter, where he posted:

The word “deplorable” earned Hillary Clinton political derision. But there’s only one way to label this description of a very heartfelt moment: deplorable. And anyone who appears on this show should also be held to account.

In another post, Pearson wrote:

There is no apology for hateful stupidity and they don’t get a pass for it. This clip shows who they really are.

Pearson attacked the Florida-based Proft’s record as a highly paid Republican campaign consultant in Illinois races, calling him a “grifter” and writing that “Proft’s won/loss percentage is worse than the White Sox.” Pearson also called the propaganda “newspapers” Proft helps put out “pink slime.” In a follow-up tweet, he wrote:

You know folks, after seeing all the Proft defenders and “what abouts” it really comes down to a few simple questions: Regardless of disability, when as an adult have you openly mocked a young person for showing affection to a parent — let alone in front of a microphone and camera?

Proft apologized on the radio on Friday, (Aug. 23 link) for what he’d said about Gus Walz:

I had a little fun with it. I did not know that he had a diagnosis of a neurodivergent condition. … I should have probably thought there might be some kind of an issue, there might be something different there, but I didn't, and the coverage that I read prior to yesterday's show, I know there was some coverage that noted his condition, but I didn't consume that coverage. So the bottom line is, I'm not a guy who would make fun of somebody with a learning disability or or some sort of developmental condition. … So it was not intentional, but I should have probably investigated it and known to exercise restraint there, and I didn't. So I apologize. …

(But) frankly, it begs some other questions, too, since (Tim Walz) has told that story so many times. Does it always generate that sort of reaction from his son? Was that something that was intended? I don't know, the whole thing struck me as odd. I don't trust Tim Walz, and there's a lot of reason not to trust him. But that doesn't mean that you take cheap shots at a son. And I didn't mean to do that, but I can see where people would say I did. … I should have known, and I didn't have the information that I could have and should have had. And so I said something I shouldn't have. … I'm not saying Tim Walz is a good role model. No, I'm not signed on for that program. Not at all.

What this expression of regret failed to include was the acknowledgement that ridiculing any child for showing emotion, regardless of his or her ability status, is a vile bullying tactic, the worst sort of punching down.

As Turnt Wooldridge put it on Twitter, “Being proud of your dad is normal. Crying is normal. Being so proud of your dad that you cry is ASPIRATIONAL.”

The additional suggestion in Proft’s apology that Gus Walz’s reaction to the moment was staged was particularly churlish.

Proft’s words did not mollify Envision Unlimited, a downtown-based agency that serves “people with intellectual, developmental and psychiatric disabilities.” Proft was on the Envision board of directors and had raised significant amounts of money for the agency. But Sunday, board chair Mary Kay Krupka and president and CEO Mark McHugh posted a message online that said in part:

It was brought to our attention that one of our board members made comments that were wholly inconsistent with our values and code of ethics as an organization and at their core insensitive and insulting to the very people and families that we serve. We immediately convened our board’s executive committee to discuss the situation and unanimously decided to remove this individual from our board.

Proft lashed back on the radio Monday. (For audio only, click on the Aug. 26 show link at 1:27 here.)

So last week I drew the ire of the keyboard warriors on Reddit and social media. Yeah, all these P-hats that live in their parents’ basements or some Antifa commune who are just sort of like a pack of hyenas. They go from one target to the next and try and carve up anybody who disagrees with them.

“P-hats” is short for “pussy hats,” the headgear participants wore in the 2021 Women’s March. I guess you can’t say “pussy” on conservative talk radio, though you certainly can spice up your indignation with sexism!

We got a call at the end of this show on Friday from one of these P-hats making all sorts of threats. “We're going to call Envision … and the administration at Amundsen High School where (program co-host) Amy (Jacobson) coaches (volleyball). … We're going to be hysterical because that's what we do.” He didn't quite put in those words, but that's translating it. That is what they do. “We’re going to punish you for the mistake that you made. Because it's an opportunity for us to do so.”

And my response was, “Go get all your friends and shout it from the rooftops. Go get all your friends and make all your calls and send all your emails and post all your tweets and do whatever you want to do. Bring your worst.”

