Eric Zorn

4-24-2025 (issue No. 190)

Eric Zorn

2025-04-24 Eric Zorn
Thu, 24 Apr 2025 10:04:59 GMT
Let the wild rumpus start!Durbin's decision not to run will touch off a heated battle among Democrats to be his successor
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Let the wild rumpus start!
Durbin's decision not to run will touch off a heated battle among Democrats to be his successor
Apr 24

READ IN APP

4-24-2025 (issue No. 190)
This week:
The battle to succeed Sen. Dick Durbin is officially on
Last week’s winning quip
News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked on JB Pritzker’s political future, on the age of 80 in the news and on the RTA’s $750,000 ad campaign about its financial woes
That’s so Brandon! — Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s maladroit mayor, including his decision to insult one of his Democratic predecessors and his interest in restarting gunshot detection technology.
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go
Mary Schmich — Channeling Donald Trump’s reaction to the death of Pope Francis
Kids these days! — A 13-year-old fails a cultural awareness test, but understandably so
What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week — panel recommendations and much more
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
Good Sports — The core of college football is rotting
Tune of the Week — “The Retirement Song” by Tom McNamee, nominated by Rick Weiland
The battle to succeed Sen. Dick Durbin is officially on
Will Gov. JB Pritzker add to the campaign madness by also declining to run for another term? 
It was no real surprise Wednesday when veteran Illinois Democratic U.S. Sen Dick Durbin announced that he will not seek reelection next year to a sixth term — he’s 80, and his campaign fundraising had lagged portentously. 
In alphabetical order, here are the most often mentioned Democrats who might run to succeed him: 
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, 65 
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, 49 
U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, 68 
U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, 51
Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, 59
U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, 38
Krishnamoorhti has a daunting $19.4 million campaign war chest, while Underwood’s backers are touting polling showing her the favorite, but we’re still 46 weeks from the March 17, 2026, primary. A lot can and will happen between now and then, including the entry of hopefuls not now on the radar screen. (A year out from their victories, the last two mayors of Chicago — Lori Lightfoot and Brandon Johnson — were virtual unknowns.)
In early 2024, Chicago Magazine’s Edward Robert McClelland offered a list of potential Durbin successors that did not include Emanuel but did include: 
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, 60 
U.S. Rep Nikki Budzinski, 48
Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, 52 
Illinois treasurer Michael Frerichs, 51
Only a fool would make a prediction at this point. So I’ll offer the guess that Giannoulias will win both the primary and the general election for senator. He’s already run statewide for three offices — winning the 2006 race for state treasurer and the 2022 race for secretary of state and losing the 2010 U.S. Senate race by 1.6 percentage points to Republican Mark Kirk — and has been improving driver services in his current position.
I’m not including on my list former Gov. Pat Quinn, 76, who still responds like a fire horse at the bell to vacancies in major offices. Nor am I including the inevitable perennial candidate Willie Wilson, 76, in part because he’s now a Trump-supporting former Democrat and member of the Willie Wilson Party. 
I can imagine Wilson throwing in for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination next year along with:
U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, 56
Former Republican gubernatorial hopeful Jeanne Ives, 60
Illinois Republican Party Chair and 2022 losing U.S. Senate candidate Kathy Salvi, 66
Increasingly conservative former mayor and gubernatorial hopeful Paul Vallas, 71
Some have floated the idea that former Republican U.S. Rep Adam Kinzinger with his brave, anti-Trump bona fides, could beat a Democratic candidate in a U.S. Senate race, even though Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried Illinois by 10 percentage points last November.  Though Kinzinger now lives north of Houston, Texas, he would simply have to be an “inhabitant” of Illinois on Election Day to qualify to run.
Even Democrats and independents who don’t agree with Kinzinger on many issues respect him as a person of principle. But since the Republican Party no longer seems to have any principles, he would have no chance of prevailing in the party’s primary.
Any or all of these pols might well pivot and run for governor if JB Pritzker also chooses not to run for reelection next year in order to focus full time on a run for president in 2028.
A Wall Street Journal article referenced below on Pritzker’s White House prospects quotes Bill Daley, former commerce secretary, presidential chief of staff and failed Chicago mayoral hopeful still best known in these parts as former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s brother: 
Daley said he would recommend against another gubernatorial bid because a crisis or scandal can pop up at an inconvenient time. Pritzker, he said, has the financial wherewithal to do something most candidates couldn’t: Announce a presidential bid in 2026 and lock down the best available campaign staff talent.
Pritzker has been coy about his intentions and probably realizes voters would not take kindly to a candidate for governor who would likely spend the first half of his next term campaigning around the country. My (again) foolish forecast is that Pritzker will try to hang on to the governorship and continue his Hamlet act about a presidential run until after his presumptive reelection.
If not, though, we will be in for a truly wild 2026, when the 2027 Chicago mayor’s race will kick into high gear and see at least a few of the above names in the mix.
Meanwhile, even I am not enough of a fool to make a prediction about the race to succeed U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, 80, if, as Politico first reported, she announces May 5 that she will retire at the end of this her 14th term. 
Schakowsky posted this to social media in response to the Politico report:
Last week’s winning quip
Sometimes, you meet someone and you know from the first moment that you want to spend your whole life without them. — unknown
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: The Wall Street Journal joins the chorus of those teasing a presidential run for Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
View: I’m skeptical. Not about Pritzker’s interest, which is palpable, but about his prospects for winning the nomination and then the White House. 
Under the headline “America’s Second-Richest Elected Official Is Acting Like He Wants to Be President,” Wall Street Journal reporter John McCormick writes that our “political punch-throwing heavyset billionaire” is looking more and more like a 2028 presidential hopeful, but then ticks off some political liabilities:
Private sector jobs have been stagnant (in Illinois) since (Pritzker) took office, and a massive unfunded pension liability hangs over the state like a black cloud. Taxes are among the highest in the nation, and the state’s population has shrunk since 2020. Violent crime and struggling schools plague Chicago, a favorite target for Trump and conservatives.
Some of his accomplishments have pleased progressives:
He has supported Illinois legislation to protect abortion access, mandated paid time off for workers, raised the minimum wage to $15 for nontipped workers 18 and older, tightened gun restrictions and invested in infrastructure. He has aggressively recruited businesses, including in quantum computing, and worked to restore some order to state budgeting, helping prompt Moody’s to raise the Illinois credit rating three times during his tenure. 
But isn’t the country looking for a more moderate Democrat? WGN-AM 720 host John Williams put that question to Substack superstar Heather Cox Richardson this week. Her answer:
What Americans want right now is a leader who will speak from principle. They don't have to agree with it all, but they want somebody who's going to stand up for America and stand up for the people. And those who are trying to tack to the center and be sort of wishy-washy, they're the ones that people are mad at. I actually think the people who are going to be going forward are people like (Abraham) Lincoln who are willing to say, “Listen, you may not like this … but this is what America stands for.” And they respected that.
News: The death of Pope Francis provides a reminder that cardinals over 80 can’t vote for the new pope. And in the same week comes the announcement that Sen. Dick Durbin, 80, won’t run for reelection and reports that U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, also 80, also won’t run for reelection.
View: Not be ageist, but 80 seems like a reasonable age to step aside for the next generation. In 1970, Pope Paul VI set the age limit for the papal electorate. The New York Times reported then: 
Pope Paul also ordered today that on reaching their 80th birthday cardinals would cease to be members of administrative departments and other permanent institutions of the Vatican.
Cardinals in charge of departments of the Roman Curia —the Vatican's administrative machinery—and of other permanent central church institutions today were “requested to submit their resignation voluntarily” when they reach 75 years of age. … Today's reform was enacted by Pope Paul through a Motu Proprio—a decree “by his own decision”—that will be known by its first two words in the Latin text, “Ingravescentem Aetatem” (“The Increasing Burden of Age”).
Pope Paul died at age 80.
Pope John Paul II wrote in 1996:
The reason for this provision is the desire not to add to the weight of such venerable age the further burden of responsibility for choosing the one who will have to lead Christ's flock in ways adapted to the needs of the times.
Reading between the lines of what sounds like a fairly patronizing explanation, I see a valid concern that cardinals of a certain age not only are less likely to be “adapted to the needs of the times” but that they are also unlikely to be around long enough to experience the consequences of the decisions of the next pope. 
As one who sees 80 on the horizon — 13 years off, but still! — I feel fine about endorsing this sentiment. A mandatory retirement age for lawmakers and others with significant influence over public or institutional policy does not strike me as unfair or unreasonable. 
POLL
Should there be a mandatory retirement age for elected officials, judges and others with significant responsibility?
No
Yes, 80 seems about right
Yes, but higher than 80
Yes, but even lower than 80
News: The Regional Transportation Authority is spending an estimated $750,000 on an ad campaign “to encourage bus and train riders to urge legislators to come up with more funding.” (gift link)
View: I cannot say it better than state Rep. Kam Buckner did on social media:
Nothing says “we’re broke” like spending nearly $1M on ads to tell everyone you’re broke. That’s what RTA just did—radio, TV, billboards, bus shelters—all to beg Springfield for more money.
Meanwhile, riders just want the bus to show up.
I’ve fought like hell for transit funding. I believe in it. We have to do more. But I also believe in common sense. And this ain’t it. The best PR campaign is a system that runs on time. The best message is a working train. Integrity in the dollar sense means every penny possible goes to the riders, This campaign doesn’t build trust. It burns it.
Want to energize Springfield? Don’t pressure us. Impress us. Show us a plan. Show us discipline. Show us that the priority is riders—not optics. We don’t need a marketing campaign. We need a turnaround. And trust me, nothing inspires lawmakers or the public like a bus that actually comes when it says it will.
Do Better!
From Crain’s Chicago Business:
Metra, the Chicago Transit Authority, and Pace — which provide rail and bus service in the city and suburbs — face a funding shortfall or “transit cliff” of $771 million a year when federal pandemic-relief funding dries up next year. The RTA — which coordinates funding for Metra, the CTA and Pace — wants $1.5 billion to hire more staff to improve service with increased frequency.
I think more and more highly of Buckner the more I read about him. “Don’t pressure us. Impress us.” is a fabulous motto.
That’s So Brandon!
Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s mayor
Mayor Brandon Johnson is picking a fight with former Mayor Rahm Emanuel as he prepares to head to Springfield to demand more money from the General Assembly.
Sun-Times City Hall reporter Fran Spielman speculated that Johnson was attempting “to undermine a potential political comeback” by one of of his predecessors by accusing him of “having devised and `executed’ the anti-Black, neoliberal ‘playbook’ that Johnson says is now being followed by President Donald Trump.”
Johnson’s barbs directed at Emanuel came when he was asked during his weekly City Hall news conference whether the school funding increase he plans to seek next week during a lobbying trip to Springfield would be enough to avert a stalled, $300 million, high-interest loan at the Chicago Public Schools.
Instead of answering the question directly, Johnson unleashed a tirade against Emanuel, whom he has attacked before, though never so aggressively.
The mayor said he was watching an interview with Emanuel recently and was “incredibly bothered by his temerity.” Johnson said there has been a “long, sustained movement” in Chicago to push back against the “neoliberal agenda” that Emanuel championed to “set up austere budgets” targeting African-Americans and the “public accommodations” that support them.
Johnson said, “We didn’t get here because we just happen to have a tyrant in the White House. We got here because someone gave him the script. … The shutting of schools. The firing of Black women,” and he accused Emanuel of having “immense disdain for public education and particularly Black, Brown and poor children.”
Heavily implying that former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff is a racist will certainly satisfy Emanuel’s critics, but it’s unlikely to win Johnson more friends in Springfield when he and his team go down next week to get the city’s “just due,” which he hopes will include billions to help the Bears construct a new stadium in the city.
The Tribune reported:
The mayor last visited the General Assembly in May 2024 and saw lackluster results. … The governor suggested to reporters Tuesday the mayor should have secured major financial commitments from the state months ago. 
“I will say it’s April and we put our budget together in the latter half of the prior year and then present it in February. So, it’ll be hard for us to talk about things in the current budget,” Pritzker said during an unrelated event downstate. 
Chicago is by far the most important city in the state, and its fiscal health is directly linked to the health and future of Illinois. Here’s hoping Johnson can make that point without throwing fellow Democrats under the bus.
So now he’s wondering if and how to replace ShotSpotter?
Sun-Times: Mayor Johnson now has to consider whether to bring ShotSpotter back to Chicago.
Under the standing headline “Brandon’s Bodies,” the crime blog CWB Chicago has now tallied 42 “incidents of people being found shot in areas previously served by ShotSpotter where the technology, had it not been dismantled, could have played a critical, helpful role.” 
Johnson terminated the city’s relationship with the company that operates gunshot detection technology last September, and it’s far from clear that the 20 incidents out of 42 that resulted in fatalities would have had a different outcome had the contract remained in place, but, fatalities or not, quicker response is always better when it comes to mitigating gun injuries and apprehending shooters. 
The Sun-Times outlines some of the proposals from the eight firms that have submitted proposals to the city, and the obvious question is why the Johnson administration didn’t solicit these proposals and consider the options before flipping the off switch against the wishes of many of the alders in whose wards it operated. 
Land of Linkin’
“Doors Closing” is the exquisite headline on Tal Rosenberg’s article in Chicago Magazine on the multifaceted challenges facing the CTA. 
“Larry David: My Dinner With Adolf” (gift link) is a sharp satirical takedown of HBO talk show host Bill Maher’s too-glowing account of his recent White House visit with President Donald Trump. 
Writing in Slate, microbiologist Meghan McGillin promotes yogurt masks as a cure for acne. 
“What part of ‘and justice for all’ does the Trump administration not understand?” contains my reminder to my fellow lefties to be consistent when carrying on about the necessity for due process of law.
WCIU-TV host and “Mincing Rascals” podcast panelist Brandon Pope has launched “Screening Room,” a new Substack about film and TV. Check out “Was Season 3 of ‘White Lotus’ good? It’s a question a lot of people are asking” for a sample post. 
The Tribune’s Rick Kogan hails “The Kiss of Night,” the debut novel of local writer Mark Wukas, who turns 70 on Sunday.
Bisnow: “The Last Picture Show? Movie Theaters Could Be Strategizing Themselves Out Of Business.” Ryan Wangman writes, “Theaters are down over 30% in foot traffic. … Operators are also battling intense headwinds driven by the increased accessibility of streaming and a generally lukewarm reception to most new movie offerings that has led to plummeting foot traffic.”
The Sun-Times has eliminated opinion pages on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Some wags have suggested that the paper folded under pressure from the Picayune Plus and the Picayune Sentinel, which comes out on those days. But I would never make such a claim.
CBS reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a TV makeup studio be installed at the Pentagon, but Hegseth called in a “totally fake story.”  
CNN: “A 5-minute charge to go 320 miles. Chinese EV battery giant CATL says its tech is even better than Tesla-killer BYD’s.” A stop along the road for gas, sustenance and digestive relief takes at least five minutes now, so if the promises of Contemporary Amperex Technology are true, this may be the game-changer for EVs that many have been waiting for.
D’oh! Due to an editing oversight last week, I miscategorized Elizabeth Weingarten’s just-published book “How to Fall in Love with Questions — A New Way to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty.” The book is nonfiction. HarperCollins Publishers writes, “In her quest, Weingarten shares her own journey and the stories of many others, whose lives have transformed through a different, and better, relationship with uncertainty.” I am, sadly, certain of how this mistake happened. The responsible party is regretful and has slapped his own forehead. 
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:
■ One of Pope Francis’ last visitors was Vice President Vance—prompting a poem from Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten.
■ Despite reports that the White House is looking to replace embarrassingly un-secure Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CNN’s Stephen Collinson says Hegseth looks safe for now, because his removal would force Trump to admit he’d made a mistake—but that hasn’t stopped the internet from launching memes comparing Hegseth to a head of lettuce.
■ Columnist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich: “Start preparing now for … a series of general strikes.”
■ Traveling? Wired counsels how to protect yourself from phone searches at the U.S. border.
■ The Washington Post: How to use your ancestry to get dual citizenship abroad.
■ Who’s who getting sued: Setting the stage for what CNN calls “a titanic clash,” Harvard University’s filing suit against some of the Trump administration’s top officials for withholding billions of dollars and threatening to strip the university’s tax-exempt status—ostensibly because of “antisemitism.” Read the suit—which MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell calls “a thing of beauty”—here.
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst wants you to know “what Seth Rogen said right to Bezos’s and Zuck’s little fascist Trump-sucking faces” at an “Oscars of Science” ceremony—remarks that “cowards … edited out.”
■ A new American Lung Association report ranks Chicago’s air among the nation’s worst. You can check your air quality by ZIP code here.
■ Happy birthday, YouTube: Wednesday marked 20 years of what’s become arguably the world’s most influential video medium—beginning with this one, posted by one of two co-founders who hail from the University of Illinois.
■ Chicago-born John Mulaney’s Netflix talk show delivered what LateNighter’s Dennis Perkins dubs a “pitch-perfect tribute” to David Letterman.
■ As journalism faces unprecedented assault from the Trump administration, Chicago Public Square has joined the Press Freedom United campaign—a national community of journalists and concerned citizens sending an open letter to Congress and the White House demanding immediate action to uphold the First Amendment. We invite you to sign by Wednesday at noon for delivery May 1.
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Mary Schmich: A papal memorial TrumPoem
My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is a recent offering, another of her TrumPoems written in the voice of MAGA’s dear leader:
I heard the news the Pope has died
I posted “R.I.P.”
And I am deeply sad because …
The limelight’s not on me!

He’s Page 1 in the New York Times!
He’s Page 1 in the Post!
Why, even Fox goes boo hoo hoo
And that’s what galls me most.

The world’s gone mad with compliments
They call him shrewd but sweet
Please spare me all the phony praise
He’s barely worth a tweet.

A voice for peace? A light of faith?
Build bridges, don’t build walls?
So much of what Pope Francis preached
Is crazy! It appalls!

It’s true he was a humble man-
In other words—like me!
But on some things, it must be said, 
I humbly disagree.

He stood up for the refugees
The immigrants, the poor
He talked of love and dignity—
Those words are such a bore.

He seemed to think equality 
Should be our greatest goal
Dear Lord, he had some bad ideas
I mean, God rest his soul.

And, folks, can I be honest here?
He wasn’t a good sport
He claimed that I am wrong to say
“Deport, deport, deport!”

Deporting is my fav’rite thing!
It makes me feel so strong!
I do not like the whiny wimps
Who pout that it is wrong.

AND YET…

I have to hand it to that Pope
He sure could rouse a crowd
He got the best publicity—
His fans are cheering loud.

They’re gathered in their churches and
At old St. Peter’s Square
They’re saying how he urged them to
Be gen’rous and be fair.

They say he taught compassion
Even for the foe and sinner—
But now he’s gone and I’m still here
That means that I’m the winner!

And when I die—perhaps I won’t!
My doc commends my vigor—
But if I do, I guarantee
My funeral will be bigger.
Kids these days! What do they know?
Twitter user @Mericamemed put a series of eight vintage cultural awareness questions to her 13-year-old daughter, and the girl almost got one right. Here are the questions and excerpts from her answers.:
What are the Yellow Pages? (“Paper?”)
What is a Rolodex? (“A piece of tape? A car?”)
What does it mean if I say I’m going to burn a CD? (“That you love it to death?”)
What's a collect call? (“Where a lot of people are on one line?”)
What is Sega? (“Slang?”)
What is dial-up? (“That sounds like a disease.”)
What does “be kind, rewind” mean? (“Be kind and let it be?”)
What was Blockbuster? ( “A store that sells CDs; kind of like a library, but with CDs.”)
Skeptics may wonder if this conversation was staged for video. but my guess is you’d understandably get similar answers from many 13-year-olds. The last Blockbuster Video stores — the ones that urged customers to be kind and rewind videocassettes after they were done watching them (until they switched over to DVD rentals in 2001) closed in 2014 when today’s 13-year-olds were 2. I give the girl partial credit for knowing that Blockbuster trafficked in home entertainment products.
Super-slow dial-up modems for home computers were obsolete well before these teens were born, meaning they may never have heard this sound. And I can’t remember the last time I saw the Yellow Pages — or any paper phone directories — in anyone’s kitchen. 
Pocket Lint offers a list of other obsolete gadgets likely to stump today’s minors.
I wonder what questions from the 1950s would have stumped me as a young teen in the 1970s. “What are vacuum tubes?” maybe. And I wonder what stumpers today’s kids could ask those of us of a certain vintage? How about “What does ‘skibidi toilet’ mean?” 
Minced Words
Brandon Pope, Austin Berg, Marj Halperin and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We discussed the 2026 political landscape now that Dick Durbin, Jan Schakowsky and perhaps JB Pritzker might not seek reelection. And, of course the latest with tariffs and deportation.
Panel recommendations:
Austin: A green light for “Soul Music of Illinois,” a coffee-table book billed as “a comprehensive overview of soul music from the great state of Illinois, this 732-page, two volume set chronicles over 3200 artists, 1200 record companies, and 10,000 individual releases between the years of 1960 and 1990.”
Eric: A green light for “Presumed Guilty,” the third and presumably final novel in author/lawyer Scott Turow’s series about the character Rusty Sabich, a series that began with the blockbuster 1987 thriller “Presumed Innocent” and picked up with “Innocent” in 2010. 
Marj: A green light for “The Horse,” a novel by Willy Vlautin “that captures the life of a journeyman musician unable to escape the tragedies of his past.”
Brandon: A green light for “The Studio,” an Apple TV+ series starring Seth Rogen.
John: A yellow light (caution) for “Call My Agent,” a Netflix series. “At a top Paris talent firm, agents scramble to keep their star clients happy — and their business afloat — after an unexpected crisis.”
Subscribe to the  Rascals  — “The podcast for people who care about Chicago” — 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
Any U.S. president, any person in public office, who suggests forcibly sending American citizens to prisons in a foreign country is not just flirting with authoritarianism. They are bulldozing over the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the moral core of what this country stands for. — Mitch Jackson
So the guy who had to pay a $25 million fine for running a fake university is suddenly an expert on what Harvard should teach. — unknown
A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, in not Christian — Pope Francis in 2016
As a share of all U.S. imports, China accounts for 99% of child safety seats with detachable hard shells, 96% of pet toys, 95% of cooking appliances, 93% of children’s coloring books, 88% of microwave ovens, and more than 70% of toys for children under 12. Altogether, these imports amount to many billions of dollars of annual spending. … The country accounts for 50% or more of global processing for lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese, which are necessary for manufacturing batteries and other electronics. If China tightens its export controls, the U.S. could quickly see surging prices for batteries and grid storage, which would raise energy prices and significantly drive up the cost of electric vehicles. America exports more than $100 billion worth of goods to China as well. This makes China somewhat dependent on America, but it also makes some U.S. industries dependent on China. As a share of global exports, China buys 89% of America’s grain sorghum and 52% of its soybeans. It buys more than 70% of our frozen-pig-organ exports and more than 20% of our frozen beef. It buys 51% of our optical instruments for inspecting and making computer chips and 32% of our semiconductor processors. … China is a choke point on the global manufacture of some of the world’s most important metals and machines—including the very metals and machines that the U.S. needs in order to rebuild its industrial base. — Derek Thompson in the Atlantic 
Beware: It's a common play for authoritarians to hone tools of oppression against unpopular populations before they roll them out against anyone they wish. — Elizabeth Shackelford.
Asking what would happen (if Trump’s Justice Department ordered the U.S. Marshals not to enforce a U.S. Supreme Court ruling) is like consulting the Monopoly rulebook for instructions about what to do if somebody flips over the board. — Quinta Jurecic in the Atlantic 
They make us pledge allegiance to a nation “with liberty and justice for all,” and then they get mad when we want liberty and justice for all? — unknown
It pisses me off: Hug the flag, wrap yourself in it, and then shit on it. — U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois
When you tell me that due process isn't important when the defendant is a piece of shit, you are already midway down the slippery slope. — Andrew Fleischman
It depresses the hell out of me that people I grew up with or am related to have turned into people that I wouldn't tell where Anne Frank was hiding. — unknown
Apparently the standard operating procedure inside (Hillary) Clinton’s secretary of state’s office was to send emails that couldn't otherwise be printed to the maid to print them out of a secure area — or from a secure area — and then hand them off. Any security professional — military, government or otherwise — would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct and criminally prosecuted for being so reckless with this kind of information. The fact that she wouldn't be held accountable for this I think blows the mind of anyone who's held our nation's secrets dear, who's had a top-secret clearance — like I have and others — who know that even one hiccup causes a problem — Current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in 2016 about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server 
Everything's running like a well-oiled machine. A meat grinder, but still. — Whis_pea
The most scandalous thing about Trump’s inauguration fund isn’t the donors. The dog that hasn’t barked here is that very little of this massive haul has been spent — hardly a surprise to anyone (like me) who spent the January inaugural weekend in D.C., when most outdoor events were canceled and Trump supporters shivered in icy drizzle and snow bursts, waiting hours for two low-wattage events at the Capital One Center. This was nowhere near a $239 million production. No, this instead is maybe the largest slush fund in American political history. No one knows where most of this cash is going, and Team Trump hopes you don’t care. — Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest: 
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
Mayonnaise is the only condiment that has a nickname. — @octopuscaveman
You're so vain, I’ll bet you think this tower of burning skulls spelling out your name is about you. — @wildethingy
That awkward moment when you're not sure if you actually have free time or if you're just forgetting something. — @andshewasgone1
But he was so nice on the prison phone calls. — @ash_isawitch
Me: What's in the bag? Friend: My kid's hockey helmet. Me: When I played, we didn't have helmets. We would get our bell rung but we would be fine. Friend: Helmets are now mandatory. Me: When I played, we didn't have helmets. We would get our bell rung but we would be fine. So what's in the bag? — @WillieHandler
When I'm in charge. people who wear slippers for shoes will be sent off to work camps where they'll use radioactive paint to make stop signs. — @Bob_Janke
Dudes named James have so much pressure at an early age. Will they stick with the nerdy name “James,” or go by the business-casual name “Jim”? Or the sporty, outgoing “Jimmy”? Or the feminine, gentle name “Jamie”? Or be super goofy and go by “Jimbo”? — @Gregggyboy
Scrambles are just omelets that gave up on their dreams. — @sixfootcandy
My doctor told me my prostate was good. I was deeply touched. — @ThePunnyWorld
(Failed movie pitch) So imagine, like, a ton of Dalmatians. Like, an absurd amount. I’m talking 30, 35 Dalmatians. — @NoahGarfinkel
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.”
I decided the following joke I saw online is too pointed and controversial to include with the silly quips, but I’m interested in readers’ take on it:
A Holocaust survivor died recently and went up to heaven. Upon meeting God he decided to tell a Holocaust joke. God said, “That's not funny.” To which the Jew replied, “Oh, I guess you had to be there.”
Subscribe and don't miss a single poll!
Good Sports
The core of college football ‘is rotting’ 
Matt Hayes, senior college football writer for USA Today, looks at the toxic combination of the collegiate transfer portal and huge name image and likeness inducements offered to players and concludes that “the core of the sport is rotting.” 
The NCAA has given players the ability to move freely from school to school, just like coaches. But unlike coaches, there’s no contract buyout — or any tether whatsoever to keep players with a team. Certainly not loyalty. …
It looks like NCAA is creating opportunity for players by allowing upward mobility within the sport. You say upward mobility, I say the best players are playing for the schools that throw the most money at them — leaving a distinct class warfare between the haves who cherry pick players and have-nots who develop players and watch them walk without compensation. … 
It looks like the NCAA will share billions with the players, who haven’t earned a penny in media rights revenue for decades upon decades. But they’re only really sharing about 20 percent of athletic-related university revenue. 
Meanwhile, ESPN reports:
The NCAA Division I Board of Directors on Monday proposed deleting 153 longstanding rules from its handbook, a move that will allow schools to share financial benefits directly with players … Players will still be allowed to hire agents for name, image and likeness compensation purposes.
Hmm, what’s the adjective I’m looking for that describes sports in which the team pays the players? Oh, yeah: Professional.
Portal madness
Baylor men’s basketball has lost every player on its 2024-25 roster to graduation, the NBA and the transfer portal.  A team fan site posted this photo recently:
@lockedonbaylor
Sox watch
After Wednesday’s loss to the Twins, the Sox are 5-19, for a winning percentage of .208.
They had a winning percentage of .253 last year, inspiring this shirt, available on Etsy
If their record is worse this year — or if the Colorado Rockies, currently playing .182 ball, set the record for futility  —  we’re going to need a new shirt.
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, “The Retirement Song,” is from Rick Weiland.
Your former cross-town colleague and my longtime guitar buddy Tom McNamee (who retired in 2001 as Sun-Times editorial page editor) has been writing, and, lately, recording, a bunch of songs. I think of them as a new genre of urban talking blues. His guitar work has gotten really good, his lyrics are poetic and his tunes are simple and evocative.
My old friend retired to set the clock back
Hopped up on a treadmill, tired of feeling fat
He took a class in Dickens to keep his mind sharp
Talked with his wife, tried to listen with his heart ....

