Zorn: Everybody* knows Harris whipped Trump Tuesday night

*As Trump defines "everybody."

9-12-2024 (issue No. 158)

Monday marked the third anniversary of the Picayune Sentinel. I’m grateful for the readership and the financial support that’s allowed me to keep this going. Please spread the word.

This week:

• Trump’s deranged debate absolutism by the numbers

• Last week’s winning quip

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked

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

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

• Mary Schmich — Time travel with a shipping trunk

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

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

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

• Cheer Chat — It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas for the “Songs of Good Cheer” cast. The regular updates on the show begin this week

• Good Sports — Should losing teams be in the playoffs? No. Should you be reading Brad Biggs’ “10 things …” columns in the Tribune? Yes. Is the probability that the White Sox will become the worst MLB team ever exciting and entertaining? Yes

• Tune of the Week — “Mercy Now” by Mary Gauthier, nominated by reader Ted Burkhardt

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.

Trump’s deranged debate absolutism by the numbers

Everybody knows that Vice President Kamala Harris clobbered former President Donald Trump Tuesday night as he gave the worst presidential debate performance in history. Nobody has ever seen anything like it.

Not exactly, of course.

Sure, a majority of those who watched the debate thought Harris won the evening. And Trump’s rancid ramblings (comedian George Wallace called him “a jukebox of gibberish”) were embarrassingly awful, though his wasn’t even the worst debate performance of this campaign season. That designation belongs to President Joe Biden.

Trump’s reflexive impulse to speak in absolutes was on full display Tuesday night — as it was during his June 27 debater with Biden — attributing numerous marginal and offbeat opinions to “everybody” no fewer than eight times:

• About his plans for the country if he’s reelected: “Everybody knows what I'm going to do.”

• About the post-pandemic surge in job creation under the Biden administration: “I was the one that created them. They know it and so does everybody else.”

• About Harris: “Everybody knows she's a Marxist”

• About the overturning of Roe v. Wade: “We've gotten what everybody wanted. Democrats, Republicans and everybody else and every legal scholar wanted (the issue of abortion) to be brought back into the states. … We did something that everybody said couldn't be done.”

• About support for in vitro fertilization (IVF): “I've been a leader on it. (The Democrats) know that and everybody else knows it.”

• About Harris’ changes in policy positions: “Everybody's laughing at it, OK? They're all laughing at it.”

Anybody’s cousin “nobody” also got eight shoutouts:

• About crime: “We have a new form of crime. It's called migrant crime. And it's happening at levels that nobody thought possible.”

• About Harris’ pitch in 2020 for donations to the Minnesota Bail Fund that helped bond out some of those arrested in Minneapolis for protesting the murder of George Floyd: “She did things that nobody would ever think of.”

• About his energy record: “I got the oil business going like nobody has ever done before.”

• About Russia’s nuclear weapons capability: “Nobody ever thinks about that. … Nobody likes to talk about it.”

• About the U.S. economy before the pandemic: “Nobody's ever seen anything like it.”

• About his administration’s COVID-19 response: “We did things that nobody thought possible.”

• About his appointment of three Supreme Court justices whose votes overturned Roe v. Wade: “I did something that nobody thought was possible.”

Trump similarly deployed the absolute “Never” three times in describing the Biden administration:

• “There's never been anything like it. They're destroying our country.”

• I've never seen a worse period of time.”

• “They're destroying the fabric of our country by what they've done. There's never been anything done like this at all.”

Trump also invoked “history” six times for similar ends

• “(Biden is) the worst president in the history of our country. (Harris) goes down as the worst vice president in the history of our country.”

• “The worst president, the worst vice president in the history of our country.”

• “This is the most divisive presidency in the history of our country.”

• “I built one of the greatest economies in the history of the world.”

• About the withdrawal from Afghanistan: “The most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.”

It would take all day to perform the somewhat pointless exercise of gainsaying these 25 sweeping assertions. But, quickly:

• Trump’s plans for a second term are, in fact, ominously vague. He couldn’t even say if he intends to allow Russia to take over Ukraine, and his position on abortion rights seems to change by the day.

• Harris is not a Marxist by any stretch of the definition, and polls show the public isn’t laughing at her, but supporting her nationally over Trump.