Because I'm not somebody who gets beat up in a back alley, and the moments like these are where you find out who's really where. You find out what organizations are really made of. …. It's fine. I mean, what? My punishment is what? I can't be a volunteer fundraiser for your organization anymore? OK. I didn't want to get into it on Friday, but I'll get into it now. Because I saw these fatheads and these fatasses and these folk singers like Zorn and Rick Pearson and Steve Cochran, you know, everybody so virtue signaling. Oh, they're so aghast and so on and so forth.

My involvement here, for the record, was re-tweeting some of Pearson’s critical posts. I am the “folksinger” in this trio, I believe, and I don’t consider it an insult. I gave my love a cherry that had no stone, motherfucker.

But back to Proft, who branded the board of Envision as “a bunch of leftist dilettantes”:

I've literally written tens of thousands of dollars in checks to Envision, and I've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars more. It's fine. My opinion of what Envision does hasn't changed … (but the board of directors) showed you who they were in this moment. That they're cowards. … You're punishing a conservative? Good for you. And that helps one person in that community how? … That's how the totalitarianism of the left manifests itself. That's how all of civil society folds into the state. And this is who the left is.

Meanwhile, pressure ramped up for Chicago Public Schools to fire Jacobson as volleyball coach at Amundsen High School on the city’s Northwest Side as the story began to make news:

Tuesday evening, the Chicago Teachers Union tweeted:

We fully support the parents of Amundsen High School in their call for Amy Jacobson to resign as coach. There is no place for adults who stoop to this level of mockery and insensitivity in our schools.

The controversy didn’t come up during Wednesday morning’s radio broadcast, but later in the day Amundsen’s athletic director Daniel Jeske announced that Jacobson had resigned her coaching position.

At the risk of being labeled a chronic defender of Jacobson*, I didn’t think her role in Proft’s thoughtlessly cruel remarks was so great that she should lose her side job. She added a Gus Walz impression when Proft began carrying on, chuckled along with him as he rambled, and seconded Proft’s characterization of the moment at the convention as “bizarre.”

On Friday, Jacobson expressed regret on the air, saying, “I want to apologize too. Because I would have reacted differently if I had the additional information. I had no idea that he had any type of learning disability or ADHD, and I thought that I was well read on the matter, and apparently I was not. … Regardless of (Tim Walz’s) politics and whether he's lying to the American public or not and is a fraud, clearly, he loves his family and, clearly, his kids love him.”

Her words were a day late. When Proft had been mocking Gus Walz Thursday morning she should have interrupted him with something along the lines of, “Hang on a sec’, that’s inappropriate,” as it was obvious to anyone who watched Tim Walz’s convention speech that young Gus was not neurotypical.

She didn’t, and that’s on her.

However, I’m not a big believer in cancellation, especially when a better outcome was possible.

Here, Amundsen administrators should have asked her to stay on as coach on the condition that she speak to the student body — not just to her teams — to explain why it’s wrong to make fun of people with differences and why it’s important to stand up to those who do. And then they should have asked her to spend an hour listening to students who live with cognitive disabilities so they could tell her first hand how painful it is to be teased and othered.

My moistened finger to the wind suggests that my less than rigorous take on this will not be well received by PS readers. So let me have it:

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*Seventeen years ago I was just about the only mainstream commentator who came to Jacobson’s defense when she was fired from her reporting job at NBC-5 for attending a pool party at the home of a man whose wife had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Here my webliography of that coverage:

• July 10, 2007: Defending Amy

• July 11, 2007: Amy Jacobson interview on WGN-AM: “I can't apologize enough."'

• July 12, 2007: Jacobson's job too high a price for doing her job

• July 13, 2007: Did she share information with police? Let's ask her!

• July 13, 2007: Still Mo' on the story of the week

• July 13, 2007: Poll positions: Results of three Internet click polls on the Amy Jacobson story

• July 16, 2007: What if....? Hard questions and deep click polling on the Amy J. story.

• July 17: 2007: GRASS helps keep scandal in perspective: With the Jacobson story still in the rear-view mirror, let me suggest a set of guidelines you hope your critics and accusers will follow in their treatment of you should you ever find yourself the subject of scandal.

• Dec. 20, 2007: Update: Amy Jacobson

I disagree with Jacobson’s politics, and she and I are not friends. I don’t think we’ve even met in person. But I call ‘em like I see ‘em.

