Zorn: More lies in the epilogue to the Jussie Smollett story

Plus your first 2027 mayoral poll, a selection of Thanksgiving quips and more

11-26 2024 (issue No. 169 )

There will be no Picayune Plus this week because I didn’t want readers to be torn between spending Thanksgiving with their families or spending time reading the Picayune Sentinel. Now you can do both! But we still have a cornucopia of picayune delights:

• Last week’s winning quip

• Please indulge me one last time in calling bullshit on Jussie Smollett and Kim Foxx

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

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

• Zmail — Notes and comments from readers with my responses

• Cheer Chat — An update on preparations for “Songs of Good Cheer”

• The Shopping Cart Theory

• Who will challenge Mayor Brandon Johnson in 2027?

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

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

• Bad Sports — Chicago’s pro teams are just awful!

• Tune of the Week — “Wichita” by Gillian Welch

This is a good time to remind you of two things:

1. Many paying subscribers are coming up on their automatic renewal dates because the support program launched in early December three years ago. I have very little control over how the subscription interface works, but in the interest of extra transparency, I want to give you that heads-up (and urge those of you who have changed credit cards in the last year and are willing to continue supporting this publication to update your information).

2. A subscription to the Picayune Sentinel is an excellent holiday gift! Thoughtful, personal, just the right size and color. And gift subscriptions do not automatically renew. Note that the cost is still what it was three years ago — the lowest that Substack allows me to charge — even though the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator says:

   

Last week’s winning quip

Prank idea: Give every person access to all the information in the world without teaching them to discern what's true. — @InternetHippo

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

Please indulge me one last time in calling bullshit on Jussie Smollett and Kim Foxx

Here are two statements in reaction to the Illinois Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday that a special prosecutor should not have been allowed to put actor Jussie Smollett on trial for staging a hate crime against himself because he’d already struck a deal with the state’s attorney’s office:

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx: For my critics who may not have appreciated my approach or thought that I was too far afield, my greatest satisfaction is that they were proven wrong.

Smollett’s attorney Nenye Uche: This prosecution was not a prosecution. It was a persecution. … The procedure that convicted (Smollett in a criminal trial) was unfair … and so anything derived from such a proceeding, I cannot say that that is valid. In fact, that jury’s decision is null and void. Jussie is back where he started, which is he's presumed innocent.

Shameful nonsense.

Neither Foxx nor Smollett is entitled to claim any sort of vindication here. Foxx botched this little case royally, and there is no reasonable doubt that Smollett staged an unprovoked attack on himself in some weird effort to advance his career.

Smollett, then a star on TV’s “Empire” and a budding music celebrity, said he left his Streeterville apartment at 1:45 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2019, one of the coldest days of the year, to walk several blocks for a Subway sandwich. A pair of tough guys in ski masks just happened to be waiting for him on the sidewalk as he returned. They shouted homophobic slurs at the Black, gay actor and yelled, “This is MAGA country,” a reference to then-President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, as they administered a patty-cake beating to Smollett outside the view of security cameras. The attackers then looped a noose around his neck and splashed bleach on him before retreating into the darkness.

Police quickly realized the story didn’t add up. And the suspicions of investigators were amplified when police identified the “attackers” as Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, Nigerian bodybuilders whom Smollett knew from the “Empire” set. They told police that Smollett had hired them to stage a phony hate crime against him.

A little more than a month after the incident, a Cook County grand jury indicted Smollett on 16 counts of felony disorderly conduct. But then Foxx abruptly and without explanation dropped all charges against Smollett just 18 days later without even extracting a guilty plea from him. Her precipitous surrender allowed Smollett to stand in front of a bank of TV cameras at the courthouse and proclaim his innocence, which was more than a little galling.

Justice demanded resolution and accountability. Yet Foxx appeared oblivious to this imperative and told reporters that those outraged by the outcome were "people who don't understand the intricacies of the justice system."

But what she didn’t seem to understand is that high-profile criminal cases — even ones as fundamentally insignificant as false police reports — are the lens through which the public sees and evaluates the administration of justice as a whole.

Are investigations thorough and honest? Is the process of obtaining an outcome transparent and fair? Does the result give us confidence that all the low-profile cases most of us never hear of are being handled with integrity?

What the hell happened in those 18 days between the grand jury indictment of Smollett and Foxx’s office’s decision to drop all charges in exchange for Smollett forfeiting his bond and taking credit for “community service” that he’d already performed.