• The protections afforded by Roe v. Wade in every state were consistently supported by two-thirds of the public in opinion polls and by plenty of legal scholars. The majority of Americans don’t want to give state legislators control of women’s reproductive rights. This might explain, I guess, why “nobody” thought it was possible that the U.S. Supreme Court would take those rights away.

These last truths are ones I wish Harris had emphasized every time Trump commenced his false, tedious bleating about how awful things are in the hellish United States. Yes, we still have problems, but:

• We have recovered economically from the global pandemic faster than the other nations in the G7.

• After a spike caused by an excess infusion of COVID-19 relief money, inflation is down to 2.5%, just a shade over the U.S. Federal Reserve’s target of 2%.

• “July saw the lowest number of crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border in four years.” (Newsweek)

• The national unemployment rate is now 4.2%, down from 6.4% when Trump left office.

• The financial markets are in significantly better shape than they were on Trump’s last day in office: The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 32%, from 30,976 to 40,861; the Nasdaq is up 31%, from 13,173 to 17,317; and the S&P has risen 46%, from 3,801 to 5,536.

• “Violent crime shot up across the country at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 while Trump was president, but has since come down sharply. Studies for years have shown that immigrants are less likely than U.S.-born citizens to be incarcerated for committing crimes.” (Los Angeles Times)

• "Domestic energy production is at record levels, such that we now generate more energy than we’re using.

• The NATO alliance is larger and stronger than ever.

• The U.S. Treasury has reported: “ In 2023, the median American worker can afford the same goods and services as they did in 2019, plus an additional $1,000 to spend or save—because median earnings rose faster than prices.

So was Harris great? Not really. She danced around specific questions — though not as much as Trump did — and she missed chances to offer extra reassurance to voters who are concerned about high prices and border security. But she shone brightly in comparison, and though everybody doesn’t actually know she won the debate — just 63% said so in a CNN flash poll — I find it hard to believe that very many previously neutral people would have found Trump’s unhinged performance reassuring or energizing.

Should Harris simply let American voters sit with Trump’s splenetic, dishonest performance on Tuesday, or try to engage him in another debate?

It depends on whether polling tells them that the narrow sliver of undecided voters needs more assurance that Harris can handle debate pressure, though she clearly put that question to rest.

From the clouded-crystal-ball file, I offer you this:

Commies! Well, speaking for those in my cell, we were never the least bit afraid, and we were texting each other delightedly all evening Tuesday (though I was off playing fiddle tunes and watched the festivities later) about the hefty can of Whoop-Ass Harris opened up.

But thanks to all who helped lower expectations.

Were the moderators fair? As Mark Jacob put it, “ABC fact-checked Trump more often than Harris for the same reason that the police arrested Al Capone more often than Amelia Earhart.” They let Trump talk “for approximately 42 minutes and 52 seconds, while Harris spoke for about 37 minutes and 36 seconds,” CNN reported. He got roughly 14% more airtime than she did, in other words.

Last week’s winning quip

I asked my Grandma which walker she preferred to use. She said Johnnie. — @Dadsaysjokes

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: Donald Trump admits in the debate that he has only “concepts of a plan” to replace Obamacare with something better.

View: It boggles my mind that otherwise intelligent people don’t recognize what an utter con man Trump is. This is from a Kaiser Family Foundation article four years ago:

In his early days on the campaign trail, circa 2015, he said on CNN he would repeal Obamacare and replace it with “something terrific,” and on Sean Hannity’s radio show he said the replacement would be “something great.” Fast-forward to 2020. Trump has promised an Obamacare replacement plan five times so far this year. And the plan is always said to be just a few weeks away. … (In October 2016) Trump promised that within his first 100 days in office he would repeal and replace Obamacare. … On Oct. 29, (2017) Trump got back to the promise with this tweet: “We will … have great Healthcare soon.” …(In June 2019, he said) “We’re going to produce phenomenal health care. And we already have the concept of the plan. And it’ll be much better health care, … we’ll be announcing that in two months, maybe less.” … (In July 2020), Trump told Chris Wallace in a Fox News interview that a health care plan would be unveiled within two weeks: “We’re signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan.”

For nine years, this greasy, mendacious, ignorant grifter has been saying he has a plan when he very obviously doesn’t. Toward the end of the debate, he asked why Harris, as vice president, hadn’t enacted some of her ideas in the last three and a half years and the response should have referenced Trump’s own failures during his four years in office on health care policy, on having Mexico pay for a border wall and so on.

