Zorn: Wall to wall Walz
& all about the WordWheel puzzle
8-8-2024 (issue No. 153)
This week:
Sorry, but no, this presidential campaign season is too damn short
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 — A look back at local folk singer Ella Jenkins’ 90th birthday on the occasion of her 100th 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, which are reruns from eight years ago
Good Sports — After their just-concluded 21-game losing streak, the White Sox are now on pace to be the worst team in modern baseball history!
Tune of the Week — “Hot to Go!” by Chappell Roan
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.
Midsummer break
I’m now nearing the end of three weeks of vacation and travel, so posting is a bit lighter than usual. But, as many of you have pointed out, I’m clearly not all that good at vacationing.
Tribune newsroom union preemptively battles AI
In a storm of posts on social media last week, members of the Tribune’s newsroom union expressed defiance at the proposal made in contract negotiations by the newspaper’s owner —Alden Global Capital — to have the right to use artificial intelligence in creating news stories or other content for the paper.
The union wouldn’t share with me the exact language of Alden’s proposal or the language of its counterproposal, so I can’t quite tell what Alden might have in mind — except the hedge fund’s usual practice of attempting to wring every dollar out of the newspapers it owns. I’m not sure how to block that impulse or how to put up an effective stop sign in front of onrushing AI.
What will keep Alden from junking up the paper with computer-generated content is likely to be vigilant, proactive readers and businesses who vote with their subscriptions and their ad dollars. And what’s likely to keep readers happy are deeply reported, thoughtfully written articles such as Nell Salzman’s Monday story, “A migrant family’s first year in Chicago: sadness, setbacks and ‘beautiful moments,’” which no machine currently imaginable could produce.
That said, and despite my deep misgivings about the aims of the secretive masters of the universe who own Alden, I remain optimistic that, overall, technology will ultimately improve journalism, not flatten it, by helping journalists, not replacing them.
Last week’s winning quip
These two quips tied for first place with 353 votes each:
“Can I get two boxes of Sudafed?”“Sorry, by law you can only buy one at a time.”“Okay then just the one box of Sudafed and these seven guns.” — @TheNardvark
Church is the worst book club ever. We've been talking about the same book for 2,000 years and most of us still haven't even read it. — @POOPSCRUFFIN4U
Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-jokes poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.
Sorry, but no, this presidential campaign season is too damn short
I’ve detected a lot of enthusiasm out there for this highly truncated presidential race — there will be roughly 100 days for Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump to engage the public, spar over their differences on the issues and try to inspire their voters to turn out. I acknowledge that it would be refreshing in many ways not to have presidential campaigns drag on for nearly two years, exhausting voters.
But without the extended, in many ways wearing primary season where small groups of voters make big decisions for the rest of us, we’d never see such outsider candidates as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama break out of the pack, overcome the favorites of the party insiders and become president. The length of the process weakens the power of wealthy party insiders to promote their favorite candidates — Jeb Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Ed Muskie, and other early favorites who flamed out come to mind.
Some of you may have a low opinion of Carter, Clinton and Obama, but I contend that, partisan politics aside, they are examples of democracy working.
News & Views
News: Kamala Harris chooses relatively unknown Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
View: My first thought was that Walz was yet another Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s totally forgettable selection as a running mate in 2016 — a bland white guy who would not make much news or draw attention from the top of the ticket. But after catching some of the Walz rollout this week, I’ve come around to thinking or at least hoping that it was a very canny selection. He comes off as affable, smart, compassionate and fundamentally decent — qualities that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump lacks and make him seem like an antidote to our toxic politics. He’ll be very good on the stump, and of all the potential veeps we’ve been discussing these last few weeks, he’s the least polarizing among Democrats.
Republicans are already trying to paint Walz as dangerously radical for certain policy decisions he’s made, and I’m assuming Team Harris believes that image can be countered, and that undecided and moderate voters will take to his happy-warrior presentation and message. His solid, everyman backstory — military service, schoolteacher, football coach — is promising, as are the online jokes about him being corny and avuncular:
Tim Walz chuckles and says "must be free!" if a grocery item doesn't scan on the first few tries at checkout.