Foxx responded with opaque and condescending pieties and persistently failed to offer an explanation why, after more than two weeks, her office chose to let Smollett off without an admission of guilt. The special prosecutor appointed to review the case, Dan Webb, said he found no evidence that Foxx routinely disposed of cases the way she disposed of the Smollett case, as she'd claimed, and that "decision-makers overseeing the Smollett resolution decision have not identified any new evidence they learned of between the time of indictment and dismissal of the indictment that changed their view that the evidence against Mr. Smollett was strong."

Webb re-indicted Smollett, and in December 2021, a Cook County jury, after hearing all the evidence and arguments, found the actor guilty on five of six counts of felony disorderly conduct.

The trial itself was fair. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled only that it shouldn’t have taken place at all because the deal was binding that Smollett struck with Foxx’s office — and please, everybody, don’t refer to it as a “plea deal” or “plea arrangement” as Foxx did during an appallingly self-serving recent interview with TMZ. Smollett never pled to anything.

Webb disagreed strongly with last week’s ruling and released a defiant statement:

The Illinois Supreme Court reached this decision notwithstanding the fact that the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office dismissed the initial Smollett case via a nolle prosequi, which does not bar re-prosecution under Illinois law, and Mr. Smollett’s own lawyers told the public immediately following the dismissal of his initial case in March 2019 that there was “no deal” with the CCSAO.

Foxx responded to the ruling with smug condescension:

I took criminal procedure my first year of law school and so I understood double jeopardy. … I knew from the very beginning that (Smollett’s trial) amounted to double jeopardy. … Dan Webb also knows criminal procedure 101, and he knew from the outset that this was double jeopardy, and (took the case to trial) anyway.

This wasn’t so obvious to a 2-1 majority on Illinois Appellate Court. which said this in a ruling last December that upheld Webb’s decision to try Smollett:

The record does not contain any evidence that the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office agreed Smollett would not be further prosecuted in exchange for forfeiting his bond and performing community service. … Therefore, the State was not barred from reprosecuting Smollett.

The Illinois Supreme Court disagreed, yes, but for Foxx to suggest that even a first-year law student would have agreed with her was churlish.

Webb also noted that Smollett, who continues to proclaim his innocence, “did not even challenge the sufficiency of the evidence against him in his appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.”

Attorney Uche’s contention that Smollett is entitled to the presumption of innocence is a legal fiction that strains credulity past the breaking point. And Foxx’s contention that her critics were “proven wrong” is preposterous. Her office botched this case in a spectacular fashion, and the high court’s decision only serves to remind us what a bad “deal” her prosecutors made that allowed Smollett to continue to bleat his innocence.

But look: Justice has been served here. Smollett, 42, could have copped to his pathetic stunt, apologized to the public, paid a fine and been the answer to a trivia question by now. Instead his name is a joke, and his show business career appears to be floundering — the only acting credit in his Internet Movie Database page since 2019 is a movie he produced, directed and starred in that was released earlier this year to so little fanfare that the movie-review website Rotten Tomatoes found that no professional film critics bothered even to evaluate it.

He may have a second act — celebrities who have come back from humiliating scandals include Hugh Grant, Robert Downey Jr., Reese Witherspoon and Paul “Pee-Wee Herman” Reubens. But he’ll never get back these last nearly six years, which is an awfully high price to pay for trying to pull off a preposterous hoax.

And no matter what Foxx says, her strange and slippery conduct in trying to give Smollett a pass will always be a stain on what I consider to be an otherwise creditable two terms as a reform-minded prosecutor.

Previous coverage in the Picayune Sentinel

• Jussie Smollett’s story never made any damn sense — Dec. 2, 2021

• What to expect when you're expecting a verdict on Jussie Smollett — Dec. 9, 2021

• Foxx, Smollett find it hard to say 'I'm sorry,' evidently — March 17, 2022

Land of Linkin’

• “In Five Years, Chicago Has Barely Made Progress on Its Court-Ordered Police Reforms. Here’s Why” by Heather Cherone of WTTW News and Vernal Coleman of ProPublica

• New York Times: “Substack’s Great, Big, Messy Political Experiment”

• “98% of Illinois residents drink water with fluoride. Why is this mineral’s longtime role being rethought?” is a thorough explainer of a coming controversy by the Tribune’s’Adriana Perez

• Jim VandeHei of Axios offers a good set of instructional pointers in “How to be a great reporter.”