My old friend retired to philosophize
Sat by the lake, the sky in his eyes 
He wrote a little poem, stuck it in a pocket
Lost it in the wash like an old bank deposit

Info
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. Browse and search back issues here.
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
Email the Picayune Sentinel
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.
If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.
Social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn 
Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social 
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5
Help?
If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.
Thanks for reading!
Give a gift subscription
Share
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

2025-05-01 Eric Zorn
Thu, 01 May 2025 10:08:15 GMT
JB Pritzker gave 'em hell in New HampshireBut no, he didn't urge anyone to commit a violent act
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
JB Pritzker gave 'em hell in New Hampshire
But no, he didn't urge anyone to commit a violent act 
May 1

READ IN APP

5-1-2025, Rabbit rabbit (issue No. 191) 
This week:
All about JB’s blockbuster speech in New Hampshire on Sunday
Last week’s winning quip
News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked
That’s so Brandon! — Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s maladroit mayor
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go
Mary Schmich — Quotes from a Nieman Storyboard interview with Schmich
When life gives you lemmas …
Nerding on wording: What does it mean to “go on tilt”?
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
Good Sports —
Tune of the Week —
Subscribe or upgrade your subscription
Pritzker unleashes the weapon of words against the Trump regime
Usage note, AP style is to refer to the “Trump administration,” but EZ style henceforth will be to refer to the “Trump regime.” As Vocabulary.com explains, “Regime takes its militaristic and government feel from the Latin word regimen ‘to rule.’ A political regime has a negative association to it that makes you think of totalitarian governments.”
The following passage, from Gov. JB Pritzker’s keynote address Sunday at a New Hampshire Democratic Party fundraising dinner in Manchester, has gotten a lot of attention and some pushback: 
Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption, but I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox and then punish them at the ballot box.
They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact — because we have no alternative but to do just that — that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors. … I'm telling you what I'm willing to do, and that's fight for our democracy, for our liberty, for the opportunity for all of our people to live lives that are meaningful and free.
The Illinois Republican Party rushed to the fainting couch in a news release Monday headlined, “Pritzker Calls For Violence Toward Republicans.”
JB Pritzker’s attempt to woo New Hampshire Democrats as he barrels towards the 2028 Democrat primary was full of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric. Pritzker’s obsession, to insult and to chastise President Trump, showed forcefully as he stoked the crowd in calling for political violence against Republicans.
The Tribune reported:
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, reposted a clip of Pritzker’s speech on social media and asked, “Are you trying to inspire a 3rd assassination attempt on my dad?” And deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller in Washington also criticized the remarks, saying they “could be construed as inciting violence.”
“The destruction of property sits directly adjacent to the — to attacks on humans, physical attacks,” said Miller, who also cited the past assassination attempts on Trump.
Easy there, Grand Old Paranoids. Fighting with “every microphone and megaphone that we have” is call for protests and rhetoric, not a call to take up bear spray, baseball bats and flagpoles, as those who answered the call from Dear Leader did on Jan. 6, 2021.
You'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. … And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
Donald Trump’s fondness for violence and violent rhetoric is well documented and includes:
Suggesting that outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley should be executed as a traitor for having back-channel conversations with the Chinese.
Saying to police, “If you had one really violent day … one rough hour — and I mean real rough — the word will get out, and (crime) will end immediately.” 
Declaring that “radical-left lunatics” should be “handled by the National Guard, or, if really necessary, by the military.”
Suggesting that never-Trump former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney be confronted “with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it ... when the guns are trained on her face.” 
Saying, “I’d like to punch him in the face,” about a heckler at a campaign rally.
Praising then-Republican U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte for physically assaulting a journalist by saying, “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my guy!”
See also “We analyzed 9 years of Trump political speeches, and his violent rhetoric has increased dramatically” in The Conversation.
And of course, Trump pardoned everyone convicted of violent attacks on police on Jan. 6. I seem to have missed the Illinois Republicans’ lamentations about that.
So they can spare us their feeble pleas for civility. 
Pritzker’s speech was a call to action, not to arms. He is urging Democrats to protest at the offices of Republican elected officials, not threaten them with stun guns, punch them in the face or poop on their desks.
“The peace that I’m talking about (in saying ‘Republicans cannot know a moment of peace’) is making sure that they know at all times that the American public opposes the policies of congressional Republicans and of the White House,” he said Monday when questioned by reporters.
Sure, the speech was obviously another move to position himself as the Democratic nominee for president in 2028 — he’s going to be on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” tonight on ABC — but it should also play well at home where he may run for reelection next year.
If you don’t have time to read the whole speech, here are some other highlights:
Fellow Democrats, for far too long, we've been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell you that America's house is not on fire, even as the flames were licking their faces. Today, as the blaze reaches the rafters, the pundits and politicians whose simpering timidity served as kindling for the arsonists, urge us now not to reach for a hose.
What I find ironic about the current conversation surrounding our party is that the voices flocking to podcasts and cable news shows to admonish fellow Democrats for not caring enough about the struggles of working families are the same ones who, when it comes to relief of the struggles of real people, have been timid, not bold. They didn't want to fight the health insurance companies and the drug manufacturers. They didn't want to demand an increase in the minimum wage or require paid family leave; they gave in to the powerful hedge fund managers and tech bros whose blind pursuit of profits is now destroying everything that matters to middle-class families, from home ownership to health care to veterans benefits.
Voters didn't turn out for Democrats last November, not because they don't want us to fight for their values, but because they think we don't want to fight for our values.
We have to abandon the culture of incrementalism that has led us to swallow the cruelty and the callousness with barely a cowardly croak. It's time to fight everywhere and all at once.
Today, it's an immigrant with a tattoo. Tomorrow, it's a citizen whose Facebook post annoys Donald Trump.
We Democrats believe that undocumented people who are convicted of violent crimes shouldn't be allowed to stay in this country. We want public safety just as much as Republicans do, and when we get back control of the Congress — and we will — and when we get the White House back — and we will — Democrats need to make it a priority to pass real, sensible immigration reform that we need to secure our border.
(Republican leaders are) so afraid of the felon and the fraud that they put into the White House that they would sooner watch him destroy our country than lift a hand to save it. Democrats may have to fix our messaging and our strategy, but our values are exactly where they ought to be, and we will never join so many Republicans in the special place in hell reserved for quislings and cowards.
It’s time to stop wondering if you can trust the nuclear codes to people who don’t know how to organize a group chat. It’s time to stop ignoring the hypocrisy and wearing a big gold cross while announcing the defunding of children’s cancer research. Time to stop thinking that we can reason or negotiate with a madman.
Time to stop apologizing when we were not wrong. Time to stop surrendering when we need to fight.
If it sounds like I'm becoming contemptuous of Donald Trump and the people that he has elevated, it's because I am. You should be too. They're an affront to every value this country was founded upon.
Last week’s winning quip
That awkward moment when you're not sure if you actually have free time or if you're just forgetting something. — @andshewasgone1
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: The Trump regime is assessing ‘ways to persuade women to have more children’
View: Proposals include a $5,000 cash baby bonus and funding for “programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles — in part so they can better understand when they are ovulating and able to conceive.” But how about working hard to mitigate the effects of global climate change, implementing a “Medicare for All” option, and subsidizing child care and extended parental leave policies? 
I have heard from some young women that they’re reluctant to bring children into a world that feels as though it’s spinning dangerously out of control. Offer hope for a brighter future in a safe, clean, peaceful world, and they and their partners would be likelier to reproduce.
Mona Charen: 
You don’t convince women in a free country to have more babies for the sake of the fatherland. If you want to encourage family formation and increase the birth rate, you can’t treat women as breeder mares. 
Lyz Lenz:
All this pearl-clutching about birth rates, hiding behind the guise of overly concerned economists, is not about the tax base or the economy. If it were, we’d be seeing an increase in hybrid work and efforts to expand parental leave. And we most certainly wouldn’t be rounding up families and deporting them. Cutting off access to abortion and birth control, forcing women out of public life and back into the home — all these measures are justified as a way to support American families and increase the birth rate. But there is no evidence those things will increase the birth rate. What this is about, what it has always been about is controlling how women live.
News: The Tribune Editorial Board twists its collective hankie and decries coarse language from Democrats
View: Give me a fucking break. No major figure in American politics has ever done more to inject vulgarity and impolite language into our discourse than Donald Trump. Here’s The New York Times reporting on an Oct. 28 Trump rally at Madison Square Garden:
Mr. Trump has always been more prone than any of his predecessors in the White House to publicly use what were once called dirty words. 
But in his third campaign for the presidency, his speeches have grown coarser and coarser. Altogether, according to a computer search, Mr. Trump has used words that would have once gotten a kid’s mouth washed out with soap at least 140 times in public this year. 
Counting tamer four-letter words like “damn” and “hell,” he has cursed in public at least 1,787 times in 2024. … The thousands on hand at Madison Square Garden cheered and laughed at the F-bombs, S-bombs and other bombs thrown out by the various speakers and warm-up acts for Mr. Trump. It clearly is part of the testosterone-driven appeal: Real men curse. Mr. Trump is a real man. What they want is a real man for president.
In total, a computer search of 17 of the speakers at Madison Square Garden found epithets used at least 43 times. One of the most prolific was Sid Rosenberg, a conservative radio host. “What a sick son of a bitch,” he said of Hillary Clinton. “The whole fucking party, a bunch of degenerates, lowlives, Jew haters and lowlives. Every one of them.”
Scott LoBaido, an artist, flipped the bird to the Democrats and called Mr. Trump “the greatest fucking president in the world.” … Mr. Trump himself was somewhat more reticent at Madison Square Garden, deploying an “ass,” a couple of “damns,” eight “hells” and a “shit.” But at other recent rallies, he has called Ms. Harris “a shit vice president” and used the same word at a Catholic charity dinner in front of New York’s cardinal.
At one appearance in February before the Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Trump spiced his speech with no fewer than 44 epithets. “I got indicted four times by this gang of thugs for nothing, or as I say respectfully to the people from foreign countries, for bullshit,” he said at one point.
So now comes the Tribune Editorial Board to wag its institutional finger at … the Democrats?
If Democrats think the path back to voters’ hearts runs through a minefield of f-bombs, they’re in for another rough election cycle. … At a time when politics demands clarity, civility and leadership, it’s a misstep to embrace vulgar language as a tool to signal authenticity or passion. Instead of elevating the conversation, it lowers the bar, reinforcing the corrosive idea that rage and vulgarity are substitutes for thoughtful persuasion.
The fact that in the second paragraph of the editorial, the board contends that “Democrats got walloped” last fall — a false summation of a very close election that the editorial board clings to, who knows why — by a cheerfully, brazenly profane opponent did not derail this prissy scolding. 
That’s So Brandon!
Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s mayor
One of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s asks as he journeys to Springfield hat in hand this week is for an extension of the $5 a month emergency 911 surcharge on phone bills. That adds up quickly in a household. And though we do need a modern, well-functioning 911 system, I feel the need to point out that this is a regressive tax.
In interviews, Johnson is continually invoking his desire to “invest in people.” And though this sounds good, what does it mean? People want clean, safe streets, good schools, robust businesses, and job and public recreational opportunities, all of which government ought to invest in. So which government investments are not investments in “people”?
Land of Linkin’
When asked about the possibility that he might run for U.S. Senate, Rod Blagojevich declared, “Never say never.” Well, I said never in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus. (Delivered weekly to premium subscribers!)
The January concert in memory of the great local songwriter and entertainer Michael Peter Smith is now available on YouTube. “The raucous afternoon of music and humor remains a highlight of my year to date,” wrote Mark Guarino, author of “Country & Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival” in a Facebook post. “If just one person across the world discovers these songs this way, it's a win!” Smith died in 2020 at age 78.
Columnist/author/raconteur Neil Steinberg and ace fiddler (and my son) Ben Zorn will be among the performers at “An Evening of Resistance,” a benefit for not-for-profit agencies harmed by federal budget cuts. The “evening of stories, poetry, history and music focused on Chicago, on change, and resilience” will be next Wednesday, May 7, at 7 p.m. at the Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia in Chicago. Details. 
“I’m not sure I want somebody somebody sent” is my reaction to the speedy endorsement of Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton’s bid for the U.S. Senate by Gov. JB Pritzker and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth. It’s a play on this famous Chicago saying.
Related: Edward McClelland of Chicago Magazine throws a bucket of cold water on Stratton’s candidacy, noting that Illinois’ lieutenant governors have “limited responsibilities, and no opportunities to build a record of their own. … Practically, the LG’s only job is to wait for the governor to die or, this being Illinois, get indicted. … Soon, (Stratton) is going to have to face politicians with actual records to run on.”
CBS News: “Despite Trump's promised cuts, U.S. spent more than $200 billion more in first 100 days than last year”
 I still don’t know the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow, yet I enjoyed “50 years ago, ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ showed us what comedy needs — and doesn’t” (gift link), Tribune film critic Michael Phillips’ glowing tribute to a classic comedy movie that has aged well. 
Sun-Times political reporter Tina Sfondeles posted that she received a text poll on the 2027 Chicago mayor’s race asking for her opinions on Luis Gutierrez, Willie Wilson, Maria Pappas, Brandon Johnson, Anna Valencia, Alexi Giannoulias, John Kelly, Kam Buckner, Bill Quinlan, Ja'Mal Green and Susana Mendoza. It’s unclear who paid for the poll, but I’ll look for results should the sponsors ever post them.
Once and for all, did President Andrew Jackson say of an averse U.S. Supreme Court ruling, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”? No. Nor did Jackson defy the court.
Some PS readers want more media coverage in this publication. Here is my response to that.
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:
■ Wrong-home horrors: An Oklahoma mom and her daughters—all U.S. citizens—were “traumatized … for life” after armed federal immigration agents mistakenly raided their home, took their phones and computers and life savings, leaving them, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow explains, no contact information or guidance on how to get it all back.
■ The city of Chicago’s settled with a family whose home cops mistakenly raided, pointing guns, during a 4-year-old’s birthday party.
■ “Mass protests … mobilization … disruption”: Politico’s Shia Kapos says that call over the weekend from Gov. Pritzker for action against Donald Trump’s administration has struck a nerve among Republicans and Democrats.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson perceives “a change afoot in the Democratic Party … as its leaders shift from trying to find common ground with Republicans to standing firmly against MAGAs.”
■ Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer—a potential presidential candidate—shared a hug with Trump.
■ The Associated Press reports that Trump’s aiming to use a little-known federal agency to overhaul U.S. elections.
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst asks: “Would you like some truly happy news? … Time for some poll porn!”
■ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Shh! Don’t wake the elderly golfer. Funerals make him sleepy.”
■ The New Republic: “Fox News Forced to Admit That Everyone Hates Trump.”
■ Forward: An “Antisemitism Awareness Act” advancing in the U.S. Senate now has a clause to protect those who preach that Jews killed Jesus.
■ The New York Times (gift link): In what looked at first like a scam, the Trump administration texted dozens of current and former university employees with a text message asking if they’re Jewish.
■ Wisconsin’s Supreme Court—controlled by liberals, 4-3—has suspended a judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities.
■ Columnist Charlie Sykes sees CBS parent Paramount on the verge of “the most pathetic surrender so far.”
■ One journalist not bowing: ABC’s Terry Moran—who The Daily Beast says fact-checked Trump right to his face.
■ Take that, early adopters: If you bought one of the first Nest smart thermostats, brace for it to get dumb in October—but you’ll get a discount on a replacement.
■ If you’re a few days behind on “Jeopardy!,” don’t read this article about a 20-year-old contestant from the University of Chicago.
■ Cord Cutter Weekly’s ever-insightful Jared Newman on (HBO)Max’s password-sharing crackdown: Don’t pay until they force you to—and there are ways to avoid being forced to. Also: How to get around Netflix’s anti-sharing rules.
■ “Secret” radio: With local news in decline on commercial airwaves, Nieman Lab turns a spotlight on audio information services where—every day, around the clock, across the country—hundreds of volunteers read local, national and international news—and books and magazines, too. (In Chicago, it’s CRIS.)
■ In a first for Illinois, a new suburban theater will extend some movie scenes onto the auditorium’s left and right walls.
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Mary Schmich: Highlights from a podcast interview
My former colleague Mary Schmich was interviewed recently by Mark Armstrong, editor of the Nieman Storyboard podcast, about “Division Street Revisited,” the seven-part documentary audio series that updates the lives of a group of people Studs Terkel interviewed for his 1967 oral history “Division Street.” Here are a few excerpts from the transcript:
I came into column writing at a point in my life where I didn't really think I wanted to write a column. When I was younger, I did. I was very full of opinions. And then I had to be — got to be — a real reporter for a long time. I covered the South for the Tribune. And I came to just understand how little I knew and not trust myself to have huge opinions on whatever the news of the day was. Because I came to see that if you have not reported the news, you don't understand the news. Even when you do report it, you're having trouble understanding it. But wow, you're just reading about it and reacting? What are you talking about? 
So, I mean, I always had an approach to column writing, which was a melding of opinion and storytelling. Because I do think the stories you choose to tell express ideas, express viewpoints. Sometimes better than the hammer-on-the-head opinion. 
One thing I got from column writing — a really important thing — was how to write tight and short. Because for most of my time at the Tribune, the column was literally in a box. And you couldn't break out of the box. Every now and then you could. But you had to figure out, what can I say in the space and time I have today? Over the years, I cultivated three essential mantras, which (were): 
Panic is my muse. 
Deadlines crowd out doubt. 
It always gets done. …
I started writing (the comic strip “Brenda Starr”) having no clue what I was doing. I learned along the way. But once again, I think all of these forms of storytelling are different, and they require different skills. And yet, a story's a story. So with writing the comic strip, first of all, there's no reporting. You’re just making stuff up, right? But I think on some level, it did help me to visualize stories. Obviously, I wasn't doing the drawing, but I had to write in a way that would allow the artist to draw. I don't know how to get too lofty about that, but I do think it probably accentuated my sense of how characters and dialogue help to carry a story. …
On the global phenomenon that was “Wear Sunscreen”: 
(“Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young,” a column known colloquially as “Wear sunscreen”) was a column I wrote in an afternoon, in a panic, because I had nothing else to write. So, we're going back to my "deadlines crowd out doubt, panic is my muse, it always gets done" philosophy, right? I just thought, well, it's graduation time, I'll write this fake graduation speech. M&M's and a cappuccino and a deadline, and I wrote it.
And I remember thinking, “Oh, I kind of like that.”
 I wouldn't always think that, but “I kind of like that. “
And then it just took on this unbelievable life of its own. It was early days of the internet, and it went viral before I think “viral” was even a term. (The speech got) attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, which helped to elevate it, because now it's attached to a famous, cult-famous writer. And then the fact that it wasn't really him elevated it a little more. 
So now you've got the whole element of, “Oh my God, look at this evil internet, what it can do, the lies it can tell.” And then Baz Luhrmann swoops in and puts it over some music that he'd used in his movie "Romeo and Juliet." Turns it into a spoken-word piece.
Originally around seven minutes. Did well in Australia. And then some radio station cut it down to five minutes. … And then The New York Times did a little blurb. I mean, the steps in this are fascinating, the steps to something rising in the cultural consciousness. 
Then it was off. And all of a sudden, it was just everywhere. Part of what I take from it is, just do your work, because you never know what's going to come of it. 
I always say there was a ghost in that piece. There was some unspoken stuff in that piece that people felt. 
… also known as the Axiom of Choice
Math nerds will know why I am inspired to highlight this post. One of my grandfather’s other contributions to the world was serving as the founding editor and publisher of the first iteration of the Picayune Sentinel.
Slanted expression
Here are three quotes from Jens Ludwig, director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, from an interview published in the Sun-Times over the weekend.
You’re more under stress in Greater Grand Grossing, so you’re more likely to go on tilt.
It’s basically the sort of social program that helps people be less likely to go on tilt, to use the poker term.
They can have really big impacts in reducing people’s risk of going on tilt and getting involved in violence. 
I wasn’t familiar with the idiom, though in context, the meaning of “on tilt” is fairly clear. It refers to making irrational decisions fueled by frustration or other forms of emotional distress. But what’s the connection to poker?
In his 2015 book “Gambling with the Myth of the American Dream,” University of Nebraska communications professor Aaron Duncan wrote:
The term originated from the game of pinball and frustrated players would attempt to cheat the game by tilting the pinball machine period. To combat this technique, pinball machines were designed with sensors, and if a player tried to cheat, the machine would freeze and flash the word “tilt.” 
“Going on tilt” has thus become synonymous with losing control and letting one's emotions get the better of you. 
In her book “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts,” former poker champion Annie Betts writes:
The origin of tilt in pinball is apt because what's going on in our brain and moments of tilt is like a shaken pinball machine. When the emotional center of the brain starts pinging the limbic system (specifically the amygdala) shuts down the prefrontal cortex. We light up. Then we shut down our cognitive control center.
In his 1984 book “Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi,” author Bob Woodward described the coked-up actor at one point as “like a pinball machine on tilt, out of control.” 
Pinball has since largely been replaced by video gaming, and the poker players — and criminologists — have taken the term for their own. But it seems useful enough that we should all adopt it. 
While I’m trying to make an expression happen …
I’m not sure whom to credit for “The Art of the Kneel” — a play on Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” — but it’s a handy bit of wordplay to use as shorthand for whenever a news organization, university, law firm, corporate CEO or foreign leader capitulates to Trump’s bullying tactics.   
John, Eric, Cate, Marj & Austin
Minced Words
Cate Plys, Austin Berg, Marj Halperin and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We chatted about the upcoming Senate race, JB Pritzker’s speech, efforts to contain plastic waste and other topics in the news.
Traffic lights:
John changed the yellow light he gave last week to the Netflix series “Call My Agent” to a green light now that he’s further into the show.
Austin: A green light for “The Rehearsal,” a reality-based series on HBO/Max in which Nathan Fielder “stars as the director of rehearsals, which are elaborately staged scenarios re-creating parts of ordinary people's lives that are meant to help them prepare for a big moment in their lives.”
Marj: A green light for Robert B Hubbell’s Substack Today's Edition Newsletter
Cate: A green light for Community Supported Agriculture — specifically the produce delivery service run by Videnovich Farms in Bridgman, Michigan.
Eric: A green light for “The Parole Room,” a locally produced podcast available only on Audible that explores the concept of justice through the case of Johnny Veal, who was convicted in the 1967 slaying of two Chicago police officers when he was 17.
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
Never forget that Medicare exists only because private insurance doesn’t want to cover old people. — unknown
Ben Smith lifts up a corner of the plush comforter under which our would-be overlords have been huffing each other's farts for the past few years as they collectively dream their way back to the cutting-edge ideas of the late 19th century. — Tom Scocca
 The Polls from the Fake News are, like the News itself, FAKE! We are doing GREAT, better than ever before. — Donald Trump on the raft of major polls showing public disenchantment with his first 100 days in office. 
Americans may have been shockingly, unnervingly ready to let Trump do a remarkable amount of damage. But on issue after issue, his administration’s conduct has been so hamfisted, heavy-handed, and hubristic that it has already rattled millions of them back to their senses. — Andrew Egger 
After 28 years, (Illinois) U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin is retiring. I knew him well when I was in Congress & Governor. He is a career politician, hyper partisan Dem. & political insider whose wife used to lobby me. I'm surprised he is leaving. Making America Great Again one retirement at a time. — Rod Blagojevich
It’s so funny that "Make America Healthy Again" does not include free healthcare. — Update the Grids 
America: We want more babies Also America: But not those babies. — Born Miserable 
Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more. — Donald Trump, downplaying the tariffs on Chinese goods
I felt like I was at a Rolling Stones concert. The crowd was virtually all white and mostly older people like myself. — Cliff Questel, 62, about the April 5 anti-Trump march and rally downtown.
The Shovel
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest: 
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
My husband is out of town, but the cupboard doors are still open, so now I have to face some hard truths about myself. — @deloisivete
There's a secret to folding a fitted sheet and it's simple: Have low expectations. — ‪@itsabbyyep.bsky.social
"Yes, he destroyed the building, but his story completely checked out." [scene from "The Credible Hulk"] — @jakevig.bsky.social
I’m not getting old. They’re just making socks harder to put on. — @pleasebegneiss.bsky.social
Me: Hey, what's up? M.C. Escher: I have no idea. — @frovo.bsky.social
In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth. And God said, let there be light: and there was light. And God said let there be sunshine and moonlight and good times. And then God blamed it on the boogie. — @wildethingy
A photographer was killed when a huge lump of cheddar landed on him. To be fair, the people being photographed did try to warn him. —@BigBearF1
Waiter: May I take your order? Mary: I’ll have the lamb. Waiter: What size? Mary: Little. Waiter: Would you like it to go? Mary: Sure, to go.  — ‪@frovo.bsky.social
I wish I could listen to my headphones when I go for a run and not have to worry about getting attacked, but sadly we do not live in a world where I go running. — @beccafacexo
I once dated a woman who was actually a ghost. I had my suspicions the moment she walked through the door. — @ThePunnyWorld
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.”
Subscribe and don't miss a single poll!
Good Sports
The legend has yet to be written about the ‘legendary’ Shedeur Sanders
The story of Shedeur Sanders, the University of Colorado’s star quarterback, has yet to be written. Sanders was so sure he was going to be a high first-round draft pick in last weekend’s NFL draft that he outfitted a whole room for the celebration, complete with huge dollar signs and the word “Legendary” everywhere you looked:
But round after round, he went undrafted. This defied the prognostications of the cognoscenti in sports media and sparked accusations of racism — even though the first three players chosen were Black — along with an outpouring of schadenfreude that the extremely cocky son of NFL Hall of Fame defensive back (and MLB standout) Deion Sanders was being brought down more than a few pegs for not being nearly as potentially “legendary” as he thought.
The obvious response to this is not outrage or happiness, but a reflective, “We’ll see, won’t we?”  
NFL owners and general managers want to win. And the fact that all 32 teams passed on Sanders until the fifth round when the Cleveland Browns finally called his name suggests an overwhelming consensus that he’s likely to be a drag on the team that selects him. 
The story will end either when Sanders washes out of the league in a few years, proving the consensus right, or when he plays his way into the starting lineup and proves the doubters wrong with performances that have others calling him “legendary.” 
Owners and general managers have been wrong before.  NFL greats chosen in the fifth round or later include Herschel Walker, Tyreek Hill, Tom Brady, Terrell Davis and Shannon Sharpe. Talent has a way of winning out in professional sports. We’ll see how much of it Sanders actually has. 
Sox Watch
After Wednesday night’s loss to the Milwaukee Brewers, the White Sox are 7-22,. Their current winning percentage of .241 puts them on pace to 123 games, two more than they lost last year when they set the mark for most losses in a Major League Baseball season. 
Tune of the Week
Exercising personal privilege to highlight a country gospel song I heard recently that had somehow escaped my notice:
Oh, the Baptists go by water and the Methodists go by land
But I'll tell you, my friends, if you wanna get to heaven,
Well, you gotta go hand in hand … 
So low, you can't get under it
So high, you can't climb over it
So wide, you'll never get around it
You must come in at the door
Watson referred to “You Must Come In at the Door,” credited to Tin Pan Alley songwriter Sunny Skylar, as “one you can pat your foot to.” It’s a version of  “So Hi,” a song I learned from recordings of the Kingston Trio. The notion of heaven being too large shows up in the Black gospel tradition as well.  
I can’t identify the Bible verse that might be closely related to this sentiment. A little help, exegetes?
 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.  