News: About the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion, Donald Trump said during the debate, “Ashli Babbitt was shot by an out-of-control police officer that should have never, ever shot her. It's a disgrace.”

View: Conservatives seldom have any sympathy for Black people who are killed by police when they don’t comply with lawful orders, but here, when the dead person is a white person who defied numerous police commands, they can’t stop clutching their pearls. Babbitt was at the head of a furious mob attempting to climb through a broken window of a barricaded door leading to the House speaker’s lobby. From NBC:

“If they get through that door, they’re into the House chamber and upon the members of Congress,” (said the officer who fired one shot striking Babbit in the shoulder, Lt. Michael) Byrd. … Byrd’s connection to what was going on outside and inside the building was his police radio. For several minutes, it crackled with a cascade of alarming messages.

There were shouts of officers down. Screams from his colleagues under attack by rioters with chemical agents. A report that an officer’s fingertips were blown off. …

“I tried to wait as long as I could. I hoped and prayed no one tried to enter through those doors,” (Byrd said). “But their failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.

“I know that day I saved countless lives. I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job. …I tried to wait as long as I could. I hoped and prayed no one tried to enter through those doors. But their failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.”

Byrd has been cleared of wrongdoing by the Justice Department and the Capitol Police.

News: Three City Council leaders demand ouster of top mayoral aide who called police 'fucking pigs'

View: Mayor Brandon Johnson simply must annoy his highly progressive base and give the heave-ho to Kennedy Bartley, his new head of Intergovernmental Affairs.

From the Sun-Times via Fox32, with the cuss words restored:

In a 2021 interview on comedian Dave Maher’s “This is Your Afterlife,” Bartley discussed the 2019 death of Elijah Jovan McClain, a 23-year-old Black man. McClain was walking home when he was stopped by police in Aurora, Colorado, and sedated by paramedics before going into cardiac arrest .

“If I die — especially at the hands of the fucking pigs — don’t name shit after me. I don’t want a piece of legislation named after me [or] a road. I would be honored if that got more folks to abolition” of police departments, Bartley said.

“It’s frustrating to me that, like, shit man, the police lynch Black folks every day. [They] shoot Black folks and Brown folks down every day in the street, and there’s still Black folks and Brown folks who are not abolitionists, who are pro-police. … That just like shows what work we have to do.”

City Hall reporter Fran Spielman summed up the broader consequences of this controversy, which involves the member of Johnson’s team who acts as a liaison to the alders and outside groups:

It comes as Johnson struggles to erase a $223 million shortfall this year, close a $982.4 million budget gap for 2025 and round up the 26 votes needed to confirm progressive firebrand Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) as chairman of the City Council’s Zoning Committee.

Already, an emboldened City Council has moved to tie the mayor’s hands when it comes to canceling the gunshot detection technology contract known as “ShotSpotter.” And Johnson has been forced to cast two tie-breaking votes. One, to spare his now-former Council floor leader from censure. The other, to pass a non-binding resolution demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War in Gaza.

If Johnson keeps her on then runs for reelection in 2027, Bartley and her remarks will be featured in numerous attack ads from opponents. He’s got to let her go quickly.

Land of Linkin’

• In “Amazon Still Has a Counterfeit Problem,” David Dayen of The American Prospect writes, “It’s essentially impossible for Amazon to know what’s being sold at any one time, and as a result a major counterfeit market, largely produced in China, has sprung up. In the past, brands like Birkenstock and Nike have fled the site rather than see their products continuously knocked off, and thousands of products have been posted for sale that are not only fake but deemed unsafe or banned by federal regulators.”

• I posted Neil Gaiman’s poem “All I Know About Love” in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus item about my son Ben’s wedding over the weekend, and got a bit choked up reading portions of it on John Williams’ WGN-AM radio program. What I didn’t know until readers pointed it out, is that Gaiman has been accused of sexual assault by several women. This brings up the old question of if and how one can separate the artist from his or her art.

• CNN: “Fact check: Trump and Vance keep falsely describing how tariffs work.”

• Make your own custom Harris/Walz logo, like this one:

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:

■ “Everything Democrats could’ve hoped for”: Public Notice’s Aaron Rupar says that, in her first face-to-face with Donald Trump, Kamala Harris “put on a debate masterclass.”

■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: Harris “shattered any veneer of sanity around Donald Trump, sending him spiraling into his true, babbling, unhinged form. … She said, accurately, that people often leave his rallies ‘out of exhaustion and boredom.’”