Tim Walz stands at his doorstep when it’s raining and says “we needed this.”
Tim Walz points the stud finder at himself and says, “Well, looks like it’s working,” before putting up a shelf.
Tim Walz says “I hated it” to every single waitress who comes to take his empty plate away.
I was energized and encouraged by the first two weeks of the Harris campaign. I am even more energized and encouraged today, like many who want nothing more than to see the end of Trump’s political career.
But I remain nervous to see how Harris and Walz will handle tough questions in news conferences and in-depth interviews. Until we’ve seen how comfortably they sit on the hot seat, it’s too early tell how smart the Democrats have been in reconfiguring their ticket so quickly and at at such a late date.
News: Both major-party vice presidential nominees favor Diet Mountain Dew.
View: I feel relief and vindication One of my weird habits is that I drink Diet Mountain Dew on road trips, like the one I am currently on, but otherwise never. For the caffeine more than the taste, but the taste now reminds me of the pleasures of the open road.
So I was dismayed to learn of JD Vance’s fondness for the drink, thinking that it would now remind me of him and make casual observers at the gas station minimarts think I was in solidarity with that loathsome phony. Now I am relieved to learn from The New York Times that it’s also Tim Walz’s favorite soft drink.
Last month, Senator JD Vance told a much-mocked joke about how he worried that he might be accused of being racist for drinking the vivid green soft drink, and he has appeared in several video clips quaffing the stuff.
It turns out that Gov. Tim Walz has also been doing the Diet Dew for years, noting in a 2018 newspaper profile that his beverage of choice is a bottomless supply of the soda.
News: On the campaign trail, Donald Trump pledges, “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.”
View: Trump is a dangerous populist ideologue, as this chart from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention underscores:
News: Donald Trump has a new, inexplicable nickname for Kamala Harris.
View: This man is a deranged, infantile bully who has totally lost touch with reality. I can’t quite tell if “Kamabla” is racist, but it does have that whiff, doesn’t it? I hope those of you planning to vote for Trump this November realize how utterly damaged he is.
The story behind the WordWheel puzzle
I’m a fan of the WordWheel puzzle weekdays in the Tribune. The idea is simple: “Insert the missing letter to complete an eight-letter word reading clockwise or counterclockwise.” For example, here is Tuesday’s puzzle:
I’ll post the solution below.
WordWheel is a quick diversion — I give myself one minute or so to see the answer, then I move on after checking with the solution printed upside down under the wheel. For those of us who don’t want to devote even 10 minutes to, say, a crossword puzzle, WordWheel is a diverting little brainteaser.
I was curious about the puzzle and so reached out through Knight Features to Doug Hendry of The Puzzle Company, which produces it for syndication: Here are his response to my questions, lightly edited for clarity and length:
I’m a 65-year-old former journalist, who, after almost 30 years in newsrooms, turned to making puzzles in 2008. I got out because I couldn’t live with the reduction in quality and wanted to work at something that gives me pleasur
I’m from Scotland, came to New Zealand in 1988 as part of a one-year backpacking trip around the world, and never left.
My wife, Ange, and I run The Puzzle Company. She’s a New Zealander, also a former journalist.
We make about 40 different puzzles with the help of two part-timers (one is our son – all four of our kids worked for us as their holiday job while at high school and university. Pays a lot better than working in a supermarket).
WordWheel runs in about 25 papers worldwide.
WordWheel was long established when we bought the business in 2008. The previous owners had started making them in 1993. So we’ve been doing them for 16 years. There’s no fixed weekly production, we just make them as needed.
We keep a record of every word we’ve used, and we’re many thousands into the series.
To make a new puzzle we look at a list of eight-letter words. Any that are too obscure or possibly offensive — molester and abortion, for example — have been removed.
The best ones are words that have a hinge, where removing one of the two letters that form the hinge changes the sound of the word. Good examples are amethyst and berthing.
Other good choices are words that are known but not everyday (e.g. decorous), and words where the first and last letters are not obvious start and finish points (which also applies to decorous).
I regularly change words that I don’t think would work in North America, or where our British/New Zealand spelling is markedly different. Examples: Pikelets (pancakes, in New Zealand /Australia), Minicabs, Publican, Gymkhana.