Mistakes were made
When I become aware of errors in the Picayune Sentinel, I quickly correct them in the online version, but since many of you read just the email version, which I can’t correct after the fact, I will use this space periodically to alert you to meaningful mistakes I’ve made. (Not typos, in other words.)
In the Tune of the Week in PS 190, I typed that Tom McNamee had retired as editorial page editor of the Sun-Times in 2001, when he actually retired in 2021 (as the link to a Robert Feder column correctly said). This is not the first time I’ve gotten my fingers tangled when it comes to 2021 and 2001, and I have no excuses or plausible explanations, only regrets. 
Info
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. Browse and search back issues here.
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
Email the Picayune Sentinel
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.
If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.
Social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn 
Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social 
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5
Help?
If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.
Thanks for reading!
Give a gift subscription
Share
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

2025-05-08 Eric Zorn
Thu, 08 May 2025 10:05:15 GMT
A moment of silence for Michael Miner& will the more be the merrier in next year's hot political races?
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
A moment of silence for Michael Miner
& will the more be the merrier in next year's hot political races?
May 8

READ IN APP

5-8-2025 (issue No. 192)
This week:
A programming note — The Tune of the Week is evolving
Last week’s winning quip
A memorial salute to Michael Miner, including a remembrance from Mary Schmich
Bashing Trump — It’s necessary, but polls show not sufficient to move voters into the Democratic column
News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked on the 2026 U.S. Senate race in Illinois, on what U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s decision to retire might mean for the race in her district and Alcatraz
That’s so Brandon! — A hat tip instead of a wag of the finger!
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go
Viral humor — It might take you a second to get the joke
Barbara Brotman is going to war against dandelions
What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Good photo or bad photo? — I’ve been taken to task for a Facebook post, and I’d like your opinion
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
Good Sports — Sox watch is on hiatus at last
Tune of the Week — “Dark Ages” by Eliza Gilkyson
Subscribe or upgrade your subscription
Programming note
After nearly 200 Tune of the Week posts, I’m planning to expand the feature starting next Thursday by rebranding it as Green Light, as in go for it. It will feature recommendations not only of songs but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on. I’m asking for your nominations — email me a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links. For TV shows, I’d like links to trailers/previews on YouTube.
Last week’s winning quip
I wish I could listen to my headphones when I go for a run and not have to worry about getting attacked, but sadly we do not live in a world where I go running. — @beccafacexo
I received some pushback for including this quip, which takes a dark observation and twists it into an unexpected bit of self-deprecation. Several readers argued that there is nothing funny about the fear that women can have while running or walking alone, and I agree. But humor is often rooted in upended expectations, and a plurality of readers chose this as their favorite among the finalists. 
Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-jokes poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.
On the passing of Michael Miner
The local journalism community was saddened to learn of the death May 1 of Michael Miner, 81, who for many years wrote the Hot Type column of media criticism and analysis for the Chicago Reader. 
Since his retirement, we have not since seen the like of his carefully crafted, thoughtful, fair and sometimes-withering looks at local news coverage and commentary. He died just two days after I posted this about the current glaring lack of a Chicago media columnist:
It’s a more fragmented beat than ever, and to cover it adequately would require a lot more bandwidth than I have in semi-retirement. I’d be happy to promote the work of an independent journalist who launched an aggressive media-crit site, one that ignored birthdays, anniversaries and meaningless puffery and instead offered frequent dives into what’s happening and why in our newsrooms.
From the Sun-Times obituary by Mitch Dudek:
Michael Miner kept Chicago journalists on their toes.
As the longtime media columnist for the Chicago Reader, if he saw something in the local papers or television news that seemed to miss the mark or made him roll his eyes, he’d write about it in his “Hot Type” column.
Mr. Miner pondered such topics as hypocritical columnists, biases, bad grammar and questionable editorial takes.
 From the Tribune obituary by Rick Kogan:
“In an era of robust competition among newsrooms all over town, Michael Miner was an unsentimental watchdog of Chicago journalism and a conscience of our profession,” says Robert Feder, longtime Chicago media critic. “He didn’t originate the ‘Hot Type’ column, but he made it his own, and he made it the first thing we turned to when The Reader came out every week.”
In an appreciation essay published in the Reader in 2011, Steve Bogira wrote that Miner, “has the wit and skill of the fabled Mike Royko, but is more cerebral. He does lack Royko’s switchblade: he’s willing to offend, but his hating instinct is underdeveloped.”
Mary Schmich posted this tribute on Facebook on Sunday:
I woke up this morning thinking about Mike Miner.
I learned yesterday that Mike just died. He was legendary among Chicago journalists during most of my years at the Chicago Tribune, notably as the feared and revered media critic for the Chicago Reader.
I vividly remember the period—late ‘80s? early ‘90s?—when once a week, a big stack of Readers would be plunked at the Chapman Sisters Calorie Counter, a lunch place right across Michigan Avenue from Tribune Tower.
Every Thursday, reporters scurried over for a salad and a copy of the hot-off-the-presses paper. We turned straight to Mike’s column.
What did Miner have to say about that hot Sun-Times or Tribune story? Was he going to lacerate some terrible reporter? Or editor? Or praise some great reporter? Or editor?
I didn’t know Mike well. Sometimes I’d see him at a journalism gathering, the tallest guy in the room, his head of frothy hair poking above the crowd. He interviewed me a few times, more than once on background as he tried to understand the goings-on at the Tribune.
But I’d never had what I’d call a “real” one-on-one conversation with him until one night two months ago.
We were at a party for a mutual friend. Needing a respite from the chit-chat, I sat down in a chair away from the fray. He came and sat down on the piano bench next to me, partly, I sensed, because he needed to sit down.
We wound up talking for a long time, about his path into journalism, and mine, about how lucky we were to work in Chicago newspapers when they were so robust.
I mentioned, in a good-natured way, how afraid so many journalists had been of his media criticism. He seemed genuinely surprised: How could anyone find him scary?
I was struck that night by how droll he was, by his ready smile, and by his thoughtful, watchful way of listening. We talked about poetry, which, to my surprise, he wrote. He urged me to keep writing TrumPoems, which is a big part of why I have.
Toward the end of our conversation, he asked if I was going to write a book. I shrugged and said I didn’t think I had it in me.
I asked if he was going to write a book. He shrugged and said he spent a lot of his time going to doctors, and living day to day, which, we agreed, was really the only way to live anyway.
As our conversation came to a close, he said, “If you write a book, I’ll write a book.” I said, “Deal.”
It was such a nice conversation that I mentioned it later to to a couple of friends, and said, “It makes me regret not getting to know him better.”
Mike seemed tired and reflective that night, but I didn’t guess that he would be gone so soon. Many people who knew him well have posted about him here on Facebook, and they have greater insights about his life and his death.
But since I woke up thinking about him, and about his wonderful wife, Betsy Nore, I just wanted to say that I hope he left this world knowing that his thoughts, his being, his heart, left wide ripples.
Again, I will say that Miner’s — and Feder’s — shoes need filling. Legacy and emerging media remain very important in this town. Everywhere, really. And as much as we need movie, TV, music and drama critics, we need media critics to analyze, cajole, praise and call out the work that shapes our civic life. 
Miner interviewed me several times over the years, sometimes on the record, sometimes off the record, and I noted — and later borrowed — his habit of allowing long silences in conversations, stilling momentarily his deep, gentle voice. These silences inspired me and I imagine others he interviewed to fill the void with yet another thought, perhaps an admission or impolitic observation that would make its way into print.
At a party a few years ago — well after he retired — I told him that I’d recognized and admired the way he took advantage of people’s natural aversion to awkward silences to draw additional thoughts from them. He chuckled softly and said, “Oh, is that what you thought I was doing?” 
I didn’t say anything for a beat, but he didn’t either. So then we changed the subject. 
A memorial program is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Monday, May 19, at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St., in Chicago
The public is souring on Trump but not warming up to Democrats
Numerous respected polls timed to the 100-day mark of the Trump regime show President Donald Trump’s approval ratings at historically low levels for this point.
But a Newsweek article took a turn after first laying out all the bad news for Trump:
The CNN/SSRS poll showed that when respondents were asked who would be doing a better job as president, 45 percent chose Trump, while 43 percent chose Kamala Harris. … That would suggest that voters' support for Trump has not shifted all that much since November.
An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, conducted between April 18 to 22 among 3,634 respondents, brought more bad news for the Democrats, showing that when respondents were asked who they trusted more to deal with the U.S.'s main problems, 40 percent chose Trump, compared to just 32 percent who chose Democrats in Congress.
And in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted between April 25-27 among 1,029 adults, the Republicans held a significant advantage over Democrats on two of the most pressing issues for voters: immigration and the economy.
When asked which party has the better plan to address immigration, respondents favored the GOP by a wide 19-point margin. On the economy, Republicans also lead by 9 points. That is despite recent polls showing Trump deep underwater on both issues over the past few weeks after he announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs and became embroiled in a dispute with the Supreme Court over the mistaken deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia.
Given how deeply entrenched most people are in their political allegiances and Trump’s unprecedented ability to defy political gravity, these results shouldn’t be too surprising. Trump’s ovine followers will not let anything like inflation — possibly a recession — unnecessary cruelty, grifting and defiance of the law diminish their support for him. But there’s clearly a key group of Trump voters who held their noses and cast a ballot for the cruel, authoritarian, ignorant narcissist because, on balance, they considered taking a chance on his agenda superior to continuing with the Democratic agenda as represented by Kamala Harris.
This provides something of a road map (remember those?) for Democrats as they look to the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential contest: Bashing Trump works but only goes so far. They need to put forward new proposals to address the issues that drove those persuadable voters into his arms. 
S.E. Cupp: 
Where’s the new Dem New Deal? Or their version of a Contract with America? A bold agenda for every Dem lawmaker to get behind, push in their districts and coalesce around heading into the midterms and for the next three years?
Trump’s 100 days have been equal parts terrifying, heartbreaking and embarrassing — but it’s hard to say that Democrats have done anything meaningful in that time either.
Well, it is hard for a party out of power to do much that’s meaningful. But the Democrats are going to have to start saying things that are meaningful if they’re going to turn Trump’s dismal poll numbers to their advantage.
News & Views
News: U.S. Reps. Robin Kelly and Raja Krishnamoorthi in, Treasurer Michael Frerichs out in the race to succeed U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin.
View: There’s little time left to stand on the sidelines. Looking at you, U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and anyone else thinking of getting into the contest for campaign cash and endorsements that will take up much of the rest of this calendar year. 
Tribune contributing columnist Laura Washington wrote a column (gift link) this week expressing concern that if Underwood joins Kelly and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who is already in, the three Black women might split the vote. Writing directly to this trio, she strongly suggested they choose just one of them to carry the banner forward:
Ladies, as you gear up for the big campaign, consider having your own conversation, a private kitchen table talk. That talk should cover a prickly path to reality. First, if you all stay in, you all may lose. Second, Kelly and Underwood … will have to give up your safe congressional seats. That would be a potential loss of seniority and clout for your districts and open up the chance for a Republican takeover in the general election.
 I’m an undecided voter here — that seems only responsible given how far off the March 17, 2026, primary is and how little I know of their records or policy proposals — but I’m in agreement with the recent Tribune editorial “JB Pritzker should stop trying to make Juliana Stratton the inevitable successor to Dick Durbin.”
Gov. Pritzker’s hasty endorsement of Stratton followed by Stratton endorsements, from U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth and former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, look like an effort by insiders to discourage other candidates from getting in the race; it is all about loyalty and has little to do with Stratton’s record as a public official, which is awfully thin.
To repeat myself, I don’t necessarily want somebody somebody sent. Thanks, JB, Tammy and Carol, but I’d like to make up my own mind.
News: Fourteen-term U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky announces she won’t run for reelection next year.
View: This is potentially very good news for Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive TikTok influencer who jumped in the primary race in March. Her chances for unseating Schakowsky one-on-one appeared very dim, but in the multicandidate field likely to develop, she might be able to sneak in.
My nickname for her is Kat Carpetbagazaleh since she’s a native Texan who lived in Arizona and, until last July, Washington, D.C. And though she’s moved to Chicago, she still doesn’t live in the district where she’s running. 
Just hours before Schakowsky’s announcement Monday, Edward McClelland of Chicago Magazine posted an interview with Abughazaleh in which he challenged her knowledge of the district with a short trivia quiz. 
She says she’s planning to move into the district, though that’s not strictly necessary because the Constitution requires only that that members of the House “live in the state they represent, though not necessarily the same district,” according to a U.S. House website.
To my mind, the spirit of the House is that members have a strong connection to their districts and the people they represent and aren’t have-ideology-will-travel opportunists.
But as a fresh, passionate and eloquent voice, Carpetbagazaleh could well win a plurality if the field of candidates grows. I’m thinking here particularly of the 2009 special primary for the 5th U.S. House District in Illinois when Mike Quigley — who still holds the seat — won with 22% of the vote against 12 other Democrats. 
News: President Trump wants to rebuild and reopen Alcatraz prison.
View: Either Trump is nuttier than a Snickers bar or he’s engaging in some canny rhetorical rope-a-dope, attempting to exhaust and distract his critics by getting them to direct attention and energy at a completely unbaked idea that he has no actual intention of enacting. 
Shortly after the movie “Escape from Alcatraz” aired on a TV station near Mar-a-Lago last week, Trump issued yet another of his loudmouth-at-the-end-of-the bar rants: 
REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ! For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. No longer will we tolerate these Serial Offenders who spread filth, bloodshed, and mayhem on our streets. That is why, today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders. We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our Country illegally. The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE. We will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
To reporters he later extolled the wonders of the island prison off San Francisco, saying “it sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable.”
Now it represents a whopping waste of money.
 One of the reasons it closed 62 years ago was that it cost some three times more to operate than conventional prisons due to its island location. Converting the ruins of the vintage hoosegow from a decrepit tourist attraction to a functioning prison would be wildly expensive.
Also unnecessary. We already have highly secure prisons.  For example, ADX Florence, a landlocked federal prison in Fremont County, Colorado, is nicknamed “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” because no prisoner has escaped in the 31 years since it opened. 
Consider me distracted. I didn’t even get around to mentioning Trump’s admission that he doesn’t know if he’s required to uphold the Constitution, his plans for a military parade in Washington D.C., his astonishing lie about the price of gas, his …
That’s So Brandon!
Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s mayor Brandon Johnson
Rather than wag my finger at Hizzoner as is my wont, this week I want to tip my cap to how Johnson addressed the controversy over the settlement of the Columbus statues issue.
The Tribune’s Jake Sheridan reports:
Asked Tuesday about the difference between the removed Columbus statues and the controversial pro-Palestinian protest puppet his administration kept up at the Chicago Cultural Center in January, Johnson argued “there is a distinction between art and monument.”
“A monument solidifies a position … we are honoring,” he said. “Art is not necessarily telling you (that) you should honor their opinion or their thought.”
This is exactly right and crisply expressed. Statues are neither history nor art, even though they are artistic renderings of historical figures. They are honors, pure and simple — akin to naming a street, park or public school for someone (Columbus has all three in Chicago) or a building or geographical feature — but more directly and personally glorifying. 
No one is perfect, but Columbus is a particularly problematic figure for Italian Americans to hang their ethnic pride on, given that Italy didn’t even exist during his lifetime and there’s quite a bit of doubt now about his actual heritage. 
See Vox’s “Just 9 instances of the almost unimaginable cruelty inflicted by Christopher Columbus and his crew during their time in the Caribbean” and my 2020 column “Ethnic pride, yes. Columbus Day? No.” Picayune Sentinel readers weighed in on Columbus here.
Land of Linkin’
A hole in the Chicago Public Media story “Acupuncture has been used for decades to treat addiction — advocates want to expand its reach” is that it failed to note that claims for acupuncture do not survive rigorous scientific scrutiny.
Rex Huppke of USA Today has the receipts when he argues that Donald Trump is at least as incoherent and addled as Joe Biden ever was, but since Trump does not have a weak voice and stammer, his supporters seem oblivious to it.
Mike Miner could be tough, but he went easy on me nine years ago in observing the 30th anniversary of my Tribune column. 
 Indiana University School of Law student Gerry Regep’s op-ed in the Tribune “Court’s revival of UIC law professor’s claim is good news for constitutional rights” gives additional oxygen and perspective to the case I’ve been writing about concerning Jason Kilborn, who came under intense and absurd fire for using a redacted form of a racial slur on a law school exam. 
Oh Joe! “Biden Says Exiting Race Earlier Would Not Have Mattered.” My forehead can take only so much smacking.
Sun-Times: “Dale Bowman, longtime outdoors columnist, on why he's cutting back to one column per week.”
 In “President Donald Trump’s policies are an education in folly,” Steve Chapman writes: “Trump’s embrace of brutally high tariffs … is reminding both consumers and business people of the benefits of access to everything other nations have to offer. The duties will gouge Americans on cars, food, appliances, electronics, furniture, clothing and — well, nearly everything. They would also decimate U.S. industries, many of which use imported parts and material in their own products.”
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:
■ Block Club: A TikTok video of former Chicago City Council member, ex-Sun-Times CEO, It’s the democracy, stupid columnist and WCPT radio host Edwin Eisendrath giving a guy his jacket on the Blue Line has gone viral.
■ The Associated Press reports that the number of local police departments and state agencies joining Trump’s drive for mass deportations has now passed 500.
■ The American Prospect suggests “one weird trick” to keep the feds out of your city.
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst: “Couches McButthair Has Warning For People Who Want To Come To World Cup.”
■ Chicago 1, Trump Tower 0. Under pressure from the city—and the Sun-Times, whose building used to occupy the same address—management of the president’s Chicago outpost has removed barricades that were blocking public access to the public-property riverfront plaza.
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg on a new book about the nearby Wrigley Building: “Iconic structure? Yes. Superb? Not so much.”
■ “I don’t know”: That’s Donald Trump, asked on NBC if he has to “uphold the Constitution.” Lawyer Robert B. Hubbell calls it “the most remarkable interview of a president … ever.” Columnist Jeff Tiedrich reviews other “scenes from a crazypants interview.”
■ “The worst, dumbest, most politically damaging message I’ve ever heard”: Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer suggests ways Democrats can make Trump pay a political price for insisting that American kids have too many dolls and pencils.
■ The president’s mistaken announcement of a plan to commemorate the end of World War II drew criticism from podcaster Keith Olbermann: “Trump is a complete moron.”
■ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: Attorney General Pam Bondi, who’s been bragging about plans to kill Americans.
■ Law Dork Chris Geidner: A federal judge’s ruling against Trump’s law firm shows how to respond. Contrarian editor-in-chief Jennifer Rubin calls it “an opinion for the ages,” which you can read here.
■ Illinois hospitals overall have moved up 10 spots from last year in Leapfrog Group’s rankings for safety—but more are getting D’s. Check your hospital’s rating here.
■ A range of Chicago cultural events are out federal cash under Trump’s cuts, but the Chicago Jazz Festival’s on track for August—with this newly revealed lineup.
■ No indication he was … um … framed: The president of Chicago’s Art Institute is on leave after allegedly stripping on a flight to Europe.
■ The American Prospect: “Apple’s monopoly is finally held accountable—and within hours of a … court ruling, innovation on smartphones is exploding.”
■ “Mainstream media is failing us”: Abortion, Every Day columnist Jessica Valenti is “dumbfounded that outlet after outlet is buying the Republican spin” on the Trump administration’s request that a judge toss an abortion-pill case.
■ Trump’s Education Department has cut $23 million that would have gone to public broadcasting TV shows for kids—including “Sesame Street,” “Reading Rainbow” and “Clifford the Big Red Dog.” But ex-Illinois U.S. Rep. Marie Newman says you can fight back against Republicans who’ve been “trying to remove funding for PBS and NPR forever.” Columnist Greg Mitchell: “Is Trump’s de-funding vendetta against PBS derived from all the mockery he suffered via ‘Sesame Street’ years ago as ‘Donald Grump’”?
■ PCWorld: You don’t need a Roku device to watch the Roku Channel at no charge.
■ The Conversation: Cursive writing’s making a comeback in U.S. schools.
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
This is going around, and it’s brilliant!
Meta AI
Barbara Brotman goes to battle
Former Tribune reporter and columnist Barbara Brotman sent this along, and while I relate totally, I have given up the fight she is waging: 
Friends, it is time for us to gather our strength to do battle against an evil, heartless, implacable enemy: 
The dandelion.
How I hate them. I hate those cheery yellow flowers that look all sweet and cute, until they recede and the stems form angry red worm shapes and the flowers erupt in puff balls the equivalent of hand grenades.
I hate their reproductive efficiency. I hate their maddeningly deep tap roots. I hate the speed at which they take over a lawn. 
And I hate their success at defying efforts to kill them.
Which, by the way, is poison. Eric Zorn once did a deep dive into the question in his Tribune column (“Weed it and Weep,” 2011), and concluded that herbicide works best, because it is nearly impossible to dig out a dandelion with its complete tap root.
I was reluctant to go that route, but a few years ago I got a spray bottle of weed killer. Oh, how I enjoyed watching them die within hours of a burst from my spray gun!
But mindful of the damage herbicides do to insects and birds, I gave up that weapon.
Dandelions do have one good quality: they are the first pollen-bearing flowers to bloom, providing essential nutrients for early-arriving pollinating insects. Considering their benefits, a bee keeper argued in a recent news story, what’s a few dandelions in your lawn?
But let’s be clear: no one has “a few dandelions” in their lawn. A single dandelion plant produces an average of 15,000 seeds, according to the Michigan State University Extension. If you have one dandelion, you have a field of them. Let them go, and you have to re-sod your lawn.
So every day at this time of year, I go out armed with a long dandelion puller, and go to war.
I make my way slowly around the lawn, digging them out one by one. I stab the weeder deep into the ground, trying to get that elusive tap root, and settle for whatever I can get. I make huge divots in the turf, which I excuse by thinking of them as core aeration. An hour later I halt the battle, my back aching and my fingernails embedded with dirt (I find that garden gloves reduce my effectiveness).
The next day more dandelions have sprouted. Trench warfare resumes. There is no such thing as a truce. Time is of the essence in the dandelion battle. You have to get them before they go to puff balls. 
If I were a better person — or if I could manage an entire front- and back-yard eradication in a few days — I would do what my landscape designer friend does: leave them while they are flowers, but swoop down right as they’re puffing out.
“I’ve marked every one of them,” she told me. “There’s one right next to my front steps. I told it, ‘I’ve got my eye on you, pal. You’ve got three days.’ ”
But my yard has so many dandelions, and their flower-to-puffball speed is so breathtaking, that I just kill them whenever I see them. Sorry, insects — but there are plenty of other dandelions nearby. Enjoy!
Of course, my battle is futile. I’m leaving behind enough bits of tap root that these remainders will lick their wounds over winter and then roar back next spring, flipping me the puffball bird. And there are so many puffball seeds flying through the air from everyone else’s yards that my survivors will have plenty of new friends.
But so what? In this brief window when spring rain turns my patchy lawn green, I get so much pleasure from looking at dandelion-free turf that it’s all worth it. As long as the dandelions are blooming, I’ll be out every day inspecting my yard, tapping my weeder on my thigh threateningly. 
I’ve got my eye on you, pal. And my dandelion puller is right behind it. 
— Barbara Brotman
Minced Words
Austin Berg, Marj Halperin and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast to discuss next year’s Democratic primary in Illinois, the legacy of George Ryan and the blizzard of astonishing news from the Trump regime. Here is a link to “Questions of Justice: The Nicarico Murder Case,” to which Austin referred. 
Earlier Wednesday, Austin and I recorded an episode of “Not Even Mad,” Mike Pesca’s podcast “dedicated to … joyful disagreement.” Look for that soon wherever fine podcasts are served.
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
Republicans now use “concerned” to mean the exact opposite—namely, “I really don’t give a damn.” — Jennifer Rubin
A lot of today’s journalists are scared of facts. They don't like to state things as flat-out true. They’d rather play it safe and employ a cop-out phrase like “observers say” or “critics claim,” even when the facts are not in serious doubt. It’s a common issue in political journalism — whether to state something as objectively true or put an assertion “in someone else’s mouth.” The problem is that when journalists attribute a known fact to “critics,” it diminishes that fact, turning it into a mere opinion. And that benefits the bad guys. — Mark Jacob
Aide: Secretary Hegseth, we have to find a more secure way to communicate our classified plans to your staff. Hegseth: Postcards! — William Ader
Trump is staging a military parade in Washington for his birthday. This is straight up dictator behavior. If you can't see this you are irretrievable. — Jack Boot
(The Wrigley Building) illustrates the principle that an ugly building by day, if illuminated, will be ugly by night as well. — Frank Lloyd Wright
(Former President Barack Obama is) building his library in Chicago. It's a disaster. And he said, something to the effect, ‘I only want DEI. I only want woke.’ He wants woke people to build it. Well, he got woke people. And they've got massive cost overruns. A job is stopped. I don't know. It's a disaster. Use good, hard, tough, mean construction workers that I love. I love those construction workers. But he didn't want construction workers. He wanted people that never did it before, and he's got a disaster in his hands. — Donald Trump
You can have all the eggs you want. We have too many eggs. In fact, if anything, the prices are getting too low. — Donald Trump
You can have two dolls or five pencils says the man with 15 golf courses. — unknown
We would urge all pet owners in the region to make sure all of your beloved animals are under watchful protection while the Secretary is in the region. — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker heralding the appearance in Springfield of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Trump just signed an executive order to bring back flared pants. — Willie Handler
Good photo or bad photo?
I stirred up a fuss on social media Tuesday morning by posting my negative reaction to the Tribune’s front-page photo of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky that accompanied the story about her announcement Monday that she will not seek a 15th term next year. At first, I posted just the cropped version of what appeared to be her grief-stricken face (left). Then, when some took me to task saying that that cropping the picture removed important context, I added a the full version:
My view was that, in either iteration, the image made it appear that Schakowsky was wracked by grief — sobbing as though she’d just lost a relative — and not experiencing that bittersweet mixture of emotions that comes at the conclusion of an impressive and fulfilling career. The coverage I read and saw of the event suggested that Schakowsky was at times emotional — the Sun-Times story noted that she had “tears in her eyes” when talking to reporters — and at times joyous and defiant — both major dailies reported that she planned to continue being “a badass” as she runs through the tape. I found the image misleading and unflattering to the point of sensationalistic. 
Others did not. Here are some of the comments from those who disagreed, many from the journalism community.
I thought it was a great photo; it captured the emotions behind her decision.
I love Jan and I love the photo. I agree with others that it captures the emotion of the moment. … This photo captures how much it means to her, which is a great deal.
I’m Team Beautiful Moment Captured. I love that she looks her age. Her long tenure is the story.
The full photo is beautiful and really touching—this is Jan surrounded by her staff at her final “women’s power lunch” that annually fills the room with some 2,000 people. This context makes the photo even more beautiful.
 This is a photo that shows the emotion of the moment. It’s what photographers wait for.
POLL
The photo of Schakowsky .. 
Was of a beautiful emotional moment
Was misleading and unflattering
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from last week’s contest, which I failed to include in the email edition:
And here is the winner of this week’s contest: 
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
Another in my occasional offering of groanworthy Dad Quips — unattributed because I find so many tweets rooted in excruciating wordplay are unoriginal:
You can get Pop Tarts but you can’t get Mom Tarts because of the pastryarchy.
I bought my wife a fridge for Christmas. I can't wait to see her face light up when she opens it.
Twister is my favorite party game, hands down.
The person who invented knock-knock jokes should get a no-bell prize.
Someone broke in my house last night and stole some eggs and left a pot of warm water. Cops think it might be poachers.
If you lose your khakis in Ohio, it means you can't find your pants. But if you lose your khakis in Boston, it means you can't start your car.
That's a nice ham you got there. It would be a shame if I put an s at the front and an e at the end.
I've struggled with timekeeping since I don't know when.
Why did the old man fall down the well? He couldn’t see that well.
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.”
Subscribe and don't miss a single poll!
Good Sports
Sox Watch is on hiatus
I’m going to stop tracking the White Sox until and unless the team falls below a winning percentage of .250 (they are now at .270) 
But I’m now keeping  one eye on the Colorado Rockies, who are off to an even worse start this year than the Sox last year, when the Sox set the record for the most losses in a season in Major League Baseball history. The Sox were 8-27 after 35 games; the Rockies are now 6-29. 
Tune of the Week
As noted above, after nearly 200 Tune of the Week posts, I’m planning to expand the feature starting next Thursday by rebranding it as Green Light, as in go for it. It will feature recommendations not only of songs but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on. I’m asking for your nominations — email me a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links. For TV shows, I’d like links to trailers/previews on YouTube. 
The Tune of the Week nomination is “Dark Ages,” a new release from Eliza Gilkyson.
Alpha white boys thumping on their chests
While they dictate to the women what is right what is best
They all bow down when the big dog barks
Fuck those little fuckers they can fuck right off