• Yahoo News: “Poppers Cause AIDS, the Environment Makes Boys Trans, Says Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”

• Mediaite: “Elon Musk Admits X is Throttling Links — Effectively Limiting People From Reading News.”

• Associated Press: “Louisiana lawmakers pass income and corporate tax cuts, raising statewide sales tax to pay for it.”Bless their hearts.

• Seventy percent of Chicago voters disapprove of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s performance in office so far according to a poll commissioned by 14 members of the City Council.

• By early Tuesday evening the Thanksgiving edition of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast will be posted. Keep refreshing your browser window!

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:

■ The Bulwark: “We don’t want to jinx it, but … some notable elected Republicans are showing faint signs of independent thought” as convicted felon Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House.

■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump is old and weak, and … it is also possible that Republican senators will … begin the process of restoring the balance of the three branches of government.”

■ Trump’s would-be education secretary, Linda McMahon, has been named in a sex abuse lawsuit.

■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “We are witnessing the Golden Age of horrible, unqualified lunkheads being richly rewarded for doing literally nothing good. And let me tell you, I am here for it.”

■ Traditional conservative Charlie Sykes: “Where does Al Franken go to get his apology?”

■ Ex-Tribune and Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now proprietor at Stop the Presses, offers reporters and the public “10 ways to defend democracy.”

■ Columnist Lyz Lenz counsels resisting “liberal conspiracy theories about the election”—and instead “examining some things about ourselves, our country and our neighbors and family that are deeply uncomfortable.”

■ CTA bus riders tell the Sun-Times about a terrifying crash that left one dead and 13 hurt Wednesday night: “I thought we were gonna die.”

■ A Red Line passenger tells the Tribune about an “alarming” altercation involving three people that same evening.

■ Chicago’s acclaimed Lula Cafe plays a central role in The Daily Show’s feature on restaurant “tipflation.”

■ A new University of Missouri study identifies a small North Side retail shopping area as a hotspot for shoplifting.

■ Macy’s reports that a single employee hid up to $154 million’s worth of expenses.

■ Axios Chicago’s Justin Kaufmann offers “The Ultimate Chicago Improv Quiz,” on which your Chicago Public Square columnist scored 100%.

■ City Cast Chicago’s Sidney Madden asks, “How Well Do You Know Chicago’s Native American History?”—and, hey, another perfect score there.

■ Trump vs. the press. The former editor of The Washington Post warns that the incoming president will use “every tool in the toolbox—and there are a lot of tools” to go after media critical of his reign.

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

Notes and comments from readers — lightly edited — along with my responses (a regular feature of the Picayune Plus, usually delivered to paid subscribers on Tuesdays)

Melinda A.K. — I'm waiting to see if the use of military to round up people in the United States without legal status will include the not-insignificant number of eastern European people who have overstayed visitor visas and work in the underground workforce (home cleaners, child carers, construction, yard work). Most have family here legally, they came for a visit then stayed. I have a feeling the focus will be on brown-skinned people.

Zorn — Ya’ think? My guess is that the Trump administration will go after convicted and plausibly accused violent criminals first, avoid any harrowing family separation stories, then call it a day. Not a vast effort, but a half-vast effort, if that. Similar to the border wall he promised to build with Mexican money last time around.

Sue Gregoire — Last week you ran this “quotable” from Andrew Sullivan:

(Here is) the core dynamic that has crippled the Democrats for the last decade. A tiny faction of usually young, well-educated, very-online social justice activists have been using the classic campus tactics of the far left to capture the interest groups and nonprofits that dominate Democratic policy-making. The weapon the activists use: classic internal accusations of racism/sexism/transphobia, empowered by staff revolts, Twitter mobs, and other social media. And then the Democrats, believing these groups represent actual public opinion, especially among minorities, take positions far outside the mainstream with scarcely any public debate — and become paralyzed when challenged.

But that could easily be reworded along these lines:

(Here is) the core dynamic that has crippled the Republicans for the last decade. A tiny faction of usually uneducated, white, so-called Christian conservatives have been using the classic tactics of the far right to capture the special interest groups that dominate Republican policy-making. The weapon they use: fear-mongering around minorities/women's rights/transphobia, empowered by boycotts, Fox News mobs, and other social media. And then the Republicans, believing these groups represent actual public opinion, take positions far outside the majority with scarcely any public debate — and dig in when challenged.

Zorn — Both can be true!