There’s no focus group, we just try a word and it either looks OK or not OK: It’s a quick decision.
We’ve had a few different people making them over the years. Sometimes it’s only after a person has made quite a few that I realize they don’t see the puzzle the way I’ve described above, and have used words that I feel are instantly identifiable. However, it’s meant to be an “at a glance” type of puzzle, one that most people can solve pretty quickly, so I suppose I need to recognize that.
Very few people solve a puzzle in a few seconds and think, “That was too easy.” They’re much more likely to give themselves credit, subconsciously, for being pretty smart. And that’s a good thing. We all need positive moments in our daily life.
I know a lot of people like the WordWheel. It’s in almost every daily paper in Australia and New Zealand.
We don’t get a lot of feedback but I learned when I was working for newspapers that silence is often the highest compliment you can get. As one former editor said about readers: “If they’re not complaining, they’re happy.”
Our syndicate already has enough WordWheel puzzles to last the Tribune and our other papers for more than five years.
I asked Hendry about WordWheels with two different possible answers, a question prompted by this May 2021 puzzle:
He said such puzzles are rare and inadvertent, and he offered up another example of what he refers to as a “double-up.”
If you have any other questions about the WordWheel for Hendry, I’ll be happy to pass them along and post the answers.
WordWheel solution: Triangle
Double-up solutions: Stampede and pedestal; tactless and startles
Land of Linkin’
Steve Chapman: “A Party Led by the Poster Child of Affirmative Action for the Privileged Shouldn’t Slam Kamala Harris as a DEI Candidate.”
“Romanians appeal gymnast’s score after inquiry drama in floor exercise final at Olympics,” and it sounds to me as though they have a good point.
The 2016 short film “The Day Beyoncé Turned Black” on “Saturday Night Live” is newly relevant given Donald Trump’s recent remarks about Kamala Harris.
“Trump praised Minnesota Gov. Walz in 2020 for response to unrest over Floyd’s murder, audio shows.” and he donated twice to Kamala Harris when she was running for reelection as the attorney general of California. But that was then.
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 Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet credits one word for Kamala Harris’ choice of Tim Walz as her running mate.
■ Filmmaker and author Michael Moore explores why Harris might have passed on Pennsylvania’s governor.
■ See the Harris and Walz debut speeches as a ticket in full here.
■ Walz,whose name is getting widely mispronounced, slipped a couch joke into his speech, which merited a ding from PolitiFact.
■ The Asssociated Press dashes the hope of the internet: “Steve Martin turns down Tim Walz impersonation role on ‘SNL,’ dashing internet’s casting hopes.”
■ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke: Harris has reduced Trump “to a quivering pile of hate and insults.”
■ The Daily Beast: “Trump’s attack on ‘Kamabla’ Harris is literally gibberish.”
■ Fox News is in high dudgeon.
■ Press critic and former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan condemns a “terrible” Times headline about Trump’s backout from a debate with Harris.
■ Economist Umair Haque: “It was one thing when it was sort of cute, how … old-school newspaper coverage was, and we’d make fun of it in harmless ways on Twitter. … But this … is an institutional failure that is placing all of us at risk.”
■ “The Donald dumpster fire”: That’s CNN’s Oliver Darcy on Trump’s appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists’ Chicago convention.
■ Axios says Trump’s session was delayed more than an hour because he objected to being fact-checked live.
■ AP race and ethnicity news editor Aaron Morrison: Trump “doesn’t understand code-switching.”
■ Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow checks in with “the very normal super-hero duo—MAGA-Man and his youthful sidekick, Fertility Lad.”
■ Jack Ohman takes you behind the scenes to explain how he devised this cartoon for the San Francisco Chronicle—“in 38 E-Z steps.”
■ At the heart of a corruption investigation in a Chicago suburb: A bathtub bought with a government credit card and installed with municipal labor.
■ Injured and infected “Saturday Night Live” star Colin Jost’s run as an Olympics surfing correspondent ended prematurely.