Send them to the bottom
Leave no traces
Send them where we'll never have to see their faces
Send them all back
All the way back to the dark ages
Gilkyson, 74, is a Grammy-winning folk singer based in Taos, New Mexico. 
Info
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. Browse and search back issues here.
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
Email the Picayune Sentinel
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.
If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.
Social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn 
Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social 
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5
Help?
If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.
Thanks for reading!
Give a gift subscription
Share
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

2025-05-15 Eric Zorn
Thu, 15 May 2025 10:04:32 GMT
Brandon Johnson's false statement about Dr. Arwady was probably not a lie, but just more incompetence & a serious look at the implausible idea of making Canada the 51st state
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Brandon Johnson's false statement about Dr. Arwady was probably not a lie, but just more incompetence 
& a serious look at the implausible idea of making Canada the 51st state
May 15

READ IN APP

5-15- 2025 (issue No. 193)
That’s so Brandon! — A lengthy update on the misadventures of Chicago’s maladroit mayor, this one focusing on his repeated insistence last week that popular health commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady resigned
Last week’s winning quip
A serious consideration of the implausible idea of the U.S. annexing Canada
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
Video: Neil Steinberg reads a chapter from his most recent book
Mary Schmich — Reflections on growing up Catholic in the South  
How some Tesla owner are keeping thiir cars safe from vandalism
What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week — Plus green lights from the panel
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Which side won the click poll about the Tribune’s Schakowsky photo?
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
Good Sports — The 2025 Colorado Rockies look like they might cause history to forget the 2024 White Sox
Green Light —  Reader Mark K. green lights the Oscar-winning animated film “Flow.”
Subscribe or upgrade your subscription
Real eyes realize real incompetence
Before I launch into this item, a tip of the cap to the Tribune and Sun-Times for their excellent, thorough coverage linked to the second anniversary today of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s inauguration.  That coverage, as well as the exhaustive (and in places, exhausting) coverage of Pope Leo XIV and his roots in the Chicago area, were prime examples of why newspapers are still very important.
Anyway, on May 9, the Sun-Times posted a video of City Hall reporter Fran Spielman and WBEZ city government reporter Mariah Woelfel interviewing Johnson, and my eyebrows went up at this exchange, which followed one of Johnson’s trademark word-salad explanations about why he had Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez fired:
Mariah Woelfel:  What made Martinez different from someone like Dr. Allison Arwady? You know, you weren't shy about cleaning house in certain departments. So I'm just curious.
Johnson: Well, remember she left on her own . I did not —
Spielman: That’s not what she said, though.
Johnson: She did announce her resignation. I did not offer up a letter to her asking her to step down. She did that on her own, and (I) respected her decision. I didn't take umbrage with her desire to move on with her life.
It was a bizarre assertion — Arwady, the popular commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health who led the city through the COVID-19 pandemic — was unceremoniously sacked by Johnson in August 2023, a move that I and many of my left-leaning friends still hold against him.  Oddly, Spielman didn’t mention this exchange in her story on the interview.
But Axios Chicago reporter Monica Eng noticed it, and she followed up during her interview Monday with Johnson:
Eng: There was one part of the interview with the Sun-Times and WBEZ that I was confused by, because I remember covering the departure of Allison Arwady. You seem to say that she was not dismissed, but that she left of her own volition, and you were respecting her wishes. But (mayoral ally and now-former 35th Ward Alder) Carlos Ramirez-Rosa went on Ben Joravsky's show and, actually, did like 15 minutes, “Here are the five reasons why the mayor fired her.” And she said that Rich Guidice said, "You have to go." She pleaded to please be able to say goodbye to her staff, and he said, “No, you need to go now.” Did I misunderstand that she was not fired? Did you say she was not fired? 
 Johnson: She issued her letter of resignation.
 Eng: But she wasn't asked to?
 Johnson: She issued her letter of resignation. 
This was not true. Not even close. Arwady never submitted a letter of resignation and in fact was cashiered in a particularly abrupt, chickenshit way — via a letter from then-chief of staff Rich Guidice:  
Johnson had disagreements with Arwady’s performance as health commissioner for Lori Lightfoot when she was mayor. WBEZ summarized:
During her tenure leading Chicago through the COVID-19 pandemic, Arwady clashed significantly with the Chicago Teachers Union — which backed Johnson’s campaign and previously employed him — over the return to school. Arwady and former Mayor Lori Lightfoot vowed school buildings were safe for kids, and pushed to open them sooner, while the union representing teachers demanded more safety protocols, such as district-wide COVID-19 testing.
Johnson and Arwady also differed significantly on their approach to delivering mental health care to Chicaogans. Johnson wants to reopen shuttered mental health clinics, which Arwady, under Lightfoot, did not opt to do. Instead, the city funneled money through nonprofit organizations to provide mental healthcare.
Despite the differences, as mayor-elect, Johnson vowed to meet with Arwady once in office.
“In order to unite this city, we’re going to need the expertise from all of the different disciplines,” Johnson said in an interview with WBEZ on April 5, one day after his election victory. “I’m looking forward to sitting down with Dr. Arwady as well.
That sit-down, where such differences might have been reconciled, never happened. One need not get into the weeds of the “when should schools have reopened?” debate to know that people of good faith acting during a difficult and confusing time came to different conclusions. Similar good-faith-on-both-sides arguments can be made about the best way to provide community mental health services.
Arwady complained that she was dismissed and her email access cut off so abruptly that she didn’t even have the opportunity to say goodbye and thank her staff.
And when Johnson came under heavy criticism for the callous way Arwady was fired, he offered the cryptic, damning  remark, “Real eyes realize real lies,” but otherwise refused to discuss the hows and whys of an incident that badly undercut his chesty proclamations about being a reasonable and collaborative mayor. 
Was he clumsily trying to rewrite that ugly chapter in his history in those interviews with the Sun-Times and Axios Chicago? I contacted the mayor’s press office for an explanation. His spokesfolks did not respond to me, but Tribune investigative reporter Gregory Royal Pratt posted to social media that they had called him “to say Mayor Johnson mixed up Arwady, who was fired, with Jamie Rhee, who retired.”
That’s a bit hard to believe. 
Eng’s question referenced Guidice, who bailed out on Johnson 11 months before Chicago Department of Aviation Commissioner Rhee resigned in February. The resignation, along with the resignations of Civilian Office of Police Accountability chief Andrea Kersten and Office of Emergency Management & Communications director Jose Tirado, came just three days after Johnson publicly warned, “If you ain’t with us, you just gotta go.” And though these resignations made news, they did not spark the widespread umbrage sparked by Arwady’s ham-handed firing. Ramirez-Rosa did not have to go on a podcast to defend these decisions.
Taking the press office’s message to Pratt at face value, it speaks to massive incompetence. Between the posting of the Sun-Times interview last Friday morning and Eng’s interview Monday, someone in his shop should have attempted to correct the record and jar Johnson’s memory so he didn’t make the same weird mistake again.
But no. For a guy who maintains that his low public approval numbers are rooted in communication failures, Johnson sure hasn’t learned the art of effective communication.
If he wanted to start off with his own hand-picked team of department heads two years ago, well fine. We all understand that new elected leaders are entitled to do that, even when the department heads are experienced and popular. And we also all understand that if a department head is failing or defying the administration, that person has to go.
But all along, Johnson has dangled holdovers from the Lightfoot administration on strings and then let them go without public explanation — “Real eyes realize real lies” notwithstanding — leaving the impression that he’s arbitrary, mercurial and out of his depth.
Last week’s winning quip
If you lose your khakis in Ohio, it means you can't find your pants. But if you lose your khakis in Boston, it means you can't start your car.
Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-jokes poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.
Wikimedia Commons map of Canada
Our 51st state? No Cana-do
I will stipulate that President Donald Trump’s bluster about annexing Canada and making it our 51st state is likely just another shiny rhetorical object meant to distract us from his trampling of the rule of law, engaging in irresponsible trade wars and grifting. But still. He keeps mentioning it, and I thought I’d at least entertain the idea.
Putting all of Canada into one state would not pass the fairness test. According to 2025 estimates, eight of Canada’s 10 provinces are more populous than Wyoming, our smallest state by population (587,618 is the current estimate). They are:
Ontario — 16,182,641
Quebec — 9,111,629
British Columbia — 5,722,318
Alberta — 4,960,097
Manitoba — 1,504,023
Saskatchewan — 1,250,909
Nova Scotia — 1,079,627
New Brunswick — 775,610
By population, Ontario alone would be our fifth largest state, right between Pennsylvania and New York.
Quebec is a wee bit smaller than New Jersey, which currently is ranked 11th in population in the U.S.
British Columbia has nearly the same number of people as Minnesota, our 22nd largest state.
Alberta has nearly half a million more people in it than Louisiana, our 25th largest state.
Manitoba through New Brunswick would rank in the 40s, each of them larger than Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming. 
The two provinces that are smaller by population than U.S. states — Prince Edward Island (179,280) and Newfoundland and Labrador (545,579) — could merge, respectively, with Nova Scotia and Quebec. The lightly populated northern territories — Yukon (47,126), Northwest Territories (45,074) and Nunavut  (41,414) — would have to be absorbed into the provinces to their south.
(Admission: Before digging into these numbers and studying the above map, I couldn’t have told how how many provinces and territories Canada had or locate most of them aside from Ontario and Quebec.) 
Bottom line, annexing Canada fairly would result in eight new states, not one.
Gemini
Is joining the nations a crazy idea, even though an overwhelming percentage of Canadians oppose it — 80% to 90%, depending on the poll. 
On Medium, Mohammad Huwaidi, who has lived in both countries, listed some of the pros and cons:
Pros
Economic Synergy and Lower Taxes: Integration would bring Canada into the larger U.S. economy, creating opportunities for businesses and individuals. Eliminating trade barriers and standardizing policies could result in significant economic growth. Additionally, cutting Canada’s high income tax rates — common in its current social welfare model — would put more money into people’s pockets.  
Stronger Defense and Security: Becoming part of the U.S. would give Canada access to the world’s most advanced military infrastructure. …
Opportunities for Innovation: Merging with the U.S. would expose Canadians to a more competitive environment, fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. … 
Expanded Global Influence: Canada, as a single state within the U.S., would gain access to the global clout of the United States. Canadians would find their voices amplified on the international stage. …
Harmonized Policies and Infrastructure: Joining the U.S. would mean unified infrastructure, trade policies, and streamlined border management. …
Cons
Loss of Sovereignty and Identity: Canada’s unique cultural identity, deeply rooted in its values and history, would risk being overshadowed by the United States’ influence.  …
Healthcare Transition Challenges: Canadians cherish their universal healthcare system, and a shift to the U.S. model could lead to significant public dissatisfaction. …
Disparities in Political Representation: Canada would have far less political influence than it does as an independent nation. This could be a significant disadvantage in representing the interests of its people. …
Cultural and Social Differences
Despite similarities, Canada and the U.S. have notable cultural differences. Aligning these differences could be challenging and might lead to social friction.
 I’m curious if Americans would like to add eight new states:
POLL
Do you want the U.S. to add eight new states by annexing Canadian provinces?
Sure!
Nope
I'd be OK with Canada as one state
News & Views
News: Former Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, reacting to news that President Donald Trump is accepting the gift of a $400 million airplane from Qatar, said, “If this were Biden, we would be furious.”
View: About time! The lack of ethical consistency from conservative Republicans in the thrall of Trump has been brazen and nauseating. Decent lawmakers and party bigwigs should have been realizing this and saying it all along:  They can’t pitch a fit about Hunter Biden and then look away at Trump’s grifting, his violation of constitutional and legal norms, and his cruelty without appearing to be either partisan hacks or despicable cowards.  
News: “‘The Bear’ Season 4 Premieres June 25 With 10 New Episodes”
View: I’ll watch this justly acclaimed, Chicago-based Hulu series, just as I’ll watch Season 4 of “Ted Lasso” on Apple TV+, but a three-season arc for both shows seemed sufficient to me. 
News:  Democratic consultants David Axelrod and Pete Giangreco are urging Gov. J.B. Prtizker not to  run for reelection if he intends to make a White House bid.
View: Far be in from me to second-guess these veteran strategists, but I’d like to see Pritzker continue on as governor while he makes what I suspect will be an unsuccessful effort to win the Democratic presidential nomination. As the Sun-Times reported:
Overall, six presidents won the White House as sitting governors … The most recent example was Republican George W. Bush, who won the 2000 presidential election while he was Texas governor. Before him, Democrat Bill Clinton ran for and won the presidency in 1992 while serving as Arkansas governor. …
Eleven times, sitting governors were their parties’ presidential nominees but lost the election, including Democratic Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson in 1952.
The story also points out that seven men won the presidency after stepping down as governors, most recently Jimmy Carter (1976) and Ronald Reagan (1980).
News: Republican busybodies are trying again to ban pornography
View: Putative freedom-loving conservatives want to take away your freedom to view  content that "appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion," and "depicts, describes or represents actual or simulated sexual acts with the objective intent to arouse." Illinois own U.S. Rep. Mary Miller is a co-sponsor.
Land of Linkin’
Submitted for your approval: WGN-TV’s weekend meteorologist Mike Janssen has one of the all-time great voices.
Add to the list of good-news sites “Reasons to be Cheerful,” founded by David Byrne of  Talking Heads: “Through stories of hope, rooted in evidence, Reasons to be Cheerful aims to inspire us all to be curious about how the world can be better, and to ask ourselves how we can be part of that change.”
An eye-opener from Axios: “Here's what it'd actually take for Trump to revive Alcatraz.” The story does not include a cost estimate, but The Associated Press put the figure at $3 billion. and The Independent added “Everything you need to know about Trump’s bizarre plan to reopen Alcatraz.”  
Austin Berg of the Illinois Policy Institute and I were paired up for the most recent episode of Mike Pesca’s “Not Even Mad” podcast.
Reader Bob E. points us to a 2020 article from Illinois Public Media, “Five Charts That Show Who’s Leaving Illinois And Why.”
Curious about contra dancing? Sierra Walden of Bloomington, Indiana’s Harmony School has just released “Thank Your Partner,” a 15-minute documentary. If you like what you see, check out the Chicago Barn Dance Company website.  
Work requirements for Medicaid recipients? A 2020 research paper in the journal Health Affairs, “Medicaid Work Requirements In Arkansas: Two-Year Impacts On Coverage, Employment, And Affordability Of Care,” concluded that they do not promote employment.
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 pact is backfiring”: The Wall Street Journal reports (a gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters) that a venerable New York law firm that cut a deal with Trump is bleeding lawyers.
■ As Trump’s pick for the U.S. attorney in Washington, Fox host Jeanine Pirro, prepared to be sworn in, a Washington Post editorial (another gift link) suggested the appointment is illegal.
■ A “Saturday Night Live” cast member was injured mid-show on Saturday, appearing with a crutch as the credits rolled.
■ Popular Information’s Judd Legum: “Why Qatar is bribing Trump.”
■ Contrarian Jen Rubin: The president’s willingness to accept a Qatari “gift” of a luxury jet is looking like “too much grift … even for MAGA Republicans?”
■ Lawyer Robert Hubbell takes a stab at answering a common question from his readers: “How does Trump get away with it?”
■ Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Sunday detained a U.S.-born American citizen—progressive Twitch pundit Hasan Piker—at O’Hare. Apparently, Wonkette’s Evan Hurst says, for “no other reason besides his political beliefs and the fact that he says them out loud, to people who subscribe to him.” Piker says, “They straight up tried to get something out of me that … they could use to basically detain me permanently.”
■ Marisa Kabas at The Handbasket: “The Trump administration is willing to sic its agents on media personalities.”
■ Piker gave “The Daily Show” a tour of the internet’s toxic “manosphere.”
■ The Intercept: Journalism students studying in a Columbia University library were suspended for a protest they took no part in.
■ Mediaite: “MAGA stars completely lose it over Leo XIV’s anti-Trump tweets.”
■ The Sun-Times reports that the public Facebook account of the older of the Chicago-born pope’s brothers is rife with hateful stuff—such as “anyone with a transgender child is ‘a sh__ty parent,’ former House Speaker and fellow Catholic Nancy Pelosi is a ‘drunken c___’ and ‘anti-Trump Democrats’ should ‘be arrested and tried for subversion and even treason against the U.S.A.’” But Louis Prevost has acknowledged he needs to tone it down for his brother’s sake: “I don’t want to get him in trouble or raise any grief.”
■ A suburban store dedicated to selling Trump-themed stuff faces closure for violating municipal sign and building codes.
■ Pritzker vs. “puppy-killer”: The Daily Beast says Illinois’ governor made clear that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s visit to Springfield wasn’t his idea. Read his news release: “We would urge all pet owners in the region to make sure all of your beloved animals are under watchful protection.”
■ The Handbasket: In D.C., Noem was denied “another camera-ready moment of cruelty.”
■ The AP reports that Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman raised alarms with a wild outburst—“Why does everyone hate me? What did I ever do?”—at a meeting with union representatives.
■ A New York City teacher shares a firsthand account: “My school banned phones for the year. Here’s what happened.”
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Just one of the goddamn days
I had a good seat at the recent event for Chicago Fights Back at the Hideout at which Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg spoke and read from his most recent book, “Every Goddamn Day — A Highly Selective, Definitely Opinionated, and Alternatingly Humorous and  Heartbreaking Historical Tour of Chicago.” Here’s the entry for  Dec. 10, 1924: 
Mary Schmich photo
Mary Schmich: Growing up Catholic in the South
I grew up Catholic in the 1950s and ’60s, in that strict German-Irish-Latin-Mass way so prevalent in those days.
But this was in the South, which made it different. Catholics were a fringe group in the South, and at one point even targets of the Ku Klux Klan. I didn’t think about that as long we were in Catholic schools. In fact, I thought the Protestants were the strange people and I didn’t understand why they had so many churches, plus something exotic called Vacation Bible School. I mean, who read the Bible? Not the Catholics I knew. Snippets of epistles and gospels, fine. But the Catholics I knew limited themselves to a few Biblical excerpts intoned from the pulpit and they never opened the whole dang book.
But when I was in 6th grade, my parents could no longer afford — or even pretend to afford — Catholic school tuition and so we transferred to public schools. I was surrounded by aliens! Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists! Even Lutherans! What were Lutherans?
I was puzzled when, one day during recess at my new public school, a boy walked up to me on the playground and said, “Go back to your own school.”
During that period, my seven younger siblings and I were living in my grandfather’s house in Macon, Ga. My father had gone bankrupt and we couldn’t afford food or rent, so my mother took us to live with her father.
My father, meanwhile, went to live on the outskirts of Atlanta, where he ran a Norge Village laundromat and sold Amway and Encyclopedia Americanas door-to-door.
But Dad usually came to visit on the weekends — in part, I think, to make sure we went to Sunday Mass. My free-thinking Southern mother was a convert and was more relaxed in her approach to sin and damnation, but he was an Iowa Catholic — meaning old-school. In his little town of Carroll, Catholics were divided between the Irish and the Germans, as distinct and divided as the Sharks and the Jets. They did, however, share certain things, among them the conviction that hell was always waiting for those who disobeyed the edicts of The Church.
There were two Catholic churches in Macon — a lot for a small Southern town. One was St. Joseph’s, the big church for white people, a sanctuary of stained glass and marble that stood on a hill downtown.
The other was St. Peter Claver, the little brick Black church on a street of shacks. The two churches weren’t far apart in miles, but racial segregation was as fortified as a stone wall.
But at some point, when I was in seventh and eighth grades, my family and I started going on some Sundays to St. Peter Claver. We were the only white people there except for the priest and nuns. I’ve never quite known why we started doing that.
Was it because my mother, in her kind and quiet way, always made it clear to us that forced segregation and its attendant evils were wrong? Or because my father felt it was easier to be poor in the little Black church than in the fancy White one?
These memories have been sparked by two recent events. One: the death of the egalitarian humanitarian Pope Francis. And two: I was in Macon last month and I stopped by St. Peter Claver to see what was going on.
It was food pantry day at the church, and I found several white women and a couple of Black men assembling brown bags of food. The place was modestly spiffed up. One of the women let me into the locked sanctuary and I gazed around, remembering how our family of 10 would line up in the back pew. One of the parishioners sometimes took my sister Gina in her arms to quiet her crying.
On the day of my visit, I was told that in the ‘70s, the church became racially integrated. Now, I was told, the church has a large Hispanic population and popular Spanish Mass. And many of those Spanish speakers are here—working— without legal papers. So in the past few months, in the menacing conditions of a new administration, many of them have been afraid to come to church.
Standing in that small beautiful sanctuary I saw a vast sweep of American history, the good and the bad and the ever-changing.
Programming note
For three and half years, my former colleague Mary Schmich has generously allowed me to share the occasional column-like entries like the above that she posts to Facebook   — musings, updated thoughts, poems (hers and others) and long photo captions.  
After my sharing this post (from April 23), she’s decided to step out of this particular limelight, but you can still find her on Facebook, and of course I’ll update readers on her latest projects — most recently the critically acclaimed podcast series “Division Street Revisited” — and the annual progress on our “Songs of Good Cheer” shows.
Big thanks to her for a great run.
One way to deter vandals
Reader submission
Minced Words
Cate Plys, Marj Halperin and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. Are we Pope’d out? No! Also: The gift airplane from Qatar, the new book on the cover-up of former President Joe Biden’s mental decline while in office and Brandon Johnson at the midway point of his first term.
Recommendations:
John: A green light for humorist Dave Barry’s new book, “Class Clown.”
Marj: A green light for “The Residence,” a Netflix drama.
Cate:  A green light for fennel seeds.
Eric: A green light for “The Pitt” on what will soon once again be known as HBO Max.
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
You are about to watch the whole world respect a person’s chosen name. It’s that easy. — unknown
For many years I refused to touch (the Chicago Tribune), since doing so seemed like laying flowers on the grave of its former publisher, xenophobe and Hitler bootlicker Col. Robert McCormick. — Neil Steinberg*
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. — unknown
And so the Greeks sent me this horse. We're talking about one of the most beautiful horses you've ever seen. So big. So strong. Normally they keep this kind of horse for themselves, but they were such big fans. They said, “Sir, please take our big wonderful horse. Will even bring it to your house.” —  Drew Magary
If you dislike Pope Leo XIV because he is too liberal, I have some very bad news for you about Jesus. — unknown
When any Democratic politician, including Gov. JB Pritzker, dares to stand up to extreme Republican rhetoric with any language beyond polite pablum and pious platitudes, pundits tell Democrats to lower the volume, cut the contempt and be nice. Democrats might alienate some putative centrist voter, and it just lowers the dignity of our political discourse. Heaven forbid Democrats do such damage to our precious polite political discourse! Meanwhile, Republicans such as our current president spew contempt like volcanoes of hatred, prejudice and madness. And that’s regrettable, but Democrats should be nice? While the Republican lava flow of contempt incinerates our constitutional separations of powers, our economy and (especially for women) our very bodily liberty, we must be nice. — Bill Savage
Can girls have 30 dolls if they’re a gift from Qatar? — unknown
(The attack on Ukraine was an) imperialist invasion in which Russia wants to conquer territory for reasons of power given Ukraine’s strategic location — Then-Bishop Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, in 2022   
Personally, I think telling kids they'll have fewer toys for Christmas because of your tariffs while having yourself a $45 million military birthday parade is kind of a dick move, but what do I know? — unknown 
*This line reminds me of a very old joke someone told me when I first came to work for the Trib: A first grade teacher in Chicago called the home of a student to speak to his parents. “Today in class I asked the children what their parents did for a living,” she said. “And Bobby told me his father plays piano in a house of prostitution. Is that true?” “Well, no,” answered the mother. “His father is a reporter for the Tribune, but you’re not going to tell a child that.”
Split decision
Last week I argued that the Tribune’s front-page photograph showing U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky weeping after she announced that she will not seek re-election last year was misleading and unflattering. But many of my friends in the journalism community thought the photo captured a beautiful moment. I took a click poll and, for the first time, saw a 50/50 split:
My last word on this is that, yes, it was a emotional moment on an emotional day, but  making it the lead photo was akin to putting a photo of a sobbing mother of the bride on the cover of a wedding album.
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest: 
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
My boss arrived at work in a brand new Lamborghini. I said, “Wow, that’s an amazing car.” He replied, “If you work hard, put all your hours in and strive for excellence, I’ll get another one next year” — @weekdayjokes
Bewildering that more songs have been written about West Virginia than Funky Town. — @benedictsre
I'll never forget my grandpa’s last words:  "Quit shaking the ladder you little shit!" — @UncleBob56
People talk about AI being a “friend,” but my real friends would never hesitate to infringe on Disney intellectual property if I needed help designing a birthday card. — @johncoogan  
I can't believe anyone can't believe I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is not butter. — @wheeltod.bsky.social‬
There are people in this world who have never heard a dial tone. — @poutinesmoothie
Me: This is my favorite. I would like to buy this exact same item of clothing again The Fashion Industry: No. — @bestestname
Packer fans, your souls have never been in greater danger. — @Longwall26.bsky.social
Pony: Is this your card? Me: Yes! Cool trick! Pony: Thanks! Me: Can you do any others? Pony: *sighs* No. — @uncleduke1969.bsky.social
If I start a sentence “I find it interesting…” what I probably mean is, it pisses me off. — @ddsmidt
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.”
Subscribe and don't miss a single poll!
Good Sports
Rocky bottom?
I find the ineptitude of the Colorado Rockies this year to be fascinating, and for the foreseeable future, I intend to keep track of their bid to avoid losing 122 games this season and snatching from the White Sox the distinction of owning the most number of losses in MLB history. 
After 43 games, the Rockies are 7-36  (.162)  . At the same point in the season last May, the White Sox were 13-30 (.302). They’re now 14-29 (.326)
The Rockies fired manager Bud Black on Sunday, a day after a football-score 21-0 loss to the San Diego Padres. I tend to think baseball managers take way too much blame for ineptitude on the field, but I suppose long-suffering fans want to see ownership doing something. 
It might be hopeless. Yahoo Sports reports:
Little help will be coming from a minor-league system that ranks 18th among baseball's 30 organizations, according to MLB.com. The payroll is saddled with horrible contracts, such as the seven-year, $182 million pact with (former Cub) Kris Bryant, who has played 170 games in his four seasons with Colorado and just had surgery to alleviate a degenerative lumbar condition.
 The Rockies are on pace to lose 136 games this year, which will cheer Sox fans from here to Rome. 
Telander returns!
Former Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander has penned a profile of Bears’ top draft pick Colston Loveland for Fox 32.
Green Light
Green Light features recommendations from me and readers not only of songs — as in the former Tune of the Week post — but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on. Email me your nominations, and please include a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links, perhaps including excerpts from reviews or background articles. For TV shows, please include links to trailers/previews on YouTube and advice on where to stream them. The debut nomination is from Mark K.:
I'd like to nominate Flow, this year's winner of the Oscar for best animated feature. I finally watched it a couple of days ago, and it's still staying with me. Adults might overlook animated movies, but this one is really special and should not be missed. Beautifully crafted, with a hypnotic, affecting score, exploring universal themes of resilience, empathy and kinship, very relevant to current times, without a single word of dialog.
The Wrap reports that “you can watch “Flow” on streaming with a subscription to  HBO Max, or find it available to rent or purchase on most major digital platforms.”
Info
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. Browse and search back issues here.
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
Email the Picayune Sentinel
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.
If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.
Social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn 
Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social 
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5
Help?
If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.
Thanks for reading!
Give a gift subscription
Share
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