Land of Linkin’

• This Red Ball Tennis video helped me understand the reference in “Does American tennis have a pickleball problem?” “Pickleball’s rise has often come at the expense of thousands of tennis courts encroached upon or even replaced by smaller pickleball courts. … The United States Tennis Association is flipping the script on pickleball with an ambitious launch of more than 400 pilot programs across the country to broaden the reach of an easier-to-play, smaller-court version of tennis called red ball tennis. Backers say it’s the ideal way for people of all ages to get into tennis and the best place to try it is (wait for it) on pickleball courts.”

• These phrases are new to me this week: “Sweaty corn” and “whale juice.” Either or both could be titles for fiddle tunes or punk bands.

• Esquire recently listed and posted YouTube links to the “50 Best ‘Saturday Night Live!’ Sketches of All Time”

• “Media coverage of DNC protests highlights the ‘activist’s dilemma’” by WBEZ’s Chip Mitchell: “If they protest peacefully, the media tend to ignore them. If they’re militant or violent, there can be a lot of news coverage. But that attention tends to be negative and may spark a public backlash.”

• The Picayune Sentinel issued its final grade on the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, including a controversial take on the decision not to let a representative of the Uncommitted Movement speak to the delegates. Most of my moderate Democratic friends disagree.

• NPR: “Trump campaign staff had altercation with official at Arlington National Cemetery.” Quoting Arlington National Cemetery officials, “Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate's campaign.”

• The petition supporting the installation of lights at the basketball courts at Chicago’s Horner Park is here. Backers say that young basketball players who are advocating for the lights “want the same accommodation that the tennis courts have gotten, so that no one is left out.” There will be a community meeting to air this issue Thursday, Sept. 5 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Horner Park Fieldhouse.

• Evanston Roundtable: Photographer Richard Cahan shot portraits of one member from each of the 57 delegations at the Democratic National Convention for “Faces of the Nation.” Quite a diverse bunch.

• A vision of Gilead from the Lincoln Project:

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:

■ “Fact check: Totally bogus.” Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow assesses the claim that “Big media fact-checkers have their heads up their asses.”

■ Because Dan Proft generated six-figure support for Envision, the charity’s asking the public to help fill that gap.

■ Columnist Parker Molloy calls out the hateful people mocking Gus Walz.

■ Public Notice: Republicans have rolled out an “unintentionally hilarious attack” on Tim Walz.

■ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: A sometimes-New York Times commentator who declared Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter a “nightmare scenario.”

■ Missing from the celebration of Harris’ nomination: Her father, Donald J. Harris—who’s still alive.

■ Musician Jeff Tweedy’s newsletter reveals that he and Mavis Staples called an audible on the tune they sang to close out Stephen Colbert’s Auditorium Theatre run last week.

■ Triggered by Oprah Winfrey’s speech to the convention, Donald Trump’s campaign surfaced a letter of praise she once sent him.

■ Columnist and University of Chicago teacher Eman Abdelhadi: “I tweeted Chicago protesters were ‘ready’ for Harris. Then, I got the call from the FBI.”

■ The American Prospect’s Rick Perlstein talks to an expert on far-right extremism about “the election story nobody wants to talk about”: What happens if Trump wins—or loses.

■ The Reader’s Ben Joravsky: “We’ve reached that funny phase of the election season where Democrats invent new explanations for why they will lose.”

■ Charlie Pierce at Esquire: “Special counsel Jack Smith has evidently had enough of seeing Judge Aileen Cannon’s Trump-sized thumb on the scale down in Florida.”

■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke offers Trump “10 very specific demands for a debate.”

■ Columnist and “Pod Save America” co-host Dan Pfeiffer: Democrats have finally figured out how to run against Trump.

■ The Bulwark explores “Trump’s latest grift.”

■ Cartoonist/columnist (cartolomnist?) Jack Ohman surveyed his friends about a New York Times piece headlined “Trump Can Win on Character” and found that, “almost to a person, they said they had canceled months ago.”

■ Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina’s put together a guide to what, who and when to get your fall vaccines.

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

Kicking you with his kicker: Willie Wilson wants you to squirm

Those who read all the way to the end ofWillie Wilson’s biweekly columns in the Tribune may have noticed that the businessman, philanthropist and perennial political candidate tends to end every column with the word “uncomfortable.”

To wit, here are his most recent closing sentences:

Aug. 22: I write this commentary to make those comfortable with abdicating commonsense policies uncomfortable.