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
I hate this about our TV
No matter what we were last watching — streaming or satellite programming — when we turn our LG smart TV on, we are confronted with this annoying “home screen” that we must navigate out of to get where we want to go.
Yes, this is a “first-world problem,” as I was reminded when I posted this gripe to Facebook. But it’s a common one, to judge from the other responses and articles and comment threads online. Your “smart” TV wants to sell you stuff, just like your social media feeds.
Mary Schmich: A look back at Ella Jenkins at 90
My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a recent offering:
I’ve posted here an 11-second video I made of Ella Jenkins while interviewing her for the abridged column below. She was 90 then. This week she turns 100. Truly a Chicago legend.
Ella Jenkins was sitting under the trees in the afternoon sun, remembering.
“Cab Calloway,” she said.
He was one of the people who got her hooked on call-and-response singing. This would have been in the 1930s, on Chicago’s South Side, at the Regal Theater, where for a little extra money you could see a stage show after the movie, often featuring Calloway, the great jazzman.
“He’d say, ‘I’m going to sing something out to you, and you sing it back to me,'” Jenkins said.
She cleared her throat and began to sing.
“Hidee Hidee Hidee Hi …”
In the little North Side park on this August afternoon, kids were doing their noisy kid thing, chasing each other across the pavement, squealing on the swings, zipping around in plastic cars, oblivious to the 90-year-old woman with the silver hair, wearing the green caftan, who occasionally broke into song.
Since 1957, with the release of her first album, “Call-And-Response: Rhythmic Group Singing,” Jenkins has lifted interactive children’s music — with its finger-snapping, hand-clapping, imitation, repetition and improvisation — into a teachable art.
She has won a Grammy and performed all over the world. One of her many albums is the best-selling title in the history of the Smithsonian Folkways record label.
Sitting on the park bench, her dachshund at her feet, Jenkins remembered how her uncle installed a rental jukebox in her childhood living room and had friends pay to play songs until he had enough money to buy it.
She recalled the Boy Scout songs her brother brought home, so different from her mother’s Christian Science hymns. And the call-and-response chants of the DuSable High School cheerleaders.
Dancing too. The jitterbug. The rumba.
From a few feet away, Bernadelle Richter said, “She’s getting tired.”
Richter has been Jenkins’ friend and business manager for more than 50 years. They’ve spent most of it in this North Side neighborhood that they’d rather not name.
“I always felt black people lived on the South Side. and white people lived on the North Side,” Jenkins said. “But I went to an art fair one year and thought, ‘I would like living here.'”
She looked at Richter. “1964?”
“1965.”
Once racially mixed, the neighborhood is now almost entirely white and affluent, but Jenkins retains her place in it. The bench where she was sitting is part of the park’s Ella Jenkins Storytelling Corner. Many people recognize her.
“Are you Miss Jenkins?”
A man carrying a bike helmet approached, the way an awestruck pupil might. She smiled.
“I want you to know I think about you a lot on Sundays,” he said, “because we sing ‘This Train’ at church.”
She watched him walk off to play with his kids.
“Isn’t it wonderful to see those children over there and hear their sounds?” she said. “I never had any myself, but children have been a part of my life.”
She paused to admire the rhythm of a boy pumping past on a scooter.
“Children,” she said, “don’t think too much about race, weight, years. If you’re kind to them and you know some songs and respect them as people, that’s all they care about.”
At last, it was time to go. She struggled to get off the bench. Her knees are bad. She’d sat too long. Richter offered her an arm.
Jenkins paused to catch her balance, then reached for her back pocket.
“What’s this?”
She pulled out a dreidel.
She laughed, then with a cane in one hand and her old friend holding the other, she walked toward home, where she loves waking up in the morning to the sound of kids in the playground.