2025-05-20 Eric Zorn
Tue, 20 May 2025 10:03:00 GMT
Yes, Biden was loopy. But Trump is loopier  & an early contender for typo of the year
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Yes, Biden was loopy. But Trump is loopier 
 & an early contender for typo of the year
May 20

READ IN APP

To read this issue in your browser, click on the headline above.
 Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.
Upgrade to paid
Yes, Biden was slipping into senescence, but let’s not lose track of the fact that Trump is a gibbering fool
This is a word-for-word transcript from President Donald Trump’s rambling monologue last week at a roundtable for military contractors, beginning at about the 3:58 mark of this video.  
 (Military drones are) very good, too and fast and deadly. Horrible, actually. When you look at what's happening with Russia and Ukraine, the drone is killing tremendous numbers of people. You hide behind a tree, and the drone comes down and it circles you with fire. You don't have a chance. The tree comes down also, by the way. It’s so intense. I mean, you see these trees being knocked down like — like they’re being sawed down by a top-of-the-line timberman like — like you know who? Sean Duffy. Do you know that? Sean Duffy, the head of the Transportation Department, who’s working right now on the airports and getting a system because Biden didn’t do a thing for four years and Pete Buttigieg was the head. And he goes bicycling to work. He takes a bicycle to work, can you believe it? He’s running the biggest air system in the world and he takes a bicycle to work. What a — And they say he's going to run for president. I don't see it. Who knows? Right? But I don't see it. But, when I look at what they've done. It’s so horrible what they have done. And the work they did do they wasted billions of dollars in trying to hook up air systems to copper, and they tried to hook up copper to glass, and the glass doesn’t work with the copper. And they had 30,000 different contractors doing 30,000 jobs, and when they put it all together they spent billions of dollars, it didn't even come close to working. And we're going to be giving out a brand new system. It's very important. We’ll have the best system and we think we know who that system is. But we have a lot of a lot of bidding. But we want one check. We want a unified system. We don't want to have 5,000 contractors in all different places, some digging ditches and some not doing ditches because they want to go by satellite— satellite seems to be the way to go— but, so, we're going to be giving that out pretty soon. But what people don't know about Sean, as I mentioned, lumberjacks. That Sean, you probably didn't know this — I’m not talking about this Sean, this Sean, no, not, this is a different Sean. Sean Duffy the head of transportation. He’s a great Sean though, I have to tell you. But Sean Duffy was the world champion for five years, climbing trees and down, up and down, world champion. So that’s what you call a serious lumberjack. And he’s doing a fantastic job, too. A really respected guy and terrific guy. And I mentioned the champion because when somebody’s a champion — he’s the world champion for a long time, he came down, when you come down those trees, coming down at a rapid — He said that started getting your back. You will often break your back. You miss a shot, and you’re coming down a lot faster than the human body was meant to come down. But he's doing a fantastic job at transportation.
If an elderly relative were prattling along incoherently like this, it would be cause for mild concern. That the president of the United States is prattling incoherently like this on the world stage ought to be cause for significant alarms.
Trump calls his goofy, disconnected oratorical style “the weave,” but I call it “the babble.” It’s every bit if not more troubling and disqualifying than his predecessor’s occasionally weak and confused utterances. 
I don’t discount or diminish Biden’s manifest unfitness for a second term, the subject of “Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” a book by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson published today.  The book already has many staunch Democrats in a rage, claiming:    
That its thesis is not true
That even if it were true, Biden still did a great deal of good as president
That this medical retrospective is no longer relevant 
That it’s a distraction from the horrific truth that a mentally unfit man is currently the president
No, yes, no, yes. Tapper and Thompson have the receipts and Biden’s physical and mental health were failing him to the point where it was plain he would not be up to doing the toughest job in the world for four more years. And this was before we learned his week of his prostate cancer diagnosis.
And though Biden was overall a pretty good president in the view of most of us who are on the left, the blinkered denial of his unfitness for reelection was shameful and obtuse. We can’t demand that Republicans recognize the unfitness for office of their Dear Leader unless we admit to our own failure to demand that Biden step aside early in the campaign cycle and to stop, for the love of God, pretending that he was still up for the job.  
The audio of Biden’s interviews with special counsel Robert Hur came out this week, totally vindicating Hur’s observation that Biden was an “elderly man with a poor memory.”  That observation, as well as isolated news accounts of Biden’s slipping mental gears, provoked conniptions of indignation from Biden world until, of course, that disastrous debate performance when he bleated “we beat Medicare.”
Moderate voters who take note of the continued furious denials and attacks on Tapper  and Thompson from the what-about caucus will have cause to distrust any candidate who continues to be a senescence denialist, just as they have cause to distrust any candidate on the right who continues to be a 2020 election denialist.
To quote The Associated Press:
“The stench of Joe Biden still lingers on the Democratic Party,” Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett said. “We have to do the hard work of fixing that, and I think that includes telling the truth, frankly, about when we were wrong.”
Sean Duffy was a lumberjack, and that’s OK
CNN reports he was a two-time winner of the Lumberjack World Championships speed-climbing competition. On Instagram, Duffy’s wife says he was a three-time champion.  But who’s counting (besides not Trump)?
Typo of the year (so far)
It took just 37 minutes for the Sun-Times to issue a corrected version of its “Morning Edition” email newsletter — he’s the Chicago-born pope — but the idea of a Chicago-porn pope delighted my friends on Facebook:
Marti J. Sladek —  Chicago porn is a hot dog with ketchup.
Tim Tuten —  I heard he’s a big White Sex fan!
Lou Carlozo — Wait, that’s not a pope typo that’s an EXCLUSIVE!
Nick Cole —  I've always felt Chicago porn is the best porn, but I'm hopelessly provincial.
John Greenfield —  Sorry, there was only one Chicago porn pope.  
Chris Duffy — Pope Leo XXX!
Notes and comments from readers — lightly edited — along with my responses
On Brandon Johnson’s multiple misstatements about the firing of Dr. Allison Arwady
Thursday’s lead item was about Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s repeated and false insistence that he didn’t fire city health commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady in August 2023. Here are some letters about that:
Alan Kuska —  Dr. Arwady was a hack. She shut down the city and only pretended to buck the CTU. Ask any restaurant owner downtown what they think of Arwady. Public health officials completely discredited themselves in 2020 and 2021. None of them will admit that the lockdowns caused more harm than good, and that we made the same mistakes as during the Spanish Flu in pushing useless masks and quarantines of healthy people. And why do you think that throwing progressive icon Brandon Johnson under the bus is going to help his billionaire buddy JB get elected president?
Zorn — So easy to second-guess! It was a confusing and frightening time in early 2020. Nobody really knew exactly what the risks were and how to contain them. Arwady was hardly alone — see “Half of humanity now on lockdown as 90 countries call for confinement.” A University of Michigan study concluded, with striking specificity, that “from March through August 2020, implementing widespread lockdowns and other mitigation in the United States potentially saved more lives (866,350 to 1,711,150) than the number of lives potentially lost (57,922 to 245,055) that were attributable to the economic downturn.”  Quantifying harms and benefits even in retrospect is difficult, and anticipating what to do when the next pandemic hits — as surely it will — won’t be simple and straightforward even in light of what we’ve learned from efforts to mitigate the impact of this virus and its mutations. Arwady, like most of the world’s public health officials, was acting in what she believed to be the best way to “flatten the curve” of COVID-19 and save lives. That she — and many others — made mistakes in the moment doesn’t make her — or the others — “hacks.” 
Johnson owed her that much understanding. He owed her a chance to at least talk though their differences in a meeting and he owed her a more graceful exit.  He richly deserves a metaphorical toss under the figurative bus for the way he handled that situation, and I see no connection whatsoever to that critique and JB Pritzker’s chances at the presidency, which I consider slim.
C. Pittman — I totally agree that the firing of Arwady was such an obviously vindictive act as a payback for her push to open schools against the CTU's desire to work from home. So Trumpian!! But the problem of "not getting into the weeds of when schools should have been reopened," as you put it, is a mistake made by journalists, as well as all Democrats and the Biden administration. 
If Democrats in congress, or the Biden administration's CDC would have done a transparent and scientific look at the decisions made in managing COVID-19, it would have shown the voters that they really did "follow the science" and help us all learn lessons for future pandemics. It would have helped de-fang the far right to show that Democratic governing bodies could evaluate scientific data and admit mistakes and might have increased support for the vaccines and the wearing of masks. At what point in a pandemic is it so widespread that closings even matter, would be good to know for the future. The learning loss and mental health toll for kids has been well documented. The fact that the majority of school districts had opened up throughout the suburbs and nation with no negative effects, while the CTU was still insisting on closings was ridiculous to most parents and voters.
And about his disagreement with Arwady over whether to reopen community mental health centers or follow the Emanuel/Lightfoot model of subsidizing not-for-profit providers, I wish someone would do an in-depth look at the effectiveness of these two approaches. Other than hiring more city employees, spending on fixed structures, and future pension costs, are the numbers of clients being served actually increasing or decreasing? Are outcomes any different?
Zorn — I think it’s notable that Lightfoot, who had vowed to reopen the clinics, changed her mind when she looked at the data.  This does seem like an excellent topic for investigative reporters to dig into.
Ben — I remember Dr. Arwady's firing distinctly because I found it so shocking at the time. It was one of Johnson's most Trumpian acts, disposing of an expert so overqualified for her position that we were lucky to have her in the first place.
On the effort to outlaw pornography
In News & Views last week I noted that Republicans were once again trying to ban porn. 
Jake H. —  I don't agree with banning porn generally of course, but I gotta say that I'm pretty sympathetic with attempts to rein it in. See this, for example, from NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof about Pornhub:
The  site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. A search for 'girls under18' (no space) or '14yo' leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren’t of children being assaulted, but too many are.
The article goes on to describe a site that caters to sicko misogynistic depravity that harms real people.  
I don't know enough about proposed solutions and/or how well they would work, but I think seeking to rein in the current porn free-for-all —  especially as it relates to kids' access and unauthorized and/or actually criminal content — would be a great and politically popular idea.  
Joanie Wimmer — There  are already laws prohibiting possession of child pornography, revenge porn, photographing people in the shower without their consent, sexual assault, and the other bad things Jake H. cites in regard to porn hub. So this law proposed by Republicans is not about making those things unlawful. It’s about making it illegal to show, or possess, or watch anything which “appeals to the prurient interest in [among other things] sex.”
This Republican proposed law really seems to be all about control, and seems to be related to their obsession about controlling female sexuality. They want women to have sex only for purposes of procreation. So they want to outlaw books and movies with a prurient interest in sex, outlaw abortion, outlaw contraception, etc.
Sexual intimacy and the desire and need for sexual intimacy is a part of the human condition. It’s wild; it’s beautiful; it’s mysterious, and it’s lovely. And this law, which seeks to regulate, limit, and control how people express themselves about this very personal aspect of what it means to be human is really fascism on steroids.
John Houck — The same morally superior people who attack trans women for using the bathroom, have a hissy fit over drag queens reading to kids, want to end gay marriage, etc., and now are back to trying to ban pornography over its “prurient content” — those people also voted three times for Donald Trump who bragged about sexually assaulting women and walking in on underage girls as they changed clothes at his beauty pageant, was held liable for sexually assaulting one woman, and was credibly accused in other incidents. Those people can sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.
Pondering the 23-year-old Bob Greene scandal 
My tribute to the recently deceased media critic Michael Miner led, in last week’s Z-mail, to a discussion of Tribune columnist Bob Greene’s departure from the paper in 2002. 
Steven K. — The Chicago Magazine article detailing the abrupt end of Greene’s career at the Tribune shed a lot of light, but it makes me realize how much my view of him and the details of his downfall have shifted over 23 years. Like many people, I couldn’t stand Greene’s cloying, saccharin writing style and maudlin sentimentality, and thus felt a surge of schadenfreude on the Sunday that I looked at the front page of the Trib and read the details of his ouster. Good riddance, I thought.
But in hindsight, I think that judgement was kind of harsh. No one was making me read Greene’s columns, yet I did read them, and if others found gold where I saw nothing but dross, then who was I to take pleasure in their loss?
I guess since I wasn’t a reader of the Chicago Reader — which ran Neil Steinberg’s “Bob Watch” column under a pseudonym — or Spy magazine — which referred to his work as "the journalistic equivalent of Tuna Helper" in Magda Krance’s December, 1988  article, "You Wouldn't Want to Be Bob Greene" — I was unaware of how much hostility there was toward Greene from some of his fellow journalistic brethren. 
Although much of that would seem to come from the same sort of objections to his style of journalism that I had, it’s difficult to consider that hostility without sensing a little bit of professional jealousy. That Greene made a lot more money, had a bigger office, had a larger profile and pedigree that many other journalists might have felt was undeserved would make some resentment understandable, but the degree to which some of it came out seemed a bit too vindictive. 
This is especially true in some of the sanctimonious indignation (and glee) that erupted in the wake of Greene’s downfall, despite the fact that all he seemed to have done was taken advantage of a perk that has been indulged by countless politicians, pop stars and rock gods. 
My own distaste for Greene had also, I think, prevented me from giving proper consideration to the woman who got him fired and what her motives were. Chicago Magazine shields her identity (not sure why), but the background details that are provided, along with the phone call that she made to Greene and a few other hints make it fairly obvious that she was either attempting, or setting the stage for attempting a shakedown. Not exactly a sympathetic figure.
Zorn — Greene did not have a particularly big office, but he did have a big following and a big presence on the national scene, with regular star turns on ABC’s “Nightline” and features in Esquire along with broad syndication of his columns. My memories of how those of us on staff thought of him in those days was not that we were jealous so much as that we resented him for giving his best work and finest efforts to national media outlets and book projects while lazily bleating on and on about child custody cases and indulging in his taste for cultural nostalgia in his newspaper columns.  In my view, when Greene was on his game he was excellent — a keen observer and a clear writer — and his editors should have insisted that he give newspaper readers his best efforts, not his sloppy seconds.
What happened?  Here’s Chicago Magazine:
As a 17-year-old high school senior in 1988, (Greene’s accuser) had arranged an interview with Greene for a school project. Her parents had driven her downtown and waited while she completed her assignment. (Greene later wrote a column about their interview).  A few months later, after she had graduated from high school, Greene and she saw each other several times over dinner and at least once they went to a hotel, where they had a sexual liaison. … (In 2002), she called Greene to congratulate him on the publication of (his new book) “Once Upon a Town,” but, according to one account, she also mentioned that she was writing a book — one that would touch on their relationship. She implied that Greene would not be pleased by her revelations. Greene told the FBI that he felt threatened by her calls. When contacted by the bureau, the young woman denied that she had made any threats.
The FBI quickly closed its investigation.  But the woman, then 32, was angry that Greene had sicced the FBI on her, and sent an email to the Tribune outlining his indiscretion 14 years earlier.  Neither he nor those in charge at the Tribune have revealed just what transpired in the days that followed. Here’s from a Tribune article published the day after his resignation was announced: 
In a meeting Monday with Tribune staff members, Editor Ann Marie Lipinski delivered a somber address in which she acknowledged that she was not free to disclose additional details of the newspaper’s internal investigation.
Lipinski heard strong support from her staff but also was asked pointed questions, several of which came back to the same issue: What part of Greene’s behavior, in particular, violated Tribune policy?
“This was not a judgment about a personal choice that somebody makes,” Lipinski said. Rather, she said, the case was an example of Greene using his “status and position at the paper in a way that causes conflict” for the Tribune.
Author and blogger John Scalzi weighed in with a question that’s still unanswered:
I do have to wonder what the problem is here. Greene’s sleeping with a teenage woman is gross to think about, but they were both of legal age, and even if she was just barely so, “just barely so,” counts as legal. So far as I know, Greene applied no coercion other than his not-especially-dazzling celebrity, and as everyone knows, if a great many celebrities didn’t do that (especially the not-especially-dazzling ones, and especially ones, like Greene, who have a face for radio) they wouldn’t get any action at all; they’re just as lumpy and furtive as the rest of us.
Journalistically speaking, having sex with someone in one of your stories isn’t very smart and is definitely suspension-worthy (a nice long “leave of absence” would have been good), but it’s not a crime. From what I can tell, Greene even waited until after he had written about the woman to hit her up. The Tribune is labeling it a “breach of trust” between journalist and subject, but if he did in fact wait until after he had written about her (and did not write about her post-boinkage), where is the breach? What I see is simply middle-age-death-denying sex, which God knows is common enough. Unseemly, sad and more than a little creepy, but there are worse things a journalist can do. Hell, it’s not plagiarism.
True. He was no longer reporting on her, and it’s not uncommon for journalists to date and even marry people they meet when acting in their professional capacity (it’s how Johanna and I met).  There was never any suggestion that their sexual contact was anything other than consensual. 
Would it have made a difference if the woman with whom Greene had a liaison had been in her late 20s instead of her late teens? If Greene had not been married? If he’d not cultivated the image of a humble, wholesome Baby Boomer? If he’d contacted his editors and been honest with them instead of going to the FBI when  the woman reached out to him?  
I’ve even wondered if Greene’s career would have survived this scandal if he’d had more allies in the newsroom.  After all, the widely beloved columnist Mike Royko didn’t even get suspended when he actually did break the law — caused an accident in 1994 while driving drunk and then resisted arrest in a particularly ugly fashion.   Here’s the account of that incident from the aforementioned Michael Miner:
According to the (police) report,  (Royko) pushed one cop in the chest and shouted, “Fuck you, fag. Get your fucking hands off me. Jag off, queer,” and yelled at ambulance attendants trying to examine his bleeding head, “Get away from me! What are you — fags? Why are you wearing those fag gloves for?”
Tribune management deemed Royko’s offenses, to which he pleaded guilty, “personal matters.”
Unpopular opinions?
 I’m simply going to channel an opinion I’ve been seeing repeatedly on social media with which I disagree (see above):  It’s unseemly and inappropriate at this time to focus attention on the Democratic Party’s failure to recognize and admit to Joe Biden’s weakened mental and physical state and to make sure early on that he would not run for reelection in 2024.
POLL
Is it important for Democrats to reckon now with Joe Biden's decline and the party's failure to get him to step aside sooner prior to the 2024 election?
No. Move along! Focus on Trump
 No, Biden was doing fine
Yes. Learn from this mistake
Last week’s result
The discussion in the comment thread on this topic was lively:
Marc Martinez —  I’m surprised at the number of  “not my business, but I say yes” to female ordination responses. Why nitpick about any particular belief of a religious sect that one rejects? Opinions of non-believers regarding roles, or dress, or dietary rules, or whatever seem like itemized rejection of beliefs that have already been rejected in whole. I am indifferent to the way any sect practices its rites or manages the evolution of those practices. I have no problem with criticizing human rights abuses in religions, cultures, and judicial systems. Stoning adulterers and executing or imprisoning heretics are also practices which we do not hesitate to condemn.
Who can wear a robe or perform a rite are not in the same category. I don't see many people demanding rights for Amish and Mennonite women. Many Islamic women accept far more restrictions, even when living in Western countries. Hasidic Jews have strict rules, and their members often submit to rabbinical courts.
I wish people of every country in the world enjoyed the same rights, freedoms, and protections as we enjoy in the U.S. Taking a position against abuse, punishment, and murder of people, for any reason, is something I agree with. I don't think the rules for who can perform the roles and rites of a religion is in the same category.
Wendy C. — I disagree. The oppression of women for religious reasons is wrong and should not be taken for granted, and certainly should not be considered a rejection of a religious belief in its entirety. The harm suffered by women worldwide due to spiritual laws and restrictions is real. In any form, it's discrimination.
Mark K.  — Female genital mutilation is still practiced by some religious sects, I would hope no one here is indifferent to that. I know that's not what we're talking about here, but it's certainly within reason to have an opinion on how religious practices infringe on equality and other human rights.
 Skeptic — I am in the group that voted that way. We are all part of the same society. What they do affects us all. Similarly, I care about leaders and lawmakers elected in jurisdictions that I am not a part of for the same reason.
Joanie Wimmer —  The Catholic Church has about 1.4 billion adherents, many of whom demand, sometimes successfully, that we enact laws reflecting the doctrines of the Church (see the current abortion bans in many states). Another is that church doctrine has been and is currently being used to justify hatred against particular classes of people: women, gays and lesbians, transgender people, that would be difficult to justify in any other way.
This occasional Tuesday feature is intended to highlight opinions that are defensible but may well be unpopular. If you have one to add, leave it in comments or send me an email, but be sure to offer at least a paragraph in defense of your view. 
From the suggestion box
I’m responding for the next few weeks to some of the hundreds of anonymous suggestions/comments that readers posted to my recent reader survey:
 Suggestion:  Don’t link to any articles behind paywalls in Land of Linkin’ and Squaring Up the News. It’s frustrating.
Reply: I share the feeling of frustration and I wish more publications included a few freebies each month or offered a way to pay a small amount to read one article rather than ask you sign up.  Charlie Meyerson and I try to include gift links when possible, but we also recognize that publications need revenue to continue operating. 
Suggestion:  Offer ranked-choice voting in the quip and joke polls, and provide a “none of the above” option for those who don’t find any of the finalists funny. 
Reply: Ranked-choice voting is possible in  the CrowdSignal app I use, but I worry that it would be too fussy and therefore too time consuming for most readers. But I’ll try it one of these weeks to see how you all like it.  As for “none of the above,” I feel that introduces excessive negativity into the results.  I know when too many of the entries are stinkers because the overall total of votes drops (and I’m usually aware of it)   
NewsWheel
Inspired by the WordWheel puzzle in the Monday-Friday Chicago Tribune and other papers, this puzzle asks you to identify the missing letter that will make a word or words — possibly proper nouns; reading either clockwise or counterclockwise — related to a story in the news or other current event. The answer is at the bottom of the newsletter.
The week’s best visual jokes
Here are some funny visual images I've come across recently on social media. Enjoy, then evaluate:
POLL
Which of the above visual jokes is the best?
Miss Clogged Drain pageant
Naughty Cat is not a strip club!
My hands are Tide
Emily Blunt / Emily Sharp
Copy / paste
 There’s still time to vote in the conventional Quip of the Week poll!
Thanks to paid subscribers for supporting the Picayune Sentinel. To help this publication grow, please consider spreading the word to friends, family, associates, neighbors and agreeable strangers. 
Visit the Picayune Sentinel archives
Give a gift subscription
Info 
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. 
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
Email the Picayune Sentinel
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.
If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.
Social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn 
Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social 
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ejzorn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5
Help?
 If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.
Answer to the NewsWheel puzzle
PROSTATE
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