Aug. 8: I write this commentary to make those comfortable with canceling viewpoints and eroding democracy uncomfortable.  

July 25: I write this commentary to make those comfortable with high numbers of Americans being shot and killed uncomfortable.

July 11: I write this commentary to make those comfortable with protecting an inequitable property tax system uncomfortable.

June 27: I write this commentary to make those comfortable with continuing inequality and disunity uncomfortable.

June 13: I write this commentary to make those comfortable with being absent fathers uncomfortable.

May 30: I write this commentary to make those comfortable leaving Illinoisans behind uncomfortable.

I doubt there are many readers who are “comfortable” with lots of people being shot and killed, high numbers of absentee fathers, senselessness and so on. I wrote to attorney and former Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin who researches and ghost writes Wilson’s columns after consultations with him, to ask about this rhetorical tic. He replied:

Dr. Wilson is a deeply religious man. His signature ending of making the comfortable uncomfortable is meant to challenge people to move beyond their comfort zone. Dr. Wilson believes that success and transformation is realized in our uncomfortable moments.  Growth occurs when people get outside of their comfort zone. 

Fair enough. And I’m glad to note that Wilson, who leans conservative, has endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

Regarding Boykin’s use of “Dr. Wilson,” Wilson is neither a medical doctor nor a Ph.D. He calls himself “doctor” because he’s been awarded a series of honorary doctorates, mostly from religious institutions, to thank him for his substantial financial contributions.

I add this paragraph to make those comfortable with the use of unearned academic titles uncomfortable.

Mary Schmich: A review of summer resolutions

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a recent offering, an abridgment of something she wrote for the Tribune in 2016:

And now it's August, and the cicadas are louder than an alarm clock.

Wake up, they seem to say, do you know where your summer’s gone?

It’s a rule of Chicago summer that as long as the cicadas sing, summer isn’t over. It’s also a rule that the louder they get, the closer they and summer are to dead.

Listen, the cicadas seem to say, stop wasting time.

Listen and ask yourself: What haven’t I done yet that I still want to do before I’m shoveling snow again?

The cicadas were so loud Tuesday that I could no longer avoid the alarm, so I went looking for my list of summer resolutions. I wanted to review it like a third-quarter performance report, an assessment that would offer the chance to rebalance.

I gave myself a grade on each one, as follows.

RESOLUTION: I will avoid the car whenever possible.

Grade: B

RESOLUTION: I will spend at least an hour outside every day, moving.

Grade: A

RESOLUTION: I will lie on the grass in Millennium Park and listen to live music.

Grade: A

RESOLUTION: I will swim, even though I’m a bad swimmer and haven’t had a suit I like in years.

Grade: F, despite the fact that a friend gave me a bathing suit to promote my intention.

RESOLUTION: No matter how binge-worthy the latest series on Netflix or Amazon is, I won’t watch it as long as there’s daylight outside.

Grade: A-, though if this resolution had banned binging on political conventions and the Olympics, my grade would have been lower.

RESOLUTION: I’ll go somewhere I mean to go every summer and never quite do.

Grade: pending

RESOLUTION: I’ll eat fresh tomatoes and peaches and corn.

Grade: Two out of three.

RESOLUTION: I’ll spend time outside with the people I love.

Grade: A-

There were several more resolutions, and on all of them I earned a grade above C. Not the summer honor roll, but all in all not bad.

Summer isn’t school. There’s no need to follow rules and keep score. Wasting time is part of the art of doing summer right, but hardcore summer lovers seek the kind of time-wasting that doesn’t feel wasteful.

What we want is to feel free from hurry, which equates to free from worry. We want to feel idle without feeling that we’re frittering the days away.

The cicadas remind us that time for such idylls is running out.

But there’s still time. Here in August, with its giant clouds and warm days and easy nights, when the goldenrod is tall and the cicadas are still buzzing, it’s the perfect moment to do what you haven’t done yet.

2024 postscript: A couple of days ago, I went swimming for the first time this summer. Ecstasy. And having done it I am prepared to release summer without regret.

Minced Words

Cate Plys’ necktie

Journalist Cate Plys wore a necktie to this week’s recording of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. She was joined by host John Williams, Marj Halperin and me for a discussion of how the Democratic National Convention looks in the rearview mirror, the Gus Walz controversy, the debate over debate rules and, my favorite topic these days, how the White Sox are circling the drain and now seem very likely to set the Major League Baseball record for most losses in a season.