■ Popular Information’s Judd Legum: “The key moment … was Trump’s refusal to commit to vetoing a national abortion ban, explicitly contradicting his running mate.”

■ Jon Stewart: “Holy s***! She crushed that.”

■ Trump says it was his best debate, he won and everyone knew it …

■ … but The Daily Beast perceives a right-wing freakout.

■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch: “Unless you work on the politics desk of The New York Times or Washington Post, it’s getting harder and harder not to notice the … dangerously unhinged nature of Donald Trump’s campaign appearances.”

■ New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi recounts an up-close look at Trump’s wound during her interview with him three weeks after an attempt on his life: “An ear had never appeared to have gone through less.”

■ Marathon Pundit John Ruberry had an issue with reporting of the Vance quote: “You left … out, ‘I don’t like that this is a fact of life.’” Your Square columnist’s response: “A person who says ‘I don’t like that the sky is purple’ is nevertheless asserting that the sky is purple.”

■ Pants on fire! PolitiFact eviscerates a nonexistent TV station’s fake report about Harris.

■ Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow offers a view of the world through “MAGA goggles.”

■ Time magazine: At-home COVID tests aren’t what they used to be.

■ Chicago’s Department of Business Affairs has shuttered an underground comedy and music venue that, for five years, has operated in a residential basement.

■ Wirecutter’s not impressed with Apple’s new product line: “Here are six ways to make your phone last as long as possible.”

■ Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper gives 3 1/2 stars to “a gorgeously filmed, beautifully cast and darkly funny series that knows exactly when to wrap things up in a shiny package,” Netflix’s murder mystery “The Perfect Couple.”

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

Mary Schmich: Time travel

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

I was in a store the other day when I spotted something that made me feel like the hand of time had grabbed me by the throat and yanked me back to the summer of 1971.

This unlikely object was a trunk, the traveling kind. A couple of metal latches, a lock in the middle. The instant I saw it I also saw myself packing it, eager to get out of Phoenix, Arizona.

In the late spring of 1971, shortly before I graduated from high school, my family — 8 kids, 2 parents, a dog — was evicted from our home.

It was the third house we’d lived in during my four years of high school. It had belonged to a member of our Catholic parish who’d recently died. The son was in Vietnam. The place was empty. We were broke. So the church arranged for us to live in it, for free, which we did until the day the son came home and wondered what the hell 10 people were doing living in his dead mother’s house. He told us to get out.

We did.

Where do 8 kids, 2 parents and a dog go when they’ve got no home or money?

They move into the Motel de Mañana.

The Mañana, as my siblings and I call it to this day, was on a seedy strip full of decaying motels that had become havens for ex-cons and prostitutes and people otherwise down on their luck.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to sleep there. My friend Marge’s family said I could stay with them. Through the summer, I’d often go down to the Mañana to visit, but I was spared having to live in that one cramped room with its one saggy bed.

I don’t remember being depressed or scared. Mostly, I was embarrassed. I hoped most of my schoolmates didn’t find out what was going on. Hey, I was 17, an age when so many emotions are subsumed into embarrassment, the fear of being seen, demeaned.

And, besides, I was on my way up and out. I was going to college. In California. California! The dream state.

But what would I take to college given that I had essentially nothing? This is where the trunk comes in.

My high school boyfriend’s name was Tom. One day Tom said his mother had a friend who’d like to take me shopping for things I’d need at college.

And so it came to pass that I wound up cruising the aisles of K-Mart (I think it was K-Mart) with a good-hearted woman I didn’t know. Among many things, she bought me underwear. Also, two pair of velour corduroy pants, one tan, the other dark brown. Oh, how I loved those pants.

To carry my new goodies, she bought me a trunk. Mine was black, not pink like the one in this photo, but otherwise almost identical. I lugged it to Claremont, California, and when I opened it in my new dorm room, I felt like a genie had wafted out of a bottle and told me that the world was mine for the asking.

And that’s the memory resurrected by spotting this trunk at The Container Store.

P.S. Years later, Tom told me his mother, Rose, had subsidized that shopping spree. The mothers of my friends--Rusty's mom, Marge's mom--were also there to help. I remain grateful beyond words to all of them. My family moved into other motels, where they spent months before they finally found a little rental house. I sometimes miss those velour corduroy pants.