2025-05-22 Eric Zorn
Thu, 22 May 2025 10:03:08 GMT
Artificial Ignorance The Sun-Times' fake-books pratfall exposes the perils of relying on AI and invites a closer look at the 'premium issue' scam
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Artificial Ignorance 
The Sun-Times' fake-books pratfall exposes the perils of relying on AI and invites a closer look at the 'premium issue' scam
May 22

READ IN APP

5-22-2025 (issue No. 194)
This week:
Artificial Ignorance — Here’s hoping that the embarrassing news about how the use of AI infected a Sun-Times Sunday supplement will finally wake the public to the sleazy way newspapers’ corporate owners use these supplements to rake in extra money
Last week’s winning quip
News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked
Meet ‘The Biblioracle’ — An interview with the Tribune’s freelance book columnist
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week
Good Sports — On Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese
Green Light — Reader Scott Tepper recommends you check out the vocal stylings of the late Eva Cassidy
Programming notes: There will be no Picayune Plus next Tuesday because Monday is Memorial Day.  Also, a reminder that, with no hard feelings, Mary Schmich has chosen to no longer be a regular contributor to the Picayune Sentinel. 
Subscribe or upgrade your subscription
Will the embarrassing news about the Sun-Times ‘premium edition’ finally wake the public to this sleazy scam?
It made international news when a supplement to last Sunday’s Chicago Sun-Times contained an AI-generated “Summer reading list for 2025” in which 10 of the featured 15 books did not exist. Other AI-generated or AI-assisted stories in the supplement reportedly quoted experts who do not not exist. 
On social media, reporters and editors at the Sun-Times have expressed mortification and embarrassment since a spectacular blunder like that undercuts the reputation of the newspaper.  The newsroom union’s statement said members were “horrified by this slop syndication,” realizing that many readers won’t understand that the 64-page  “Heat Index” summer entertainment guide was written by a freelancer and provided to the paper by King Features, a unit of Hearst Newspapers. 
Yes, someone at the Sun-Times (and the Philadelphia Inquirer, which ran the errant supplement last Thursday) should have given the supplement a once-over given that readers would naturally assume that the articles have at least the imprimatur of the newspaper, but staffing is tight these days, and at some point, time-pressed editors have to trust freelancers to be fair and accurate.
King Features has severed relations with Marco Buscaglia, the Chicago-based writer who submitted the AI nonsense for “Heat Wave” and boasted of his “crack research skills along with his unwavering ethics” on his personal website, which he took private after this scandal broke.  The Sun-Times and other outlets have reported that Buscaglia has taken full ownership for what happened:
Buscaglia said he … wanted to assume full responsibility for what happened, which exposed the Sun-Times and Philadelphia Inquirer to widespread public mockery.
“Stupidly, and 100% on me, I just kind of republished this list that (an AI program) spit out,” said Buscaglia, a longtime journalist. “Usually, it’s something I wouldn’t do.
“I mean, even if I’m not writing something, I’m at least making sure that I correctly source it and vet it and make sure it’s all legitimate. And I definitely failed in that task.”
Buscaglia … acknowledged using AI for other stories in addition to the list of books and could not guarantee he fact-checked those articles completely either, saying, “At this point, I’d expect anything.”
Slate’s Henry Grabar was a bit sympathetic:
Buscaglia’s profile is interesting because he’s not a tech guy trying to automate journalism jobs. He’s a 56-year-old media lifer with two writing degrees trying to automate his own freelance job, using AI to maintain an impossible human workload of low-paid gigs. He’s the victim of the previous downward spiral of paid writing jobs (thanks to the decline of ad dollars) turned perpetrator of the current downward spiral of paid writing jobs, wielding (large language models) to perform a convincing impression of the 25-year-olds who would have crafted the summer heat special section in 1997, and distorting unscrupulous bosses’ sense of what they can get for their money.
Grabar concludes that the eruption of umbrage over “Heat Wave” “is a sign of something ending—a last gasp from the era of the diligent, human reader who can tell the difference between a real book and a fake one.”
One possible silver lining here is that it will remind journalists that — for now, anyway — AI is not necessarily a reliable partner for a writer, and that everything it generates must be double-checked against reality. And it will spur publishers and editors to invest the necessary time and money into making such double checks.
Another possible silver lining is that it might inspire subscribers to revolt against the sneaky practice of charging readers on the sly for these “premium” giblets stuffed into their papers.
“Subscribers will not be charged for this premium edition,” says the Sun-Times apologia.
I can imagine Sun-Times subscribers reading this and asking themselves, “What the hell? They were going to charge me extra for an insert I didn’t ask for and probably wouldn’t read?”
Yes, they were!  Here is from the fine print at the Sun-Times website (weird, Trumpian capitalization theirs):
All Print Subscriptions may include up to eleven (11) Premium Editions per year. For each Premium Edition your account will be charged an additional fee of at least $3 in the Billing Period the edition is published. Each such additional fee will be deducted from your Subscription payment, which will shorten the length of your Billing Period.
The Philadelphia Inquirer also levies a charge for these extra inserts — a customer service representative told me that the charge is equal to whatever the subscriber happens to be paying for the Sunday paper.
Both papers allow subscribers to permanently opt out of paying for these products by calling the customer service line — 888-848-4637 for the Sun-Times.
The Tribune’s fine print about this sneaky charge is way more appalling:
Your subscriptions may include up to 15 premium issues per year. For each premium issue, your account balance will be charged an additional fee up to $15.99 in the billing period when the section is published. This will result in shortening the length of your billing period.
The number of these “premium issues” per year has risen from “up to 12” to “up to 15,” and the price per “premium issue” has shot from $7.99 to $15.99 since just 2022. The price is never mentioned on the cover, and the inserts are never labeled as “premium,” which is yet another layer of deception.
The Tribune Content Agency refers to this practice as “a tested model that generates significant fresh revenue.”
Subscribers can opt out of paying the Tribune this additional fee by calling 312-546-7900 and navigating the phone tree, but the opt-out lasts only six months at a time.  Why not forever? Believe me, I’ve asked many times and never gotten the answer (which is obviously “because we need the money and we know people will forget to opt out”).
Would that the newsroom unions spared a little indignation for this sneaky way of exploiting subscribers.
Last week’s winning quip
My boss arrived at work in a brand new Lamborghini. I said, “Wow, that’s an amazing car.” He replied, “If you work hard, put all your hours in and strive for excellence, I’ll get another one next year” — @weekdayjokes
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: President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is investigating Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for making “hiring decisions solely on the basis of race” in light of remarks he made over the weekend.
View: For generations, white elected officials favored white job applicants, but were seldom if ever blunt enough to admit it publicly. Johnson, who is Black, made the mistake of bragging about his tendency to favor Black applicants “to ensure that our people get a chance to grow their business” because “we are the most generous people on the planet.”
Speaking at the Apostolic Church of God on Sunday, Johnson said, “One thing I know for sure I have to do over these next two years: Every single dime that our people have been robbed of, I’m going to make sure that is returned two-, three-fold.”
Johnson’s goal — compensating for decades of discrimination with some affirmative action and boasting about it to boost the support he’ll need from Black voters if he is to have any chance at reelection in 2027 — is understandable. His tactic — defiantly playing the race card — is divisive and politically tone-deaf.  
News: The Illinois General Assembly is considering measures to phase out plastic shopping bags and foam food containers  
View: Yes to banning foam food containers but no to banning plastic shopping bags, which I’m not persuaded are more environmentally friendly than paper bags. Keep the bag tax — heck, raise it a bit — to encourage shoppers to bring reusable bags, but allow retailers to provide plastic bags. 
John Warner, “The Biblioracle” (provided)
Meet the Biblioracle
I’ve long been intrigued by John Warner’s “Biblioracle” columns in the Sunday Tribune — a clever combination of literary criticism, consumer advice and reflections on the state of publishing. Who is this guy anyway? 
I reached out to him, and here is a lightly edited version of our email exchange:
EZ: Where did you grow up and what did your folks do?
JW: I was born April 5, 1970, in Evanston Hospital and grew up in Northbrook. My mother, Sue, founded the Book Bin bookstore in Northbrook when I was a year old, and ultimately co-owned it with a few different partners until just after I graduated from college in 1992. My father, Mike, was a lawyer in Chicago with Seyfarth Shaw. He passed in 2005. My mom still lives in Glenview. I have one sibling, Mike Jr., who is four years older than I am and still lives in Chicago,  working as a lawyer just like our pops.
EZ: Where did you go to school and what did you study?
JW: Greenbriar Grade School, Northbrook Junior High, Glenbrook North High School and then the University of Illinois, where I majored in rhetoric, which was really just a fancy name for creative writing. After a couple of years of work post-college, I earned a master’s degree in literature and a master of fine arts in creative writing at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
EZ: When and how did you start writing the Biblioracle column?
JW: The Biblioracle persona — the person who “tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read” — was born as an offshoot of my role as co-color commentator with my friend Kevin Guilfoile in the Tournament of Books, a March Madness-style bracket competition for books instead of basketball. When we’d run out of things to say late in the 2010 tournament, I offered on a whim to recommend a book to anyone who posted in the comments the last five books they'd read. Maybe 150 people asked for recommendations. It took me all day to respond.
In 2011, as a new Printers Row book section was launching, Kevin recommended me to the Tribune’s literary editor, Jennifer Day. The first Biblioracle column appeared in February 2011, and I've been in the paper in one way or another almost every week since.
EZ: How many requests do you typically get for advice from people writing to biblioracle@gmail.com?
JW: In a given week, it's no fewer than two and usually no more than 10, but it varies week to week, and I have no idea why. I serve customers in order of request provided they include both their first name and last initial, their current hometown and their five most recent reads. For the most part, I'll tackle any list, but I do sometimes shift the order of which list goes in which week to make sure there's a variety of recent reads among the requesters. Sometimes, I'm not able to accommodate a request just because the books are too far outside my sphere of knowledge, but that's fairly rare.
EZ: How many papers does the column run in?
JW: Just the Chicago Tribune, and I guess some Tribune-owned papers on occasion. But I've never been syndicated. I was told years ago that that wasn't a thing anymore, and it hasn't been, at least for me.
EZ: What's your process? In other words, how do you read so much, write the column and also hold down a job?  
JW: It's evolved somewhat over the years. For the early years of the column, I was teaching college full time as a non-tenure track lecturer at the College of Charleston. I also started writing a weekly blog for Inside Higher Ed, so I would teach pretty much all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and use Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for writing, grading, class prep, etc. Since 2019, I've been totally freelance and now mostly make my living by speaking at colleges and schools to help others teach writing. So while I could be more flexible with the column, I rarely am. Basically, Monday or Tuesday, I settle on what I'm going to write about. Often, it's a book I'm reading or some bit of book-related news that crossed my transom. I then spend some idle time Tuesday and Wednesday just thinking about my subject, jotting down a couple of thoughts. I draft the column (always 600 words, give or take) on Thursday, sleep on it, then revise and do the recommendations on Friday. I send it to my editor Friday by 5 p.m. to run a week from that Sunday.
Occasionally, there will be some more timely event that throws me off that schedule — most often the passing of a writer I liked — but it's always a deliberate process of thinking and planning followed by a relatively short period of active writing and the revising. Thanks to the thinking/planning, the drafting usually doesn't take much more than an hour of concentrated work. It's one of my favorite activities of the week because it's like I've had a blurry picture of what I wanted to capture rolling around my head for a couple of days and the writing is my chance to bring it into focus and capture what I'm seeing.
Reading isn't a problem because that's just something I do. I read at least a book a week and often am simultaneously reading one nonfiction book and one work of fiction. I get at least 15 pitches for books from publishers every day, so I'm never short of tempting material. I also manage to buy plenty of books every year too.
EZ: What else do you write?
JW: Over the course of my increasingly varied career, I've done a lot of different stuff, including many years writing and editing humor through my association with McSweeney's Internet Tendency. A few years ago when I thought the end of newspapers was nigh, I started a Substack newsletter The Biblioracle Recommends where I do similar things as my Tribune column. This includes giving reading recommendations, but I also range more freely in terms of topics, though I always try to bring things back to books and reading in some fashion. I've published a bunch of books over the years, including a novel (“The Funny Man”) and a collection of short stories (“Tough Day for the Army”), but for the last six or seven years, I've been primarily focused on writing about how I think we could and should better teach writing, including three books, “Why They Can't Write, Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities,” “The Writer's Practice” and, most recently, “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.”
I know folks are worried about students not learning to write anymore, and I'm here to say that this is a challenge we can meet.
EZ: What is your current family situation?
JW: I’ve been married to Kathy Sennello for 25 years as of this August, no kids, two dogs (Quincy and Baxter). Kathy is a veterinarian, and we live in Folly Beach, South Carolina, just outside Charleston.
EZ: Which recent novels are you recommending these days?
JW: Some recent — new in at least the last few years — novels I've been recommending are:
“The Passenger Seat” by Vijay Khurana, a novel about two teenage boys from rural Canada plagued by the inchoate discontent of being young and feeling alien who make some bad choices without truly choosing. It's coming out of the same zeitgeist as recent Netflix sensation “Adolescence,” but because it's a novel and focused on the boys, we get a much more intimate experience.
“The Search” by Michelle Huneven. When I tell people that this is a novel about a Unitarian church in California going through the process of finding a new minister that includes lots of talk about food (including recipes in the back), it sounds boring, but it's warm and charming without being cloying or saccharine. This is what I recommend for people who are looking to escape the present world around them who aren't into outright escapist literature.
”The Book of George” by Kate Greathead. This is a little trickier recommendation in that the title character is sort of a self-sabotaging shithead who is also strangely charming (and at times, charmed), and you spend chunks of the novel wanting to tell him to get his act together. Greathead writes with tremendous clarity, which is not quite the same thing as sympathy.
EZ: Finally. what are your favorite novels ever?
JW: A truly impossible question to answer! At least you asked me for my "favorites," rather than the novels that I think are "the best," which would've tied me up for weeks. I've decided to go with the novels that had the greatest impact on me at the time I read them, privileging that initial experience of the novel as opposed to engaging in hindsight about which books remain my "favorites." It's possible that I may not even like some of these books if I read them now, but I cannot deny their impact on me at the time I read them.
“Bridge to Terabithia” by Katherine Paterson. I would've read this when I was 10 or so years old, and it had a profound effect on my childhood notions of love and grief. It's a book that takes the emotional lives of young people seriously, and I guess I just found it reassuring in that way.
“The Godwulf Manuscript” by Richard B. Parker. This is the first of Parker’s Spenser novels. It was published in 1973, but I would've been maybe 14 when I read it. I grew up in the era where young adult fiction was Judy Blume and S.E. Hinton and not much else, so my mom started giving me relatively safe adult books. Spenser is a Boston private investigator, deliberately modeled on a classic chivalric hero and is a kind of ideal portrait of secure masculinity. He’s a feminist who will also punch out a bad guy if necessary.
“The Girl with Curious Hair” by David Foster Wallace. I read an advance copy of this sent to me by my mom freshman year of college over Labor Day weekend after everyone I knew went home for the holiday. Not a novel, but a collection of short stories grappling with stuff I didn't know people were allowed to write about.
“Oreo” by Fran Ross. The first and only novel written by Ross. It is the smartest funny book I've ever read. Everyone I recommend it to agrees with me.
“The Water-Method Man” by John Irving. This is one of Irving's pre-“The World According to Garp” novels, and it is still the one that gets me to laugh out loud more than any novel I've read. There's a scene where the main character, Fred "Bogus" Trumper, is trying to ski down a mountain in Austria that I cannot get through because the tears of laughter blind my vision.
“The End of Vandalism” by Tom Drury. This one speaks to my Midwestern heritage. A novel of regular people trying to get along even when the world seems aligned against their chances of success.
Land of Linkin’
In case you missed it — as I did! — “Paris on Politics,” a segment hosted by Fox-Ch. 32 political reporter Paris Schutz, is now an audio podcast.
In Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, I pondered the lack of  resolution and clarity in the 23-year-old Bob Greene scandal. 
Toledo City Council approves renewal of ShotSpotter — but cuts back on the number of areas served.
In Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, I nominated “Chicago-porn pope” as the typo of the year.
Richard Roeper, who left the Sun-Times earlier this year, now has a regular segment on WGN-AM 720 with morning host Bob Sirott.
I was out of town Monday evening and was unable to attend the memorial gathering for Michael Miner at the Newberry Library, so am relieved that the entire program is now available for viewing on YouTube.  
In Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, I opined, “Yes, Biden was slipping into senescence, but let’s not lose track of the fact that Trump is a gibbering fool.” Related in Politico: “All the President’s Enablers — Three books on Joe Biden’s presidency jointly paint a devastating portrait of an ailing, geriatric leader surrounded by mendacious aides and grasping family members.”
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:
 ■ Newcity publisher Brian Hieggelke asked Google’s AI tool to rewrite the story of the Sun-Time’ AI misadventure in the voices of two acclaimed Chicago writers—and was delighted at the result.
■ “One thing you can do … that will matter and show your support for federal employees”: Chicago’s former regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Debra Shore, is encouraging people to go online by Friday to oppose the Trump administration’s plan to “abolish the professional civil service and essentially convert it to a patronage system.”
■ Here’s the comment form—which you can fill out quickly and anonymously, with something as simple as “Schedule F (politicization) is bad and the rule protecting nonpartisan civil servants is good.”
■ Habeas stultitia: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem put her ignorance front and center as she flunked a Senate question about the meaning of habeas corpus.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson says that was just one of several rough moments Tuesday for Trump’s team on Capitol Hill, as illustrated by Wonkette’s Evan Hurst’s roundup of “videos of members of Congress beating the dicksnot out of Trump officials.”
■ Digging deep into Republican budget legislation making its way through the House, Popular Information discovers on page 380 “a powerful new tool to silence dissent.”
■ “Do you like Donald Trump?” That’s one of the questions progressive streamer Hasan Piker says federal agents asked him as they detained him at O’Hare for more than two hours Sunday.
■ Techdirt columnist Mike Masnick: Piker “gave his millions of followers a masterclass in what not to do when detained,” turning “what should have just been a clear story of an unfortunately common constitutional violation into potential legal ammunition against himself.”
■ “No Surrender”: As his European tour rolled on, Bruce Springsteen wasn’t backing down from his criticism of Donald Trump. Here’s video.
■ Taking things a step further, Springsteen’s released a recording of the tour’s opening night—including his words condemning Trump.
■ The average Chicago-area electric bill is set to rise almost $11 a month beginning in June, providing fresh incentive for homeowners considering going solar—a process columnist Mike Fourcher has been going through himself and breaks down for beginners here.
■ ZDNET explains how a hidden slider in Google Earth lets you view your street or other locations on the planet as they’ve appeared from the sky going back up to 80 years.
■ Trib columnist Rick Kogan talks to Malnati’s pizza boss Marc Malnati about the ups and downs of building an empire on his father’s troubled legacy.
■ “What if we keep giving food to all the hungry children and, to make up for that, Republicans can eat … a bag of d___s?” In a show sprinkled with joking suggestions his show could be canceled, Stephen Colbert let loose on a federal budget that would cut Medicaid while giving billionaires tax breaks.
■ Colbert devoted most of the night to an interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders, who explained in plain terms the consequences of that plan.
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Quotables
A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. — Susan B. Anthony
Democrats must understand that their destiny will be determined by economics, not demographics. Having a clear economic message that voters believe will improve their lives is at the core of the work they need to do to return from the political wilderness. Republicans have a bigger problem. Since Trump hijacked their political party, they’ve been shedding reliable college-educated suburban voters—along with most traditional Republican values and policies … favoring tariffs, price controls, and Russia. Reagan weeps! — Sarah Longwell, The Bulwark
He's a monster. Period. — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Donald Trump
I got through 13 years of public school without feeling lingering ill will toward paper straws. Not so the president. Somehow, a technology that any 6-year-old can master eluded our nation’s leader, who clearly has had some bad, almost unbelievable, experiences with paper straws. “These things don’t work,” he said. “I’ve had them many times. On occasions, they break. They explode. If something’s hot, they don’t last very long.” They explode? And who but a moron drinks a hot beverage through a straw of any kind? — Neil Steinberg
We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created by the, you know, you know the thing. — Joe Biden, March 2020
Well, Well, Well, Not So Easy To Find A Mayor That Doesn’t Suck Shit, Huh? — Onion headline
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest: 
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
If you drink enough, any bar can be a karaoke bar. — @KevinBuffalo
Do you ever think about how Japanese dogs understand Japanese and you don't?  — @citizenkawala
Got pulled over today and the cop asked if I know why he pulled me over. I replied, "Is it because you want to see how tall I am?" He said, "Step out of the car sir." See, I knew it. — @ThePunnyWorld
Weddings should have a slide show of the couple’s exes and all the guests get to boo and throw bottles at the screen. — @CasualThursday
Don’t chew your food. It shows weakness. — @poutinesmoothie
One of the weirdest things about mid-century media is that TV used to just stop for the night. They'd put up a graphic that said, in effect, “No more TV, go to bed." And that was it. You didn’t even have a phone to look at. You had to read a book or something. — @looksbizarre
People who take naps are the real heroes. It takes courage to wake up twice in one day. — unknown
Having too much sex can cause memory loss. I read that on page 14 in a medical journal on Nov 14, 2019 at 3:19 p.m. — @Dadsaysjokes
I never chose to love classic rock. When I hit a certain age, it chose me. — @Brock_Teee
Everybody is mad at me due to my infuriating ways. — @donni.bsky.social
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.”
Subscribe and don't miss a single poll!
Minced Words
Cate Plys, Brandon Pope and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We discussed the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights investigation into Mayor Brandon Johnson, the “pop-up” curfew idea and other topics in the news. 
Recommendations:
John: “Theater Kid: A Broadway Memoir” by Jeffrey Seller, producer of “Hamilton” and “Rent”
Cate: Reruns of “Cheers” and “Barney Miller” 
Eric: The Colorado Rockies baseball team, for reasons explained below
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.
Good Sports
Greetings from Caitlinville
Picayune Sentinel video
The Picayune Sentinel had nosebleed seats for last Saturday’s WNBA game between the Chicago Sky and the Indianapolis  Fever. As you can see from my iPhone video of the introduction of Fever superstar Caitlin Clark, Gainbridge Fieldhouse was rockin’.
Clark didn’t disappoint. She led her team to a 93-58 trouncing of the Sky, was in double figures for points, assists and rebounds, and provoked a chippy altercation with her rival, Sky center Angel Reese. Clark was called for the lowest level of flagrant foul, which looked right to me, as there was a little extra, gratuitous oomph in how she hacked at Reese to prevent her from making an easy layup.
I’m sure Reese isn’t alone among WNBA players in resenting the attention and endorsement money that Clark is getting, and that may have fueled her fury at the way Clark fouled her. But Clark is really fun to watch with her clever passing and long-range bombs. Her success — I’d estimate that at least 5,000 of the more than 17,000 fans in attendance were wearing Clark apparel of some sort — is well deserved.  The league needs her.
That said, I hope there’s nothing to the reports that fans courtside heckled Reese with racist remarks after the altercation. The league emphatically does not need that.
Rockiest start ever
Wednesday night’s loss to the Philadelphia Phillies left the hapless Colorado Rockies with a record of 8-41, assuring that they will set the mark for the worst record after 50 games in modern MLB history. That record was set by the 2023 Oakland A’s, who were 10-40 after 50 games. 
The White Sox now stand at 15-35, exactly where they were last year at this point when they went on to set the modern record for losses in a season with 121.
The 2023 A’s rallied, after a fashion, to finish 50-112.
It’s ain’t over ‘til it’s over
I’ve been watching a lot of the NBA playoffs this year, but mostly just the last few minutes of each game (and only when they’re close).  The first 45 minutes or are often meaningless ground pawing.  True fans scorn my approach, but I felt vindicated Wednesday night when the Indiana Pacers came back from a 14-point deficit with 2:40 left in the first game of the Eastern Conference finals against the New York Knicks to tie it in regulation and then win in overtime.  
Green Light
Green Light features recommendations from me and readers not only of songs — as in the former Tune of the Week post — but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on. Email me your nominations, and please include a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links, perhaps including excerpts from reviews or background articles. For TV shows, please include links to trailers/previews on YouTube and advice on where to stream them. This week’s Green Light is from Scott Tepper:
Many years ago, I dated someone from another country for a few weeks. We had a good time together, but in the end, we weren't a match. Yet I came away from that time with something that was much more lasting. He introduced me to the music of Eva Cassidy.
I had never heard of her. Apparently she had much more of a following outside of the U.S. But after hearing two of her songs, I had to go out and buy all the CDs (you can tell this was a while ago), that I could find that she had made.
Sadly, she wasn't able to make many albums. She passed away from cancer in 1996 at age 33.
When I have mentioned her to other people, no one seems familiar with her. 
Her voice is unique in her range, clarity, and precision. Her ability is almost like a magic trick ... what she does with softness, held notes, and clarity seems simple, but is actually very difficult and rare.
It's so sad that she passed at such a young age, and that more people are not familiar with her. The amount of joy her songs have given me over the years is immeasurable.
I hope her music brings some joy to you. 
Among the links Tepper sent along was Cassidy’s cover of Sting’s 1993 song “Fields of Gold.”
You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold
Other Cassidy covers he sent along were “Songbird” and “Over the Rainbow,” the latter being the recording that elevated her to posthumous fame and was featured in this 2001 feature on ABC’s “Nightline.”
Info
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. Browse and search back issues here.
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
Email the Picayune Sentinel
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.
If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.
Social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn 
Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social 
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5
Help?
If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.
Thanks for reading!
Give a gift subscription
Share
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