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

I’m reminded of a Tracy Chapman song called “At This Point in My Life”, which I used to listen to on repeat when I was in my 20s and very depressed. Much of the song is about someone who fears that they are only defined by the mistakes they’ve made. But, toward the end, there’s this lyric:

At this point in my life/I’d like to live as if only love mattered/As if redemption was in sight/As if the search to live honestly/Is all that anyone needs/ No matter if you find it.

I’ve found solace in that for decades. — R. Eric Thomas, aka advice columnist “Ask Eric.”

Democratic convention week brought absurdities like PolitiFact tackling a DNC video that showed an actual Trump 2016 quote that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions and labeled it “mostly false” (!!) because his panicked aides later told him to walk back such a politically damaging statement. Also typical was USA Today calling it “false” when the DNC talks about “Trump’s Project 2025″ because the blueprint for his presidency was produced by the Heritage Foundation, even though most of its authors are former and would-be future Trump staffers and it offers the only program for filling jobs in a Trump administration. — Will Bunch

As a conservative and a veteran, I believe true strength lies in defending the vulnerable. It’s in protecting your family. It’s in standing up for our Constitution and our democracy. That is the soul of being a conservative. It used to be the soul of being a Republican. But Donald Trump has suffocated the soul of the Republican Party. His fundamental weakness has coursed through my party like an illness, sapping our strength, softening our spine, whipping us into a fever that has untethered us from our values. — Former Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois speaking to the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 22

When you ponder the lowest of the low, the apotheosis of morally vacant Trump behavior — even after his long, soiled catalog of egregious abuses — using Arlington’s Section 60 as a prop for a desperate photo-op in his failing campaign puts Trump is a category beyond shame and disgust. — Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Republican anti-Trump Lincoln Project

I am disgusted by my brother’s obscene embrace of Donald Trump. And I completely disavow and dissociate myself from Robert Kennedy Jr. and his flagrant efforts to desecrate my father's memory. — Kerry Kennedy

Just to quell any speculation, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES will I join Donald Trump on an electoral ticket. Our positions on certain fundamental issues, our approaches to governance, and our philosophies of leadership could not be further apart. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., May, 2023

I’ve known Bobby Kennedy for quite a while. Something has happened to him. Maybe it’s the worm that got into his brain, but saying Trump will protect your freedoms and keep America from becoming a totalitarian state, he’s out of his fucking mind. — Rob Reiner

Kamala Harris showed she can be warm and winning, and she showed she can be fierce and relentless. The person we saw in her convention speech is someone you'd like to have as a friend and would hate to have as an enemy. — Steve Chapman

IT’S ALWAYS FAKE WITH KAMALA. WE’RE DOMINATING HER ON SOCIAL MEDIA, SO SHE MAKES UP A FAKE LIST OF HER NUMBERS VERSUS MY NUMBERS. ALL OF OUR ENGAGEMENT IS REAL AND ORGANIC, WHILE KAMALA HAS TO PAY FOR HER FAKE ENGAGEMENT. WE’RE BEATING HER “LIKE A DRUM”, LIKE WE WILL BEAT HER ON NOVEMBER 5TH. IT’S ALL FAKE, IT’S ALL MISINFORMATION AND DISINFORMATION. WE ARE DESTROYING THE DEMOCRATS ON SOCIAL MEDIA! — Donald Trump on Truth Social

Billboard in Leland, N.C.

Regrettables

On our recent driving vacation, we used the Waze navigation app almost continually — as we use it for many excursions. To find the fastest routes. To estimate the time of arrival. Even to tell the speed limits on some of the backroads we found ourselves on.

It prompted me to remember one of the dumbest columns I ever wrote, a July 1991 offering in which I rolled my eyes at the very idea that drivers will ever have any real need for computer guidance. So I’m making this the first and I hope not last installment of “Regrettables” in which I’ll ask writers to share pieces they wish they could recall.

Nothing smart about smart cars

Sam Skinner needs a hobby. Maybe stamp collecting. John Sununu could offer him rides to all the best auctions.

Because the U.S. transportation secretary clearly has too much time on his hands these days — this computerized "smart car" guidance system idea he's flogging is obviously the product of an idle mind.