Minced Words

On this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast, host John Williams, Cate Plys, Brandon Pope, Austin Berg and I analyzed Tuesday night’s presidential debate and Berg summarized the predicaments that Mayor Brandon Johnson finds himself in, then we all piled on.

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 have concepts of a plan” was the defining moment of this debate and is going to go down in presidential debate lore as one of the most pathetic lines in debate history. For the record, it was about health care—specifically, the long-awaited but never arriving Republican replacement for Obamacare. … Was this Trump’s Biden moment? He wasn’t quite as bad as Joe Biden was back in that June debate. But the mere fact that I was forced to consider that question speaks volumes. His age, his narrow-mindedness, his mental incontinence all came aggressively to the fore. … We may have just witnessed the beginning of a downward spiral that’s going to get weirder and worse over the next 55 days. — Michael Tomasky

Imagine your angry grandfather yelling, “THEY’RE EATING DOGS IN SPRINGFIELD!” with fake tanner on, and then thinking, wow, I wish he were the president of the United States — Charlotte Wilder

In Colorado, (asylum-seeking immigrants) have taken over. I mean, in Colorado, they’re so brazen they’ve taken over sections of the state. And you know, getting them out will be a bloody story. — Donald Trump

I wonder how Putin would clean the orange stains in his Tupperware after he eats Trump for lunch — Marcus Flowers

Migrants are not eating pets. Doctors are not murdering newborn babies. Schools are not doing transition surgery on kids. Nobody is taking away your gas stove. You will not be forced to drive an EV. This moral panic nonsense is Trump's campaign platform, and it's all fake. — Mark Rothschild

It’s incredible that Trump doesn’t understand how tariffs work. Tariffs on imported goods are nearly always passed onto US consumers. Not only that, when China imposes retaliatory tariffs on US exports, that often prices US goods out of the Chinese market, killing American jobs. — Jon Cooper

What could be more Republican than getting outraged over the imaginary killing of imaginary pets in Ohio but yawning at the real killing of real children with assault rifles in schools throughout America? — Betty Bowers

When people complain that there's a double standard for Trump, they’re wrong: There is literally no standard. He can say absolutely insane things — like that they are giving kids sex-change operations in schools — and it won't even get a single headline. — @Wilson__Valdez

My daughter just texted she’s opted in for the transgender surgery at the high school nurse’s office. She’s like 5th in line. It’s going slow because they are using staplers and erasers. — Jonathan Slater

I just went down to the kitchen and an illegal was performing transgender surgery on our cat (he/they). — Bess Kalb

You can say that it’s weird for the Cheneys to endorse a liberal Democrat, but it’s even weirder for a police union to endorse a criminal who believes cop beaters are great patriots. — Michael Freeman

When you buy a gun, you’re shown pictures of gunshot victims. If your neighbor suspects you of buying a gun, they can call a hotline. If you’re from a state where guns are illegal, you can be arrested if you buy a gun out of state. Oh sorry, these are all abortion laws. — Nick Jack Pappas

Tom Brady is to broadcasting as Michael Jordan is to baseball. — Rob Mattheu

Kamala Harris’ ability to stop herself from saying "this motherfucker" on national television requires the kind of willpower most of us could never even dream of. — Amanda Litman

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:

Note that for the first time in the history of the visual jokes poll, an entry got 0% of the vote.

The new nominees for Quip of the Week:

• I asked the waiter how he was doing, and he told me all about his bad gas and hemorrhoids. Ugh, that's the last time I go to TMI Friday's. — @Writepop

• Big decision to make? You must seek The Five Dentists. — @neenertothe3

• The Costco sample lady called spanikopita “spankopedia,” and I'm still disappointed it turned out to be a spinach thing. — @BrickMahoney

• So disappointed. I was unable to witness the awesome spectacle of the Perseid meteor shower in the middle of the night because, unfortunately, the view in my location was totally obscured by a thick layer of bedroom. — @thewritertype

• I can’t believe it’s watching Taylor Swift watch football season already. — @CooperLawrence

• Forty-five is a weird age. Am I far too old for Velcro shoes or am I far too young for Velcro shoes? — @LoveNLunchmeat

• Hitchhiking used to be more popular before people got so uptight about being buried in a desert. — @jlock17

• Email translations: “I was under the impression …” Translation: “I’m furious.” “As per my email..” Translation: I’m furious. “With respect” Translation: I’m furious. “While I appreciate …” Translation: I’m furious. “As I’m sure you’re aware. ”Translation: “I’m furious.”“ As previously discussed.” Translation: I’m furious. — @SoVeryBritish

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

• Nobody knows what a dew point is. Not even Jesus. — @BuckyIsotope

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.”