Steve T. — You should survey PS readers on how they expect Trump’s administration to perform. For example, how many of the 13 million or so undocumented migrants will be deported, placed in a camp, etc.? Which Democrats will Trump’s Attorney General target for “crimes” committed prior to the election? Will we stay in NATO, pull Ukrainian support, pass nationwide abortion ban, pass national bathroom bills, pass laws to provide public funding of Christian schools, pardon January 6 offenders, boost tariffs, kill the Affordable Care Act and so on? Not to check in later to see who’s right, but to get a read on what we’re thinking without falling back on “End of democracy!” or “More freedom from government. overreach!” I’d especially like to see GOP voters’ responses to understand what they really are expecting with their vote, but I know this forum skews hard left, so maybe EZ could promote the survey in his broader media space.

Skeptic — I like Steve T.’s idea. Expectations about what is going to happen vary widely. It is a good practice to write down what you think will happen and store it somewhere and then go back and look at it. We all have selective memories, and many of us will be surprised at what we said we believed a year ago. Jason Zweig, a financial columnist, urges his readers to write down predictions about what will happen in markets or the economy in the next 12 months every December. Readers can also send him an email to have it recorded that way.

Zorn — I will use some of these questions in my year-end predictions survey, for sure! I am particularly interested in whether the U.S. Justice Dept. will revive the Comstock Act in an effort to prevent the interstate shipment of abortion-inducing medication. Keep an eye on the Sentinel in about a month.

Edward Fee — Thank you for the video of that great rendition of "Twas in the Moon of Wintertime" at the “Songs of Good Cheer” rehearsal. I had to look up the song's origins, feeling that your rendition had medieval English roots, and was surprised to have found its roots in Native American Canada.

Zorn — Come to the show and sing it with us! It will also be available on our upcoming CD, and I can safely say it’s a gorgeous version of beautiful song because I have no particular role in it.

Cheer Chat

An update on preparations for the 26th annual “Songs of Good Cheer” winter holiday sing-along programs at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

Join us! Shows are Dec. 12-15, and tickets are now on sale online and at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

The Shopping Cart Theory

I just stumbled onto a version of a post that went viral four years ago:

The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore, the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it.

No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you, or kill you for not returning the shopping cart. You gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct. The Shopping Cart Theory, therefore, is a great litmus test on whether a person is a good or bad member of society.

I’m not sure I totally agree with this: When the cart corral is a long way off and the parking lot isn’t crowded, I admit to leaving my cart where store employees can fetch it when making their rounds, and I’m not a bad member of society.

But it is a useful thought experiment — a version of the old saying that the true measure of character is how you treat those to whom you don’t have to give respect.

What little things do you do just because they’re the right things to do, not because you have to or even necessarily want to? (Charitable donations don’t count for purposes of this discussion, though they are important.)

Who will challenge Mayor Johnson for reelection in 2027?

Is it ever really too early to speculate? News media last week reported that high-ranking members of the Chicago business community are soliciting Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias to challenge Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, assuming Johnson runs for redelction in two and half years.

Giannoulias was the Democratic Party’s nominee for U.S. Senate in 2010, and my assumption has long been that he’ll run again for that office as soon as 2026 if veteran incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, who turned 80 last Thursday, decides to retire. But if Giannoulias is still available in 2027, sure, maybe, why not?

And since it’s not too early for speculation to begin, it’s not too early to take a click survey about potential candidates. I will not ask yet for your preference or even how you rank those whose names keep coming up in these conversations — I don’t know much about some of them, and I assume you don’t either. Instead, I’ll ask you to click on the names that you’d like to see on the mayoral ballot:

My list, in alphabetical order:

• State Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago

• Ald. Bill Conway, 34th 

• Former U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

• Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel

• Former Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson  

• Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson

• Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza

• Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd

• Ald. Silvana Tabares, 23rd

• Ald. Gil Villegas, 36^th  

• Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson

• U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Chicago 

• City Clerk Anna Valencia

• Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas

I’m not including Willie Wilson or Bob Fioretti, perennial candidates whom I assume will make a bid along with the inevitable assorted crew of also-rans. But you can add them or your own suggestions at the bottom of the poll.

Take that click poll here.