A $4,000 computer in your car to tell you how to get from place to place?

Someone has been watching too many reruns of "The Jetsons."

I don't mean to be a Luddite about this, but the smart car will never succeed. Consumers will never buy it in significant numbers; if they buy it, they won't use it; if they use it, it won't do them much good.

To discover these patently obvious truths, various government agencies have announced they will dump about $30 million in public money into a five-year test of the system in our northwest suburbs.

Secretary Skinner was in Schaumburg last week to preside over the unveiling of ADVANCE (Advanced Driver and Vehicle Advisory Navigation Concept) and tool around in an Oldsmobile that voiced to him such computer synthesized profundities as, "At the next stop sign, turn right."

As we said in elementary school, "Well, duh."

Here is a hint to Skinner and the bureau-technocrats who are predicting that someday we will all have guidance computers in our cars: If you wish to learn how best to get from point A to point B, you have only to look at a common road map and listen to all-news radio stations for traffic information every 10 minutes or so.

In fact, for the money taxpayers are spending on this test project alone, the government could buy a high-powered AM radio station downtown and broadcast never-ending traffic reports more or less until the sun burns out.

This would have the advantage that the information would be available immediately to virtually every motorist, not just those who can afford to buy a fancy gizmo and who are then smart enough to learn how to use it.

ADVANCE, which includes a video screen, microprocessor, data communications radio and global positioning satellite receivers, is said to be great for delineating alternate routes when accidents and construction delays clog main roads.

But hey. If you do a lot of driving on our metropolitan highways and byways, as I do, you know that only in very dire tieups do alternate routes save any time. Limited access roads and straight paths are almost always fastest.

And when they're not, the alternate routes quickly become clogged with clever people and become as slow or slower than the primary routes. We can't all fit onto Northwest Highway or Meacham Road.

"The answer (to congestion) in the next century will not be new highways," Skinner said. "It will be in using the facilities that we have better and more efficiently."

This man's limousine has been traveling imaginary highways. Our problem in this and other metropolitan areas is not, as the experts say, underutilized shortcuts and dumb cars — it is that too many automobiles are trying to go the same directions at the same times. Period.

Does it take an ordinary commuter to realize that, without new highways, the only solution to this problem lies in somehow reducing the number of cars on the road, not in giving these cars the IQ of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?

Maybe we could try offering incentives for telecommuting and flextime, we could pass tax breaks to spur further decentralization of business, we could build more rail lines or we could heavily subsidize and create special traffic lanes for car and van poolers.

But it's hard even to imagine that drivers will actually stop before driving and enter the addresses of their destinations, then give themselves up to a series of directions that, knowing the brute logic of computers, may send them on routes that make sense only to those beings with chips for brains.

But if, by some fluke miracle, thousands of drivers do end up employing ADVANCE, the promise that the system will make it easier will only encourage them to drive more, adding to the problem in the end.

Not to worry about that, however. I will eat a copy of this column at the Des Plaines Oasis in rush hour if, in 10 years, computer guidance systems for cars are used by more than 2 percent of the driving public or have done anything to reduce traffic congestion in any measurable amount.

Smart cars? Why don't they put that $30 million into developing smart keys, wallets and sunglasses that never get lost?

That, at least, would save us some time.

Update:

Ten years and one day later, in a far less regrettable column, I wrote that I was not dining on paper and ink because “Some form of satellite-aided technology is operational in 2.4 million of the 213 million vehicles now on the road, according to research estimates provided by the Intelligent Transportation Society of America and Wards Automotive. That's 1.1 percent. …

“(But) I'm now certain that satellite guidance technology will someday be as common in American cars as, say, CD players are now. … The cellular-wireless revolution will ultimately add so many information and safety features that maps and directions will seem like an afterthought.”

Columnists! Op-ed writers! Editorial boards! Pundits of all stripes! Confession is good for the soul. Submissions please!