Cheer Chat

This week, I will commence my weekly updates on progress toward the beloved “Songs of Good Cheer” holiday singalong shows hosted by me and Mary Schmich at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood. The dates are set: Thursday Dec. 12 through Sunday Dec. 15, and tickets will go on sale next week.

We have yet to hold our first organizational meeting — that will be this coming Sunday — but the late summer and now early fall has been occupied with a recording project so we can offer studio quality versions of some audience favorites, including Schmich’s song “Gonna Sing.”

I will be featured on “The Gloucestershire Wassail” and have already cleared space on the mantle for my inevitable Grammy.

Good Sports

When they make me the commissioner of all sports, no team with a losing record will “make” the playoffs

At this writing, the WNBA Chicago Sky is battling the Atlanta Dream for a spot in the postseason, and both teams are under .400 — worse than mediocre.

Seems to me the bare minimum price of admission to the playoffs in any sport ought to be a winning record. No team with a losing season has ever won the Super Bowl, the World Series, or an NBA/WNBA championship (though the 2021 Sky were 16-16 before their title run in the playoffs.)

As czar of all sports, I might make an exception for hockey, since Stanley Cup winners include the 1938 Chicago Black Hawks (14-25-9), the 1949 Toronto Maple Leafs (22-25-13) and the 2012 Los Angeles Kings (40-27-15), who won less than half their games.

But I might decide that the regular season should matter more, and those 1938 Black Hawks with their .292 winning percentage had not earned the right to compete for the Stanley Cup.

Or I’d decide that the regular season shouldn’t really matter at all. Maybe the playoffs should be like college conference tournaments, where every team gets invited and the teams with the better records get one- or two-round byes.

(Speaking of byes, please allow me to renew my objection to the term “bye” to describe a football team having a week off during the season.)

Your turn:

Read Brad Biggs

I’m in awe of Tribune sportswriter Brad Biggs’ online “10 thoughts …” columns after every Bears game. They are incredibly long, richly reported and filled with insights and tidbits. He often cheats and, like this week, adds 10a, 10b, 10c and so on because he simply has so much to say.

Headline: “NFL averaged 21 million viewers per game in Week 1 — its highest on record”

I guess predictions of football’s inevitable demise as a sport were premature, at best.

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 147 games

Paul Sullivan in the Tribune:

Barring a complete turnaround, they’ll probably break the record sometime next week, perhaps late at night in San Diego, when most Sox fans will be sleeping. At this point, anything less than a spot in the history books would be disappointing to Sox fans, who’ve suffered through this long enough and want some kind of payoff for their troubles. It’s 121 or bust!

The dreadful 1916 Philadelphia A’s played a 153-game season and finished with a modern record low win total of 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. Therefore, here are the scenarios:

• If the Sox go 5-10 in their last 15 games, they will finish 38-124 and set the record for worst winning percentage in modern MLB history (since 1900).

• If the Sox go 6-9 in their last 15 games, they will finish 39-123 and narrowly avoid a worse winning percentage than the 1916 A’s. That mark will also remove any potential asterisk from the record books, since the 1962 Mets played only 160 games due to two rainouts that were not made up.

• If the Sox go 8-7 in their last 15 games, they will finish 41-121 and set the record for most losses in a season.

• If the Sox go 9-6 in their last 15 games, they will finish 42-120 and tie the record for most losses in a season.

• If the Sox go 10-5 in their last 15 games, they will finish 43-119 and avoid the record books.

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 Ted Burkhardt:

Some classics take time to percolate. Leonard Cohen took years to write "Hallelujah,"and it took a couple of decades for it to become popular. "Mercy Now," a 2005 song by Mary Gauthier, is a heart-tugger, and on a similar trajectory. It's been fairly well known by Americana fans, but now reaching wider audiences, such as being featured on "Yellowstone." Hearing it is like a prayer vigil, as thoughts lead to those who could use some help, and that's a long list these days.

Yea, we all could use a little mercy now
I know we don’t deserve it, but we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground
Every single one of us could use some mercy now

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