2025-05-29 Eric Zorn
Thu, 29 May 2025 10:01:33 GMT
Jussie Smollett just can't stop lying!And what are we to make of Chicago's drop in crime? And Trump's tsunami of pardons?
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Jussie Smollett just can't stop lying!
And what are we to make of Chicago's drop in crime? And Trump's tsunami of pardons?
May 29

READ IN APP

5-29-2025 (issue No. 195)
This week:
How can we miss Jussie Smollett if he won’t go away?
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
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week
Good Sports — An update on the Colorado Rockies’ prospects for setting a new standard for futility just one season after the White Sox did
Green Light — A recommendation via Peter Sagal of the 1985 novel “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry
Subscribe or upgrade your subscription
Good riddance at long last to Jussie Smollett
I was hoping never again to type the name of the fatuous, self-important liar Jussie Smollett, but the actor and singer is back in the news with a recent statement on social media in which he declared, “Despite arduous and expensive attempts to punish me, I am innocent both in the eyes of God and of our criminal justice system."
The statement accompanied news that Smollett has agreed to make a $50,000 donation to Building Brighter Futures Center for the Arts, a South Side not-for-profit agency, in exchange for the city dropping a civil suit against him. That suit sought to reclaim the estimated $130,000 police spent investigating Smollett’s phony claim in early 2019 that he’d been the victim of a racist, homophobic attack on a sidewalk in the Streeterville neighborhood. 
God knows it was lie. 
And the criminal justice system found Smollett guilty in 2021 of staging the attack, presumably to raise his public profile and advance his career. 
The only reason he can claim innocence is that, thanks to the bizarre and unaccountable bumbling of former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled last fall that an early, hasty decision to drop the charges against him constituted a binding plea deal so he should never have been tried.
For a full retelling of this saga, consult my post in the wake of that high court ruling, “Please indulge me one last time in calling bullshit on Jussie Smollett and Kim Foxx,” which turns out not to have been the last time. 
Had Smollett quietly made his settlement donation and slithered away, I might not even have mentioned it. But this statement is so jaw-droppingly obtuse, dishonest and provocative, I must reproduce it in full simply for the record:
Over six years ago after it was reported I had been jumped, city officials in Chicago set out to convince the public that I willfully set an assault against myself. This false narrative has left a stain on my character that will not soon disappear. These officials wanted my money and wanted my confession for something I did not do. Today, it should be clear they have received neither.
The decision to settle the civil lawsuit was not the most difficult one to make. After repeatedly refusing to pay the city, I was presented with an opportunity to make a charitable donation in exchange for the case being dismissed. Despite what happened there politically, Chicago was my home for over five years, and the people became my family. Therefore, making a donation to benefit Chicago communities that are too often neglected by those in power will always be something I support. I've made a $50,000 direct donation to Brighter Futures Center for the Arts, a local nonprofit doing incredible work nurturing self-expression, creativity and exploration of the arts for Chicago youth. This organization was of my choosing, and I'm comforted that there will be at least one winner from this experience.
Though I was exonerated by the Illinois Supreme Court in a unanimous decision, and the civil case will be dismissed, I'm aware that it will not change everyone's mind about me or the attack I experienced. However, despite arduous and expensive attempts to punish me, I am innocent, in the eyes of God and our criminal justice system. What I have to do now is move forward. I will continue creating my art, fighting passionately for causes I hold dear, and defending my integrity and family name with the truth. 
Lastly, I'm grateful to have had the resources to defend myself. So many do not. They are backed in the corner to take deals or confess to crimes they did not actually commit. In their honor, I am donating an additional $10,000 to the Chicago Torture Justice Center, who provides resources to communities healing from the violence of the Chicago Police Department. To anyone who has had to prove they have in fact been violated, you know how difficult this can be to navigate. I stand with and for you.
To everyone who has supported me, thank you. Your prayers and belief in me mean more than words can properly express.
 I will never take it lightly. I will never forget.
 Onward.
Just to reiterate, Smollett was not “exonerated” by the Illinois Supreme Court, which did not address the powerful evidence of Smollett’s guilt, evidence that Smollett’s appeal did not challenge. Rather the justices simply overturned an appellate court ruling — confoundingly in my view — by holding that putting him on trial amounted to double jeopardy in light of the agreement Foxx’s office had — again confoundingly — struck with him. 
The civil case was not “dismissed” but settled, with the liable party (Smollett) paying up.
Perhaps this will be the last time I will type Smollett’s name? 
Onward. 
Last week’s winning quip
If you drink enough, any bar can be a karaoke bar. — @KevinBuffalo
Here are this week’s nominees, and here is the direct link to the new poll.
News & Views
News: President Donald Trump is drunk on his pardon power
View: It will require a constitutional amendment to rein in the presidential pardon power because, evidently, the Founders never anticipated a president so deeply corrupt that he would use the power simply to reward his allies, throw shade at the justice system. 
His pardon of the goons who beat the crap out of Capitol Police officers during at attempted insurrection on Trump’s behalf on Jan. 6, 2021, and his pardon of our sleazy former Gov. Rod Blagojevich were illustrative. Recently he’s pardoned:
Former Culpepper County, Virginia, Sheriff Scott Jenkins, a staunch MAGA supporter. who was about to start serving a 10-year prison sentence for conspiracy, honest services fraud and bribery. ““He is a wonderful person who was persecuted by the Radical Left ‘monsters,” Trump wrote on social media. 
Reality TV performers Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted in 2022 for attempting to defraud banks for more than $30 million along with several tax crimes and were serving 12- and 7-year sentences respectively. Their daughter, Savannah,  was a key part of “Team Trump’s Women Tour,” and she poke at the Republican National Convention last summer. Her parents had been “overly prosecuted by an unjust justice system,” a White House spokesman said. 
Former nursing home executive Paul Walczak, who pleaded guilty last year to tax crimes. Here’s The New York Times’ summary:
Between 2016 and 2019, (prosecutors) said, (Walczak) withheld more than $10 million from the paychecks of the nurses, doctors and others who worked at his facilities under the pretext of using it for their Social Security, Medicare and federal income taxes. Instead, he used some of the money to buy a $2 million yacht and to pay for travel and purchases at high-end retailers, including Bergdorf Goodman and Cartier. 
But Walczak’s mother, Elizabeth Fago, had raised millions for the campaigns of Trump and other Republicans, co-hosted a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago and attended ta $1 million-per-person fundraising dinner in April. So Trump spared Walczak an 18-month prison sentence and nearly $4.4 million restitution payment by granting a full pardon. Why? Because he’d been “targeted by the Biden administration over his family’s conservative politics,” said a White House statement.
The list goes on. and includes former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland and former New York U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm — both are Republicans, both pleaded guilty to felonies, both spent time in prison and both received presidential pardons on Wednesday. 
(I’m not counting Wednesday’s commutation of former Gangster Disciples leader Larry Hoover’s federal life sentence because he’s still incarcerated on state murder charges for which Trump cannot pardon him.)
Back away from the keyboard, those of you who want to remind me of when Democratic presidents have abused the pardon power. Granted! This is a bipartisan problem and calls for a bipartisan move to curtail it by amending the Constitution.
News: Crime rates are dropping in Chicago, which saw the least violent Memorial Day weekend in 15 years. 
View: This is good news, of course, and the overall drop in violent crime from spikes during the pandemic is a relief. 
Mayor Brandon Johnson is taking a victory lap: “Through these critical investments that we are making for housing and economic development, robberies are down by 36%, shootings are down by 36%, homicides are down by 21%, and violent crime overall is down by 21%," he said, citing the reopening of three community mental health clinics and a bigger summer jobs program for youths.
But other major cities have experienced greater or, in some cases, similar drops in violent crime, and the reasons for the improvement are varied and somewhat mysterious. Criminologists pore over this sort of data and try to tease out the cultural, economic, technological, environmental, penal and police deployment factors that lead to movements in the crime rate.
Johnson thinking his policies are the reason crime is down may be like the rooster thinking his crowing brought about the sunrise. And if crime ticks back up in 2026 — the year his reelection campaign will swing into gear should he choose to run again in early 2027 — he’ll have to take responsibility for it. 
News: Democratic U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood of Naperville has decided not to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Dick Durbin.
View: Underwood had a strong showing in some early “what if?” polls on the 2016 Democratic U.S. Senate primary, and while it’s hard to tell where her support might go, I suspect much of it will go to U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Schaumburg. He has entered the race along with Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton of Chicago and U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly of Lynwood. Stratton has the endorsement and presumably the considerable financial backing of Gov. JB Pritzker as well as the endorsement of Sen. Tammy Duckworth, but her legislative experience is very thin and Krishnamoorthi has a $19 million campaign war chest to underscore that for voters.
I still think Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias would win the primary, but he hasn’t entered the race. His entry or the entry of Comptroller Susana Mendoza, also still on the sidelines, would dramatically change the contours of the race.
POLL
As of today, who has your vote for the Democratic U.S. Senate primary in 2026?
Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton
U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly
U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi
Other / undecided 
I'll vote Republican
News: Trump’s budget proposal will eliminate federal income taxes on tips.
View: There is no logical reason that tips aren’t every bit as much “income” as wages, so this idea makes sense only as a tax break for those for whom tips make up a significant part of their earnings — often low-paid employees. 
But why Trump instead didn’t simply create a truly progressive tax benefit that would cover all low-paid employees instead of those just who work for tips is beyond me, as is how the diminished Internal Revenue Service is going to get around those who try to game the system. A recent Tribune editorial included the tip exclusion among the “illogicalities (and) craven giveaways” in the budget bill.
It won’t be difficult to newly classify some form of income as “tipped” to gain that tax-advantaged status and employers might well correspondingly try to reduce non-tipped components of tipped employees’ income and argue the worker will come out the same. We could see a world where tips become very heavily “suggested” (possibly by a computer) if a consumer wants to get a fair deal and an employer wants to save money. Imagine an Uber ride (or a meal) where your cost goes down with a suggested “tip.”
It’s an incoherent and costly initiative, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy for the Democrats — once, God willing, they take charge again — to repeal it. 
News: Former Chicago police officer who killed her husband, also a police officer, will spend just seven days in prison after her plea deal.
View: I’m not a student of this case, in which Jacqueline Villasenor pleaded guilty to shooting and killing her husband, German Villasenor, during an argument in 2021. She said it was an accident that happened after she pulled out her gun and threatened to kill herself. Who knows?
But what caught my eye was that, even though she received a six-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter, the Sun-Times reported that “with Illinois’ day-for-day sentencing law and credit for the years she spent on electronic monitoring awaiting trial, Jacqueline Villasenor is expected to serve about seven days in the Illinois Department of Corrections, plus a year of supervised release.”
Illinois law counts a day wearing an ankle bracelet the same as a day in prison, which is an almost offensive legal fiction. If it were true, then we’d let convicted felons serve their time on electronic monitoring. 
And don’t get me started on the “day-for-day” sentencing law that all but automatically cuts sentences in half. I’m not saying sentences should be longer than they are, just that judges (and the media) should be honest about how long they are.
News: Trump has acted to halt the minting of pennies
View: “At last Trump proposes change I can believe in.” 
From my click survey in April 2023:
830 votes
Land of Linkin’
Recommended: Tribune contributing columnist Jim Nowlan’s op-ed “With the Chinese outpacing our tech advances, has our ‘Sputnik moment’ come and gone?”
Self-pitying troglodyte John Kass wrote this in a Sunday blog post: “The Trib was once the voice of midwestern conservatism. It was about as mainstream as you could get. No longer. Once the leftist Jacobins took over newsroom, the knives came out and I had to go.” So I am obligated, due to the bond with my readers, to once again offer a link to “The truth about John Kass’ dispute with the Tribune and the Tribune Guild.” 
I went down the Weird History rabbit hole. It’s a “Sunup already?” website, I warn you.
Is it accurate to refer to the deadly gun attack on two employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., as “an act of cowardice”? I put my opinion — no — to the readers on Tuesday. 
“‘Our people hire our people’: Long before DOJ probe into Mayor Brandon Johnson, racial politics coursed through City Hall hiring,” by the Tribune’s Alice Yin, is exactly the sort of in-depth, historical reporting relevant to a current issue that keep newspapers vital.
In “Police oversight in Chicago is a bureaucratic nightmare,” my fellow “Mincing Rascals” panelist Austin Berg makes the case for a Los Angeles-style single oversight body, because “Chicago’s convoluted oversight structure produces too much political infighting and not enough accountability or transparency. It’s not just inefficient – it actively prevents meaningful police reform.”
Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker, a frequent critic of his institution, defended it against President Donald Trump’s ominous efforts to undercut the university in a New York Times essay, “Harvard Derangement Syndrome.”
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:
■ David Dayen at The American Prospect says Senate Democrats have a tool to stop President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
■ The anonymously bylined Closer to the Edge newsletter: “We read every word of the bill. All 1,000+ pages of it. What we found … was a sprawling Rorschach test of authoritarian fantasy, fossil fuel worship and trickle-down mythology. Still … there are a few shiny coins buried in the wreckage.”
■ You don’t have to look far to find sanewashing like “Trump honors fallen soldiers at Arlington” atop accounts of the president’s Memorial Day exploits—but that undersells an address in which Wonkette’s Evan Hurst says Trump “babbled like a demented Nero.”
■ Days after publishing a 900-word “manifesto” from the Chicago man accused of killing two Israeli Embassy aides, investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein shared “messages from a private group chat where (the suspect) was a prolific poster (right up to the day before the shooting).”
■ Weather forecasters see years of killer heat ahead as the globe gets warmer.
■ The U.S. nuclear energy industry’s surge is taking hold along Lake Michigan.
■ Columnist Andy Shaw flags Chicago’s street crime: “I’m not just talking about the number of carjackings, armed robberies and smash-and-grab burglaries. … I’m talking about something even more disturbing: The utter failure of the Chicago Police Department to catch the perpetrators.”
■ Chicago journalist Dan Sinker found himself discouraged as he read “hundreds of applications for something” clearly written by a chatbot—until he found “delight and joy and sadness” in one “written entirely by a person.”
■ Then again: Mother Prompter columnist (and, ahem, your Chicago Public Square columnist’s daughter-in-law) Nicole Willis Meyerson offers two AI-powered cooking hacks to save parents time and mental energy.
■ “How to kill 346 people and get away with it”: Popular Information reviews what’s happened since a Boeing 737 Max crashed into the Java Sea after takeoff in 2018.
■ SpaceXcruciating: Another Elon Musk-funded Starship launch went bad, evoking this recurring cartoon bit from the very early “Sesame Street.”
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Quotables
A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power. First, make the truth seekers live in fear. Sue the journalists. For nothing. Then send masked agents to abduct a college student, a writer of her college paper who wrote an editorial supporting Palestinian rights, and send her to a prison in Louisiana and charge her with nothing. Then, move to destroy law firms that stand up for the rights of others. With that done, power can rewrite history. With grotesque, false narratives, they can make heroes criminals and criminals heroes. And they can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality. — CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley 
One thing about my marriage is, it's never involved me having to send hush money to a porn star after cheating on my spouse. … So they want to debate family values? Let's debate family values. I'm ready. — Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice person. — Dave Barry
A lot of Boomer wisdom is simply complaining — the senescentt spewing of a generation that has turned into old farts, just as the generations before us did. — Dave Barry 
If you're wondering whether something is AI or not, AI has already won. — William Ader
Correct me if I’m wrong but I feel like the U.S. is the only country with a president who calls the citizens scum in his holiday messages. — Sgt. Pepper
I once owned a dog who avidly chased squirrels, but looked away when he met a deer. My wife explained: "Some things are too big to see." I recall that saying when journalists get excited over "Biden was addled" and ignore "Trump is a Putin- or Mobutu-scale crook." — David Frum
via Betty Bowers
Quips
Due to the Monday holiday, there was no visual jokes poll this week. 
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
My dental health plan is chew on the other side. — @BobGolen
After age 30, an all-nighter is not getting up to pee.— @SundaeDivine
It is impossible to drink “too much” coffee. You have failed the coffee in your weakness. The coffee is not to blame. — @donni.bsky.social
Screw you double negatives! Screw you for not never doing nothing for nobody! — @jakevig.bsky.social
Me (having heard about a terrible thing happening to some random person):“Oof. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy” Later that day, Me (hearing about the same terrible thing happening to my worst enemy): “You know, I’m actually OK with this.” — @wheeltod.bsky.social
Home ownership is mostly saying “we should really repair that this summer” and then quietly letting 6 years go by. — @LurkAtHomeMom
There is a correct number of bananas you should buy for your household that will get eaten before they go bad. You're convinced the number is ten, but it's four. — jackboot.bsky.social
Ernest Hemingway: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. Shoe store manager: *pulls him aside* The “for sale” and “never worn” parts are implied, Ernest. — @frovo.bsky.social
I just found a grey pubic hair. I was so upset I had to throw the rest of the muffin in the bin. — @wildethingy
I believe it's not butter. I was just pretending it was butter to be polite. — @bestestname
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.”
Subscribe and don't miss a single poll!
Minced Words
Cate Plys, Austin Berg and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. Topics included Chicago’s encouraging crime statistics, Jussie Smollett’s churlishly defiant statement after he settled the city’s lawsuit against him and the CTA’s Red Line extension project.
Recommendations:
John — A yellow light for the HBO series “The Rehearsal.” 
Austin — A green light for the Season 2 finale of “The Rehearsal.” 
Cate — A green light for the new Broadway staging of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” starring Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr and Michael McKean. 
Eric — A green light for Larry McMurtry’s novel “Lonesome Dove,” highlighted below.
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.
Good Sports
Is the Tribune smart not be aboard the Sky train?
The Sun-Times is sending journalists on the road to cover the WNBA Chicago Sky, while the Tribune is relying on wire copy. The Tribune’s story on Sunday’s game didn’t appear in the newspaper until Tuesday morning because it was a “late” game (that started at 5 p.m.).
But interest in the Sky may wane considerably if they don’t start winning games — they’re off to an 0-4 start after blowing a 16-point third quarter lead Tuesday night in a five-point loss to the Phoenix Mercury. Angel Reese, the marquee player, gets a lot of rebounds and makes her share of short shots, but isn’t really that much fun to watch.
Meanwhile, news that Indiana Fever phenom Caitlin Clark’s quadriceps strain will keep her out of the June 7 Sky-Fever game at the United Center has reportedly caused ticket prices to fall 71% on the secondary market. The game was moved from the Wintrust Arena (basketball capacity 10,387) to the United Center (basketball capacity 20,917) to accommodate what was expected to be a huge crowd. 
On the rocky road to ignominy
After Wednesday’s third-straight loss to the Cubs, the Colorado Rockies stand at 9-47 (a winning percentage of .161), a start to the season even worse than the 10-46 start by the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, a team that holds the record for the worst record in MLB history for a season longer than 120 games (they finished 20-134, for a winning percentage of .130). 
The 1916 Philadelphia Athletics (36-117, .235) are considered the worst team in baseball’s modern era — which dates from 1900 for reasons explained here — and after 56 games, their record was 17-39.
The 2024 Chicago White Sox, current holder of the record for most losses in a season (41-121, .253), were 15-41 after 56 games. The 2025 White Sox are now 18-38.
The division-leading Cubs outscored the visiting Rockies by just four runs over three games, which suggests to me that they might not end up as the worst team in MLB history after all. 
Green Light
Green Light features recommendations from me and readers not only of songs — as in the former Tune of the Week post — but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on. Email me your nominations, and please include a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links, perhaps including excerpts from reviews or background articles. For TV shows, please include links to trailers/previews on YouTube and advice on where to stream them.
This week’s Green Light is for Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel “Lonesome Dove” and comes from a Facebook post by author Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s long-running comedy quiz show “Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me”: 
A few months ago, I was talking with (a friend) about novels. and he referenced "Lonesome Dove." And I said I'd never read it, and he just looked at me with a particular kind of surprised pity and said, "You've never read ‘Lonesome Dove’? Dude." So I’ve been reading “Lonesome Dove,” … (and) OMG I regret every minute I spent of my life not reading this book. I'm not finished, and find myself slowing down towards the end because once it's over, then I will no longer be able to be reading “Lonesome Dove.”
I remember having the same feeling reading “Lonesome Dove” shortly after it came out. It’s nearly 900 pages, and I came to dread the thought of finishing it. 
Sagal’s post mentions a recent essay about McMurtry by Thomas Powers in The New York Review of Books:
“Lonesome Dove” (is) an irresistible saga of two retired Texas Rangers and half a dozen cowboys trailing a herd of cattle from the Rio Grande in Texas to Montana in the summer of 1876. … In Lonesome Dove the retired Texas Rangers — Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call — chafe but are bound to each other. Gus is lazy and talkative but focused in sticky situations, in a Texas way. Woodrow sleeps alone, rides a half-wild horse called the Hell Bitch, is a slave to duty, and is always ready for trouble, in a Texas way. How Gus and Call look at life and the world, and what holds them together, is the point of the book. Something hard to name lingers with the reader—the kind of thing we sense when we say a book is about something, or means something.
Though my general view is that life is too short to reread novels when there are so many excellent works I haven’t read, I’m very tempted to revisit “Lonesome Dove.” 
I’ve read “To Kill a Mockingbird” three times and a bunch of high school-level classics (“The Scarlet Letter,” “Huckleberry Finn,” “Jane Eyre” and so on) twice, once in my school days and again when my daughter was reading them for English class. 
Which books have you read more than once?
Info
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. Browse and search back issues here.
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
Email the Picayune Sentinel
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.
If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.
Social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn 
Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social 
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5
Help?
If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work, check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email, and I’ll be happy to help.
Thanks for reading!
Give a gift subscription
Share
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

2025-06-05 Eric Zorn
Thu, 05 Jun 2025 10:03:09 GMT
Gary Deeb's death is another reminder of the paucity of media criticism in Chicago& an amplification of a plea to revamp our promiscuous use of 'reform'
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Gary Deeb's death is another reminder of the paucity of media criticism in Chicago
& an amplification of a plea to revamp our promiscuous use of 'reform' 
Jun 5