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:

• God: How are they doing down there? Angel: [long drag on a cigarette] Not good. — @OllyiConic

• Masturbake: (verb) Baking a few dozen cookies to eat alone. — @Marlebean

• When you get angry, take a breath and count to 10. Throw a punch at 8. Nobody expects that. — Unknown

•  *hands doctor a pee sample* “Here you go. For my urine test” Doctor: No, I said “hearing test.” — @craiguito

• I don't usually think about what I say before I say it. I prefer to think about it after I've said it, late at night, for the rest of my life. — Unknown

• The worst part about getting sucked up by the tornado you're filming is to die knowing your wife was right. You are an idiot. — @IamJackBoot

• What rhymes with “riddance”? I want this bereavement card to be perfect. — @retniw_nuf

• It would appear as though "that one time I refilled the ice cube tray" has lost its clout as an example of how I help out around the house. — @MelvinofYork

• I’m gonna start ending every insult with “but in a good way.” — @Heatinblack

•  I feel bad still posting jokes online when I should be ending racism instead. — @wildethingy

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

Go Sky

Here is a look at the tenuous hold the WNBA Chicago Sky have on a spot in the eight-team playoff bracket with 10 games remaining in the regular season. ESPN is estimating their chances here.

Meanwhile, StubHub is listing tickets to Friday night’s home game against Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever for up to $7,084.

The cheapest single tickets, up in Wintrust Arena’s low-oxygen seats, were going for $115 Wednesday afternoon, whereas single tickets for that night’s game against the Washington Mystics were going for as low as $13.

‘‘Seismic’ or ‘absolutely horrible’? Helmet communication in major college football is here’

The Associated Press reports:

After years of debate over cost and equity, the NCAA approved widespread use of helmet communication … for the Bowl Subdivision, giving 134 teams at the top of the sport the option to use it beginning this season. It will officially debut during this week’s full slate of openers and join traditional methods such as huddles, hand signals, wristband play scripts and those clever sideline signs bearing emojis and animation to call play.

Some are calling this the Connor Stalions Effect, a result of the now former assistant at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, who was detected stealing conventional sideline signs from future opponents in a way that allegedly violated NCAA rules. Stalions is the subject of a Netflix documentary released this week, and the scope of consequences for his actions has yet to be determined.

To those grateful for this technological advance, let me say on behalf of my fellow Michigan alums that you are most welcome.

The No-No Sox

Here is my weekly comparison standings of the 2024 White Sox with the 2003 Detroit Tigers and the 1962 New York Mets, teams that have defined futility for more than 80 years. Included in the comparison is the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, the worst team in baseball’s modern era (20th century on).

After 134 games, including last night’s soul-crushing defeat in the nightcap of a doubleheader — in which Texas Rangers left fielder Travis Jankowski jumped high over the fence to rob the White Sox’ Andrew Vaughn of a ninth-inning, walk-off homer — this is the grim picture:

As you can see, the Sox are now on pace not only to smash through that 120 loss barrier, but to finish with a worse won-loss percentage than the 1916 A’s. To avoid 121 or more losses they will have to finish the season 11-17 (.393).

The Sun-Times noted Tuesday that Monday’s loss to the Detroit Tigers marked the 25th time this season that the Sox lost a game after leading in the seventh inning or later.

The 1916 Philadelphia A’s played a 153-game season and finished 36-117. Out to another decimal place, that’s a winning percentage of .2353. The Sox play in a 162-game era. 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 8 with 28 games remaining in the season (8-20; .286)

On “The Mincing Rascals” podcast, I argued that if the Sox break the Mets’ record for most games lost in a single season, we are likely to see a book similar to “Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? The Improbable Saga of the New York Met's First Year” by Jimmy Breslin. And if they perform even worse than the 1916 Philadelphia A’s, we’ll see a book on the order of “A’s Bad as It Gets: Connie Mack’s Pathetic Athletics of 1916,” by John G. Robertson and Andy Saunders.

The previous worst White Sox team ever was the 1932 club, which went 49-102 for a winning percentage of .325. The worst White Sox team in the era of the 162-game season was the 1970 club, which went 56-106 for a .346 winning percentage.

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 Tim O’Brien:

I recommend "People Get Old," a 2018 release from Lori McKenna. 

McKenna is an amazing singer/songwriter who has written or cowritten songs for artists including Reba McEntire, Tim McGraw, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift. 

I love many of her songs, but this one really hit home about your parents, yourself, and your own kids getting older.

 Houses need paint, winters bring snow
Nothin' says "love" like a band of gold
Babies grow up and houses get sold
And that's how it goes

Time is a thief, pain is a gift
The past is the past, it is what it is
Every line on your face tells a story somebody knows
That's just how it goes
You live long enough and the people you love get old

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