Minced Words
This week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast was recorded under the dark cloud of my absence for the third straight week. Host John Williams was joined by Cate Plys, Brandon Pope and Marj Halperin to talk about developments in the race for president and much more. 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
Dear Ma and Pa MAGA: You say Donald Trump fought for you, and that he's fighting for you right now. So I want to know what you mean by that. He didn't fight to lower your taxes. He didn't fight to get your roads fixed or your bridges built. He didn't fight to get you healthcare coverage, didn't fight to lower the cost of childcare, elder care, or education. He didn't fight to lower the price of your prescriptions, to decrease the deficit or to end the opioid crisis. He didn't fight to revive the coal industry. He didn't fight to make COVID disappear. He didn't fight to make Mexico pay for the wall. He didn't fight to put America first, and he sure as hell didn't fight to drain the swamp. He didn't get any of that done with four years in office. So, how hard could he have possibly fought for you? But Joe Biden did fight for a lot of those things, and he got a lot of them done. So when you say that Trump fought for you, you mean he validated your hate. Because unless you count the time he raised his fist at a rally when unfortunately faced with a weapon the majority of us would very much like to ban. He didn't do a goddamn thing for you other than that. But at the end of the day, he hates who you hate. And, sadly, that's all you think you need. — @JoJoFromJerz
This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want. — Hannah Arendt (attributed)
I actually find the RFK Jr. dead-bear-cub story extremely humanizing because I’ve made a lot of snap decisions that defy all logic which have stymied several city employees across various departments in our country’s largest urban centers. — Allen Strickland Williams
I was a Republican for 37 years. I absolutely disagree with Harris and Walz on some issues. But they will stand up to Vladimir Putin. They will not wreck the economy with ridiculous tariffs. And they aren't criminal insurrectionists. That's why I am a Republican for Harris. — Chris Vance, former Washington state Republican Party chairman
I don't remember Republicans calling out the horrendous “jokes” made about Paul Pelosi after his skull was smashed by a hammer, so save us the pearl-clutching about Tim Walz saying Vance should get off the couch and debate him. —@mmpadellan
We will be creating so much electricity that you'll be saying, please, please, president, we don't want any more electricity. We can't stand it. You'll be begging me. No more electricity, sir. We have enough. We have enough. — Donald Trump
Quips — Summer reruns
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite quips 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 are a list of weekly winners from 2016, in the spirit of summer reruns:
Toyota Prius: Ranked #1 in customer self-satisfaction. — @yonewt
I wear a stethoscope so that in a medical emergency I can teach people a valuable lesson about assumptions. — @thepunningman
"Do not iron." Like that was ever going to happen. — @julie2288
Establish dominance with drive-thru clerks by saying, "That completes my order" before they ask. — @Darlainky
Most household injuries are caused by saying “whatever” during an argument. — @Underchilde
[In the hotel lobby] “Sir would you like our turn down service?” "Sure" “Very good sir.” Girl behind the desk: “I'd rather die than go out with you.” — @QwertyJones3
Sex in an elevator is wrong on so many levels.— unknown
You were the hot single in your area the whole time. — @1followernodad
Interviewer: So you're super fast at math? Me: Yup. Interviewer: Ok, what's 346 x 48? Me : 804. Interviewer: That's not correct. Me: Fast though. — @PlopWaffle
I asked my wife what women really want and she said “attentive lovers.” Or maybe it was "a tent of lovers." I wasn't really listening. — @KenJennings
Vote here and check the current results in the poll.
For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.
Why the new name for this feature? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.”
Good Sports
The No-No Sox
As long as the race remains close, I will offer you 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, and the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, the worst team in baseball’s modern era (20th century on).
After 117 games
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 a better winning percentage than the 1916 A’s is now 11 with 45 games to go (11-34 is a .244 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 my 34-year-old son Alex when I asked in the family chat for a song to introduce my readers to Chappell Roan, who drew a huge crowd at Lollapalooza and inspired Neil Steinberg to write a column in the Sun-Times headlined, “Why haven't you started listening to Chappell Roan yet?” with the subhead, “Old people tend to ignore new music. That’s a mistake.”
Snap and clap and touch your toes Raise your hands, now body roll Dance it out, you're hot to go
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If you are going to cite outsider presidential candidates benefiting from a long campaign cycle, then you should also include Donald Trump. The Republican Party establishment would have shut him out if the process were quick.
Also, a leading contender at one point for the 2016 Republican nomination is Jeb, not Jed.
In the 80s, my kids were zipping around Ella Jenkins in the North Side park. I am delighted to see her celebrate her 100th birthday.