Quotables

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

Parents: Kids are more depressed these days, I wonder why? Kids: You destroyed the economy for us, the Earth is literally dying, we are going to work until we die, and, on top of that, the Nazis are back. Parents: It's those pesky iPhones. — James Parker

I wish that I could turn back the clock so that I might find you sooner and love you longer. … I may not be your first date, kiss or love, but I want to be your last everything. — unknown

The Republican Party has elected a twice impeached, four times indicted sociopathic sex offender as president. Now here's three articles about what's wrong with the Democratic Party. — Douglas J. Balloon

If you want me to believe that teaching about God in school would improve people’s morality, you’ll first need to explain why it doesn’t seem to work in church — unknown

Quips

The new nominees for Quip of the Week:

• Be sure to bring up politics at Thanksgiving dinner. It’s going to save you money on Christmas gifts. — Unknown

• In the U.K .we celebrate Thanksgiving as the day we managed to ship all our paranoid religious fundamentalists off to another continent. — @wildethingy

• Cheers to all who skipped that one dish at Thanksgiving because you just didn’t trust the person who brought it. — @mcdadstuff

• Text your mom on Thanksgiving afternoon "How many minutes do I microwave a 25-pound frozen turkey?” — @Marlebean

• Before Thanksgiving guests arrive, wedge a chair under the hall closet door knob and, when they ask about it, nervously change the subject. — @WilliamAder

• Gonna establish dominance by making sure I’m the one who ruins thanksgiving this year. — @nikalamity

• Thanksgiving and Christmas should be six months apart. It’s absurd to see those people again so soon. — @ChaseMit

• This Thanksgiving, let’s go around the table and all say where we’d rather be. — @bazecraze

• School said we should teach kids the history behind holidays, so for Thanksgiving I’m making piggies in a smallpox blanket. — @nikalamity

• Once again, I’ve been asked to bring the bag of ice to the family Thanksgiving dinner. — @Dani_elephant1

The last three in the list are losing entries from last year’s Thankgiving-themed poll.

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.”

Bad Sports

The current or most recent-season records for our local pro sports teams:

• Chicago White Sox 41-121

• Chicago Bulls 7-11

• Chicago Sky 13-27

• Chicago Blackhawks 7-14

• Chicago Red Stars 10-14 (2 ties)

• Chicago Fire 7-18 (9 ties)

• Chicago Bears 4-7

The only team with a winning record is the 2024 Chicago Cubs, who, at a mediocre 83-79, finished 10 games out of first place in the National League Central.

Stats freaks will let me know if and when it’s ever been this bad.

On the plus side, in the college ranks, the DePaul and Loyola men’s basketball teams are undefeated at 6-0 ,and Northwestern men’s basketball is 5-1.

Go Bears … to Arlington Heights!

News broke Monday that the Bears had reached a tentative agreement with the Northwest suburban village of Arlington Heights that would lower the property taxes on the 326-acre site of the old Arlington Park International Racecourse. The Bears purchased that land nearly two years ago but have not moved forward on plans to build a domed stadium and entertainment complex on the land as they keep trying to find a home suitable home along Chicago’s lakefront and secure public money to help pay for it

For the vast majority of us, a Bears stadium is glorified TV studio. I, for one, don’t care where the team plays its home games or where the stadium goes, as long as it’s privately financed.

Tune of the Week

Gillian Welch’s “Wichita.”

Going back where the grass grows tall
And the fields burn in the fall
You can still hear the night birds call
Back in Wichita

From a 2004 New Yorker profile:

The music Welch and (her musical and life partner David) Rawlings play contains pronounced elements of old-time music, string-band music, bluegrass, and early country music, but Welch and Rawlings diverge from historical models by playing songs that are meticulously arranged and that include influences from rhythm and blues, rockabilly, rock and roll, gospel, folk, jazz, punk, and grunge. … Her voice resonates more in her head than in her chest. Its range is not wide—it is more an alto than a soprano—and it has a mournful, vernacular, almost factual quality, as if she were a witness to the scene she is describing. She conveys emotion through dynamics, not vibrato, and by a self-effacing absorption with the narrative. What ornamentation she employs comes mainly from bluegrass and brother-team singing—the pounce on certain syllables, the dying falls, the trills, the quick fades and returns, the small tear—though she manages, partly by the solemnity of her bearing, to give the impression of singing without artifice, which in itself is dramatic.

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.

Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. 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.

The Picayune Sentinel is a reader-supported publication. Browse and search back issues here. Simply subscribe to receive new posts each Thursday. To support my work, receive bonus issues on Tuesdays and join the zesty commenting community, become a paid subscriber. Thanks for reading

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