READ IN APP

6-5-2025 (issue No. 196)
This week:
A look back at the late Gary Deeb
Last week’s winning quip
The General Assembly’s disappointing punt on ‘right to die’ legislation
News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked, including another instance where I agree with Donald Trump
Where is the effort to reopen the public schools Chicago closed a dozen years ago?
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go
Those who invoke ‘reform’: Reform thyself
Cate Plys — On the Mikes, Royko and Miner
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
What’s on ‘The Mincing Rascals’ podcast this week
Good Sports — Why did the Knicks fire Thibs? And why are the Sky retiring Candace Parker’s jersey number?
Green Light — A recommendation from reader Bill Minor of “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal,” by Christopher Moore 
Subscribe or upgrade your subscription
Gary Deeb, 1945-2025
This week came the news that famously caustic former Chicago media critic and columnist Gary Deeb died May 17 at 79. His informed, but often excessively blistering, dispatches were must-reads when he wrote for the Tribune from 1973 to 1980 and then for the Sun-Times from 1980 to 1983. 
In many ways, Deeb was opposite of the measured, cerebral Chicago Reader media critic Michael Miner, who died just 16 days earlier, on May 1 at age 81. 
“He was the first newspaper columnist I ever read daily,” wrote former Sun-Times and Tribune columnist Phil Rosenthal in a Facebook post. “My love of the news business was inextricably linked to my mornings reading him as a pre-teen and beyond. In a box somewhere, I have an autographed picture I asked for when I was 12 or 13. He was extraordinarily readable.”
He was. And this was in large part because he was “the wolf-man of the air waves — the sourest, crudest ravager of the medium since Spiro Agnew put away his thesaurus,” in the words of a 1975 Time Magazine profile headlined “The Terror of the Tube.”
The Rotten Tomatoes archive of his withering assessments includes:
“Diff’rent Strokes” is “a disastrous piece of junk that ought to be wiped out before it spreads.”
“Little House on the Prairie” is “a meatless sausage of cloying sweetness, padded dialog, and soap-opera background music.”
Actor Carroll O’Connor’s “flaws stand out like the stench of a cheap cigar.”
Rosenthal offered his own collection of Deebisms:
Donny and Marie Osmond were "twerps." "Dallas" was a "low-rent ... soap opera." Shaun Cassidy was "a slack-jawed wimp," not to be confused with the brother referred to some years later as "slack-jawed no-talent Patrick Cassidy."
A Deeb column on the arrival of Jane Pauley at WMAQ-Ch. 5 attributed to an anonymous sources the suggestion the newcomer from Indianapolis had the IQ of a cantaloupe.
When Robert Blake was cast in a made-for-TV "Of Mice and Men," Deeb noted, parenthetically, that "Blake won't play the feeble-minded character, which is certainly casting against type."
Bob Goldsborough’s obituary for Deed in the Tribune had a few more choice quotes:
 In 1973, he wrote that sportscaster Howard Cosell was “vain, pompous, cruel, occasionally stupid, always overbearing, often a buffoon. Worse yet, he is insincere. That last one is the toughest to cure.” A year later, he criticized the “hacking cough, strident voice and insipid ‘crosstalk’” of CBS Morning News coanchor Sally Quinn. In 1975, he wrote that sportscaster Curt Gowdy was “intolerably inept,” while in 1978, he called broadcast journalist Geraldo Rivera a “fatuous punk” who was “capable of weepy melodramatics and the most flagrant affectation.” … And Deeb took numerous jabs at Channel 7 meteorologist John Coleman, calling him “a joyboy weatherman” who was “about as funny as a whoopee cushion. But not nearly as sophisticated.”
In a 2003 column, Michael Miner wrote:
Loathed, feared, applauded and sucked up to, Deeb was nationally notorious. … Then in 1983 he made the career move that nobody has ever understood. He took a job as a critic for the station he’d excoriated most, WLS TV, Ch. 7. (short video highlight reel)
If WLS hired Deeb to shut him up, it worked. His old readers watched appalled as Deeb, the fearless media analyst who’d let the chips fall where they might, shilled for ABC programs. Deeb’s new job not only silenced him, it discredited him. And as the years went by, the on-air time WLS allowed its old nemesis steadily diminished to the point where he all but disappeared.
In 1999, Richard Roeper wrote in the Sun-Times: that “Deeb was often about as subtle as a Bob Hope leer at Joey Heatherton and as fair as an Eastern-bloc Olympics judge circa 1976, but he was entertaining as hell.” 
Mitch Dudek’s obituary in the Sun-Times noted that, when Deeb became a TV pundit, he “offered up the same sort of puff pieces he once railed against. It was a move that shocked many in the industry to the point that some wondered if it was a ruse and Mr. Deeb was actually going undercover to write an expose.”
He left town with almost no fanfare nearly 30 years ago and returned to his native Buffalo, New York. The Buffalo News reported that Deeb “died of multiple ailments” in Charlotte, North Carolina, “where he had lived for almost the past two decades.”
In a column this week hailing Deeb as “the greatest,” Daily Herald sports media columnist Jim O’Donnell quoted this advice from Deeb to those aspiring to do the job he once did:
Give me insight into the people I'm watching and the people making the decisions about the people I'm watching. Ferret out the redemption-less weasels and hurt the incompetent. Skewer the misplaced. And in those rare cases where you find such clear and compelling vision and talent, spotlight it. Encourage it. Work to constantly force them to raise the bar in their particular medium.
One of Deeb’s brightest moves was hiring Robert Feder, then a young editor at a chain of suburban weeklies, to be his legman when he joined the Sun-Times in 1980. Feder inherited Deeb’s pulpit and occupied it for 25 years, followed by another 14 years as a media/critic columnist for other local outlets. In a 2022 exit interview with the Picayune Sentinel following his retirement announcement, Feder said: 
I consciously chose not to emulate Deeb’s aggressive personal style. My apprenticeship with him was invaluable — from learning how to read a ratings book to developing sources. But I like to say that I learned as much from Gary about what not to do as what to do. And I said to myself then that if I were ever in that position, I would definitely choose to do the job differently.
Deeb was famous for his take-no-prisoners style. And it was enormously entertaining to read if he wasn’t writing about you. But every time you burn a bridge, you lose the opportunity for that person or that organization to trust you.
So you have to decide: Is it better to write something that makes you the center of attention? Or is it better to focus on the story? I never wanted to make it about me. I just wanted to get the goods and have the people trust me.
The Tribune obituary quoted Feder in 1984 discussing Deeb’s TV career:
 The things he is choosing to cover are the very things he expressed the greatest contempt for when I worked for him: celebrity interviews, sitcom stars, minor cast changes, all the stuff that comes out of Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.
At his height, Deeb was intriguingly toxic and compellingly ruthless. I once called him “loathsome” in print, in part because, very early in my career — when I was a young feature writer trying to balance the demands of churning out a regular column on the radio industry along with feature stories for the Tribune’s Tempo section — he punched down at me, impugning my work ethic. 
Given how toxic and ruthless social media have become and how harsh assessments of the work of others is everywhere, it’s not clear that there’s an audience in today’s fragmented media market for such a wrecking ball columnist. But losing him and Miner in the same month is a reminder of the vacuum in local media coverage and analysis. 
TV and radio stations, podcasts, online publications, not-for-profit newsrooms, newsletters and, of course, newspapers remain or have become vitally important. It would be better to have a jaundiced eye on them rather than almost no eye at all.
See Cate Plys on Michael Miner below.
Last week’s winning quip
After age 30, an all-nighter is not getting up to pee. — @SundaeDivine
Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-jokes poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.
The General Assembly’s disappointing punt on ‘right to die’ legislation
The End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act passed the Illinois House on Thursday by a 63-42 vote but then failed to get a vote in the Senate before the end of session deadline Saturday at midnight. 
Tribune:
The measure would legalize medical aid in dying, sometimes referred to as physician-assisted suicide or medically-assisted death, allowing mentally competent, terminally ill adults the right to access life-ending prescription medication.
(Should it ever pass), Illinois would join about 10 other states, among them Oregon, California, Colorado and Hawaii, as well as Washington, D.C., in allowing medical aid in dying.
I realize there are slippery-slope arguments against legalized euthanasia and that safeguards must be in place to be sure that those experiencing temporary severe depression or pressure from family members don’t impulsively or reluctantly take their own lives. 
But aside from that, I want for all people what I will want for myself — freedom, bodily autonomy and agency; the opportunity to leave this world, as we all must, peacefully and with dignity. I don’t want to be told that someone else’s religious notions about the sanctity of life compel me to suffer horizontally until I mercifully and naturally expire. 
If hanging on until nature finally takes you down is your jam, fine! Do so. End your days however you wish. But let me make my own decision and not have to resort to unauthorized home remedies or even prove to anyone that I’m “terminally ill.” We’re all terminal, after all. 
Neil Steinberg of the Sun-Times put it well this week:
You might have a fully lucid parent dying in agony. And they, and you, and all that is moral and decent, might cry out for a way to shorten this pointless suffering. So should the Catholic Church be able to step into your parent’s sick room, consult the Bible and dictate care? I don’t think so. … The idea that a person might be done with suffering, a cool decision based on, oh for instance, the terminal cancer ravaging them, violates the medieval ethics of the church, which works both ends of the spectrum: prodding women who don’t want babies to have them, and people who don’t want to continue to live to continue suffering. It’s cruel. 
 We have debated this issue long enough. Where do you stand?
POLL
Regarding the right to physician-assisted suicide with legal safeguards
I'm for it
I'm opposed to it
News & Views
News: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials lured immigrants to what were ostensibly routine check-in appointments with the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) Wednesday, then arrested at least 10 of them.
View: I can’t improve on the public letter that my congresswoman, Democratic U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez of Chicago, said in her open letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’ and acting ICE director Todd Lyons: 
Using text messages to call people into ISAP facilities to arrest the exact immigrants who are demonstrating their commitment to the rule of law by complying with ICE’s instructions runs counter to every claim the Trump Administration has made — but is consistent with reporting that your actual intent is maximizing arrests. The message your actions send to noncitizens facing removal is that the Trump Administration does not care if you are complying with the law because they do not respect the rule of law. They do not care if you have constitutional rights because they do not respect the Constitution.
News: Elon Musk turns on Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill.’
View: Too little, too late. I still ain’t buying a Tesla. 
Tuesday, Musk tweeted:
I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.
He followed up with a tweet Wednesday:
Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL 
It’s too little because Musk’s pique — like the pique of some Republican senators — is mostly a call for more spending cuts rather than an objection to extended tax breaks for those in the upper income brackets. Anything that might in the end soften or impede this bill is a good thing, I guess, but the opposition to the MOP bill (“Massive, Outrageous, Pork-filled”) on the left still has little traction.
News: Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto will spend $650 million to build a 22,000-seat soccer stadium in “The 78.”
View: This would be a win-win for the Fire, which now plays in Soldier Field and usually fills only a third of the stands, and Chicagoans like me who don’t give a rusty damn about soccer but who are likely to benefit from the development in this long vacant parcel of land along the South Branch of the Chicago River.
An enthusiastic Tribune editorial said that the development stands to “remove what for too long has been dead land and thus a psychological barrier that has been a detriment to expanding the economic promise of the South Loop further into a part of the city that we see crucial to Chicago’s future.”
Agreed. But kudos to Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times who noted in her opening paragraph on Mansueto’s plan that “tens of millions of public dollars would be needed to ready the long-dormant site for development.”
Mansueto’s willingness to bankroll stadium construction makes him an outlier among Chicago sports moguls who in the past have routinely looked for public handouts and property tax breaks.
Still, a formidable city subsidy would be needed to cover major infrastructure costs at the long-dormant site. … There are railroad tracks that need to be moved and a crumbling seawall that needs to be rebuilt. Water, sewer and power lines need to be installed, and parking garages and surface lots need to be built. So does the last leg of the Riverwalk between Lake Street and Ida B. Wells Drive that had an initial price tag of $140 million.
The contrast with ultra-wealthy owners who want cities to build arenas and stadiums for them could hardly be more stark. Now maybe the White Sox will come up with the cash to build their own field on the same property.
News: The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case related to objections to Illinois’ vote-by-mail procedure.
View: This is no big deal. Yet. The high court is looking only at the question of whether the plaintiffs, led by U.S. Rep. Michael Bost, R-Carbondale, have standing to challenge the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive up to two weeks after the date for in-person voting so long as they are postmarked by that day.
Should the justices rule that Bost, et al., have standing to sue and then side with the contention that a ballot “is not a legal vote unless it is received by Election Day,” it would be bad news for voters. To be certain your mail-in ballot arrives by Election Day, you would want to drop it in the box four or five days in advance, and a lot can happen at the very ends of campaigns. Many of us who vote early volunteer to take that risk, but those who for one reason or another can’t make it to the polling place and must vote absentee would be forced into that choice.
That said, two weeks is an awfully long window, even for ballots mailed from overseas, and the potential period of uncertainty can end up sowing further distrust in the electoral process.
The National Conference of State Legislatures table shows that most states require mail-in ballots to arrive by Election Day. And of the 14 states plus the District of Columbia that allow a grace period for mail-in voters, Illinois is unusually generous in allowing for 14 days.
Alaska — “Must be received within 10 days if postmarked on or before Election Day.”
California — “Must be received no later than 7 days after Election Day.”
District of Columbia — “Must be received within 10 days of the election if postmarked on or before Election Day.”
Maryland — “Must be received within 10 days after the election by 10 a.m. if postmarked on or before Election Day.”
Massachusetts — “Must be received by 5 p.m. on the third day after the election if postmarked on or before Election Day.”
Mississippi — “Must be received within five business days of the election if postmarked on or before Election Day.”
Nevada — “Must be received by 5 p.m. on the fourth day following the election if postmarked by Election Day. Ballots with unclear postmarks received by the third day following the election are deemed to have been postmarked on or before Election Day.”
New Jersey — “Must be received within 144 hours (six days) of the close of the polls if postmarked on or before Election Day. Mail-delivered ballots without postmarks that arrive within 48 hours of the close of the polls will be considered valid.”
New York — “Must be received within 7 days of the election if postmarked by Election Day.”
Ohio — “Must be received within 4 days of the election if postmarked by the day before Election Day.”
Oregon — “Must be received within 7 days of the election if postmarked on or before Election Day.”
Texas — “Must be received by 5 p.m. on the day after the election if postmarked on or before Election Day.”
Virginia — “Must be received before noon on the third day after the election if postmarked by Election Day.”
Washington — “Must be received no later than the day before certification, which is 21 days after a general election and 14 days after a primary if postmarked on or before Election Day.”
West Virginia — “Must be received before the canvass (which begins on the fifth day after the election) if postmarked on or before Election Day.”
News: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s photographer has been fired over allegations that he carried a gun in a city car.
View: The city is experiencing major budget woes, and the mayor’s been employing a photographer on the taxpayer’s dime? How does this improve the lives of residents? Yes, it’s a small expenditure and undoubtedly one made by many high public officials going back. But its only purpose is to help glorify the mayor.
Also, assuming photographer Terence Crayton was properly licensed to carry his gun, what’s the big deal here? 
News: President Trump calls for a scrapping of the debt limit
View: It makes me uneasy to agree with Trump on anything, but damn, he’s right in this social media post:
The Debt Limit should be entirely scrapped to prevent an Economic catastrophe. It is too devastating to be put in the hands of political people that may want to use it despite the horrendous effect it could have on our Country and, indirectly, even the World. 
At the risk of being the 1,000th pedant to point this out, raising the debt limit neither authorizes new spending nor increases our national debt by a single dime. t simply allows us to pay the bills Congress has already racked up.
There’s a wholly different lever to limit future spending. It’s called the legislative budget process, and, for reference, it’s outlined in your U.S. Constitution, if anyone still pays attention to that. 
 The debt limit is not in your Constitution. It’s based on a 1917 law that was designed to make it easier but not blank-check-forever easy for Congress to fund the military during World War I without having to authorize every last bond issue.
Congress has raised it more that 100 times, usually with little fanfare or objection, because wiser heads have realized that a more accurate name for it would be “the default ceiling.” And, even getting close to hitting it “threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits,” as Ronald Reagan argued nearly 40 years ago. “Interest rates would skyrocket. Instability would occur in financial markets, and the federal deficit would soar.”
Maintaining U.S. credit is not a Democratic value or a Republican value. Paying the bills is not a liberal priority or a conservative priority.
That the actual function of the debt limit is so poorly understood by the public has allowed cynical pols to hold it hostage to try to gain leverage in broader debates. The fact that members of both parties have used this form of extortion in the past makes it more, not less, despicable.
At best, all the debt limit does is make the markets jittery and provide an opportunity for contemptible, hypocritical grandstanding that distracts from serious negotiations about taxes and spending. At worst it crashes the economy.
No president, Democrat or Republican, should ever again have to negotiate with Congress with such a threat over his or her head. No American should ever again have to worry that a stubborn, destructive caucus might be able to bring ruin upon them. 
Where is the effort to reopen the public schools Chicago closed a dozen years ago?
An aside in Laura Washington’s column in Wednesday’s Tribune noted that “Chicago has yet to recover from (former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s) decision to close nearly 50 Chicago schools.”
It was 12 years ago last month that the school board OK’d Emanuel’s controversial and still-debated decision, yet unless I’ve missed it, neither of Emanuel’s successors — Lori Lightfoot and Brandon Johnson — nor their school boards nor the Chicago Teachers Union has made any serious proposals to reopen even one of the schools. This is in contrast to how Johnson has begun reopening some of the mental health clinics that Emanuel closed. The affected schools were vastly underenrolled then and would likely be even more underenrolled now. 
Should opening up formerly shuttered schools be an initiative? If not, what would help Chicago recover from the negative impacts of that decision? 
Numerous pro-and-con retrospectives came out on in 2023 around the time of the 10th anniversary of the closures, including:
“After 10 years, Chicago school closings have left big holes, and promises unkept” (WBEZ) 
“Chicago Closed 50 Schools 10 Years Ago. What’s Happened Since Then?” (Block Club Chicago)
“A decade after Rahm Emanuel closed nearly 50 schools, CPS faces a drastically different landscape” (The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research)
“Revisiting the Impact of Chicago’s Mass School Closings 10 Years Later in Austin, Garfield Park” (WTTW-Ch. 11)
“The truth about the 2013 school closures the Chicago Teachers Union doesn’t want you to hear” (Paul Vallas)
Land of Linkin’
What do you think of the proposed Retail Delivery Climate Impact Fee — informally known as the “pizza tax” — of $1.50 on each delivery of goods to your home? I took a look at the question in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus.
“Devil’s Bargain: How the slave trade built and sustained New Orleans” is a fascinating bit of history by former Chicago Tribune/New Orleans Times-Picayune journalist Ben Estes.
In “It’s Time for Chicago to End the Legal Gravy Train for Private Law Firms, Andy Shaw blasts as “white collar patronage" Chicago’s “chronic reliance on high-priced private law firms, instead of its large, well-funded legal department, to defend lawsuits against the Chicago Police Department — particularly civil rights cases involving misconduct, brutality, and wrongful convictions.”
In “Donald Trump’s campaign of intimidation echoes the worst of our past,” Steve Chapman writes, “Trump’s administration is hardly equivalent to what prevailed in the old South. But what it is doing raises ominous parallels: the contempt for the rule of law, the pardoning of violent insurrectionists, the attacks on civil rights protections, the celebration of cruelty and, of course, the relentless effort to scare people into submission. It’s no coincidence that many of the states where Trump is most popular are the states that enforced white supremacy with the greatest ferocity.”
This week’s NewsWheel puzzle in the Picayune Plus was quite timely!
The online publication Business Insider is cutting 100 jobs (21% of its workforce) after reportedly losing half its audience in the last five years. “ We are going all-in on AI,” wrote Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng in a note to staff. “In the past year, we've launched multiple AI-driven products to better serve our audience.” 
Credit to Chicago Public media for owning up big-time to the fake books scandal at its newspaper. “Special section with fake book list plagued with additional errors, Sun-Times review finds” and “Lessons (and an apology) from the Sun-Times CEO on that AI-generated book list” went a great distance in putting this embarrassing incident behind the organization.
Reader Conor Mac highly recommends Season Seven of “Chameleon,” a seven-part podcast series that explores the plot to assassinate Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Look for that story to be in the news again soon as President Donald Trump reportedly considers pardoning those convicted in the case. 
Joshua Peck takes a deep dive into the Alabama incident that likely prompted Harper Lee to write her 1933 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
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:
■ Message Box columnist Dan Pfeiffer: Although “it’s probably wise to ignore most of the sewage that spills out of Elon Musk’s pickled brain … here’s why Musk’s opposition … matters.”
■ Cultural critic Bob Lefsetz: “Musk is providing cover for Republican congresspeople to go against Trump. … This is just the beginning”…
■ … and so it is that MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she agrees with Musk that everyone who voted for that legislation—including herself—should be ashamed.
■ 5 “hidden horrors”: Ex-Illinois Democratic Rep. Marie Newman focuses on some of the lesser-known impacts of that budget bill— the House-approved version of which you can read here.
■ LateNighter’s Jed Rosenzweig rounds up 20 late-night jokes about Musk’s White House exit.
■ Supremely pissed: CNN reports that Trump’s been complaining privately for at least a year about his most recent appointee to the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett.
■ People’s Parity Project chief—and Harvard Law graduate (and your Square columnist’s daughter-in-law)—Molly Coleman, writing for Teen Vogue: “We don’t have to accept judicial supremacy. In fact, many of America’s most admired leaders have rejected it.”
■ The Daily Beast: “Trump rages at claim he launched Harvard war because he didn’t get in.”
■ “The White House is telling Republican-led states that they can let women die”: Abortion, Every Day columnist Jessica Valenti flags the Trump administration’s decision to stop directing hospitals to provide emergency abortions for women facing pregnancy crises.
■ The Electronic Frontier Foundation recaps 404 Media’s reporting: “She got an abortion. So a Texas cop used 83,000 cameras to track her down.”
■ “School boards ride in limousines and students lack the basics”: A Tribune editorial calls out a suburban district spending bigly on board member perks as students struggle.
■ Flashback, 40 years this month: The gone-but-not-forgotten WXRT News team wins an award for reporting that exposed undocumented expenses by Chicago’s school board members.
■ Replace cable—cheap: Consumer Reports explains how to assemble a compelling assortment of TV content, complete with local broadcasts—for about $25/month.
■ 404 Media: “The IRS tax filing software TurboTax is trying to kill just got open sourced.”
■ “Am I missing a major source of news?” A reader seeking to broaden his information diet asks where Square gets its news. An answer in brief: Dozens and dozens of email newsletters—including email and app news alerts—nationally and in Chicago. And a secret weapon: Sill—although its usefulness is a function of how many smart people one follows on Bluesky.
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Those who invoke ‘reform’: Reform thyself
If my former Tribune colleague Liam Ford would like to join me in heading up the Reform ‘Reform’ coalition, I’m all in.
Recently, Ford posted this on social media:
I responded approvingly with a link to my 2014 column decrying the “use and abuse” of this dreaded word:
It’s loaded. It’s prejudicial. It’s presumptuous.
“Tort reform,” for example, puts a terminological blessing on the idea of diminishing the awards in lawsuits, just as “immigration reform” signals support for proposed modifications in laws dealing with people the United States illegally. …
David Minthorn, co-editor of The Associated Press Stylebook and the usage expert behind the news service’s online “Ask the Editor” feature, notes that “reform” is “a term to be used carefully in news reporting.”
In an email response to my query, Minthorn said, “In occasional reminders on usage, we’ve said there are accurate alternatives to reform in describing legislation or other proposed changes, including revision, overhaul and revamp.”
The old Chicago Tribune stylebook (we now use The AP for everything but local issues) sounded a similar note: “Reform — Use with caution, as it tends to be biased in favor of the so-called reformers. Often there will be an opposing view. Sometimes a more neutral word, such as … change, is more accurate.”
That column — which contained a confession that I’d been a repeat offender in the past — had been prompted by a social media post by the same Liam Ford. 
I have since tried to be scrupulous in avoiding the word, just has I have been scrupulous in recent years about referring to the Republican Party as the “GOP,” short for “Grand Old Party.” There is nothing the least bit “grand” about a party that has sold its soul to an amoral authoritarian half-wit. Plus, it’s consistent with the way churlish Republicans refer to “the Democrat Party” because, they say there is nothing “democratic” about the party’s positions. 
I’ll take suggestions for a shorthand way to refer to the Republican Party. 
Cate Plys: Memories of Mikes
Chicago journalist and historian Cate Plys — a member of the “Mincing Rascals” podcast team — goes deep in her Substack “Roseland, Chicago: 1972.” Here’s a sampler:
Watch your step! Anywhere you wander around Chicago, historical rabbit holes open at your feet leading to amazing places, crazy stories, and fabulous people.
Michael Miner, media critic for the Chicago Reader for over 30 years, was one of those fabulous people. A Sun-Times reporter from 1970-1978, he knew the ins and outs of people, politics and newspapers in this town. So, for instance, Miner could pick apart a spat between Mike Royko, Mayor Jane Byrne, her husband (former Daily News reporter) Jay McMullen, her chief of staff (former Trib reporter) Bill Griffin, and long-time star Sun-Times gossip columnist Mike Sneed, then working for the Trib and married to Griffin. Throw in Walter Jacobson for good measure.
But Miner could also philosophize with the best of them, becoming, as former Reader editor Mike Lenehan told Reader reporter Steve Bogira, “the conscience of Chicago journalism.”
Miner’s death last month was a deep loss for his family and friends, but also an incalculable blow to Chicago journalism, which must stagger on somehow without him. I wrote one post specifically for Miner —chasing down the first Mike Royko column he ever read, a column that never stopped inspiring him even though he was never able to find it again. You can read that here. 
Quotables
A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
I'm sick of people calling everything in crypto a Ponzi scheme. Some crypto projects are pump and dump schemes, while others are pyramid schemes. Others are just standard issue fraud. Still others are just little men skimming off the top. Stop glossing over the diversity in the industry. — Pat Dennis
In the current year, Harvard had 7,000 foreign students. That means that an equivalent number of our brightest children were denied the opportunity to study at Harvard. And, since it is unlikely that all those foreign students will remain in the U.S. after graduation, many of those best educated minds will contribute nothing to our nation. — David Swanson 
Based on the observation related to tariff threats: “Trump Always Chickens Out” 
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest: 
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
Dance like no one is watching. Because they aren't. They're looking at their phones. — @jackboot.bsky.social
I post the following as a review for every product I buy on Amazon: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." — @jakevig.bsky.social
If alcohol damages your short term memory. Imagine what alcohol can do. — @frostiebbyx
To all the people who said I wouldn't accomplish anything because I procrastinate too much ... Just you wait. — @ThePunnyWorld
I’m not the person I thought I was when I cut that cupcake in half. — @traciebreaux
On nothing but vibes, I’m convinced that keeping the end pieces bookending the loaf’s remaining slices seals in their freshness. — @batkaren.bsky.social
Me, in May: Child labor is always wrong. Me, two hours into my kids' summer vacation: There are interesting arguments on both sides. — @mauraquint.bsky.social
I stopped in a temporary tattoo booth to get a tattoo. When the tattoo wouldn't wash off, I went back to complain. But the booth wasn't there. — @BobGolen
For the last time, I’m not operating a hot dog cart. This cart is for my personal hot dogs. — @MoMohler
It's enraging that the people I agree with are acting in good faith, whereas everyone I disagree with holds their views only because they’re self-interested, venal and corrupt. — @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.”
Subscribe and don't miss a single poll!
Minced Words
Cate Plys and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We discussed/debated late-arriving mail-in ballots, right-to-die legislation and the always difficult issue of trans girls in sports. 
Traffic lights:
John — A yellow light for “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” a feature film now in theaters.
Cate — An anticipatory green light for CNN’s live airing Sunday at 6 p.m. of the Broadway stage production of “Good Night, and Good Luck” starring George Clooney as Edward R. Murrow.
Eric — A yellow light for author Shalom Auslander’s 2020 novel “Mother for Dinner,” the wildly inventive, comic, allegorical and, at times, fairly gross tale of a Cannibal-American family trying to hold on to its customs in a world that doesn’t understand them.
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.
Good Sports
The New York Knicks fire head coach Tom Thibodeau, who formerly coached the Chicago Bulls.
The once-hapless Knicks made it to the semifinals this year before losing to a talented Indiana Pacers team, and Thibs is the scapegoat? I can’t feel sorry for the guy — he’s 67 and will be due $30 million based on a three-year contract extension he signed last year — but come on! 
Statistics guru Nate Silver has some interesting thoughts in “The Knicks just had their best season in 25 years. Then they fired Tom Thibodeau. Does that make any sense?”
The Sky will retire Candace Parker’s number in a ceremony on August 25. 
That’s silly. Parker was an all-time great WNBA player, and she was on the one championship team in Sky history, but she spent only two seasons here after 13 seasons with the Los Angeles Sparks. She then finished her career with a year on the Las Vegas Aces.
The threshold for retiring athletes numbers ought to be quite high, as in “they were so great for our team for so long that it’s hard to imagine anyone ever wearing their number again.”
The Sparks will retire Parker’s number later this month, which seems fitting. 
The Rockies hit a smooth patch
After setting the Major League Baseball record for the worst 59-game start — 9-50 — the Colorado Rockies swept the Miami Marlins this week and now stand at 12-50 (.194).
After 62 games, the 2024 White Sox, who went on to lose 121 games — the most in MLB’s modern era (since 1900) — stood at 15-47 (.242), and the 1916 Philadelphia A’s — who finished with the worst winning percentage (.235) in MLB’s modern era (post-1900) — were 17-45 (.274). The Rockies are now tied at this point in the season with the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, whose season record of 20-134 (.123) is the worst in all MLB history, modern and premodern. 
Even after their winning streak, the Rockies are on pace to finish 13-131, mercifully obliterating the Sox record from last season. 
The 2025 White Sox, at 19-43 (.306), are on pace to lose only 110 games!
Green Light
Green Light features recommendations from me and readers not only of songs — as in the former Tune of the Week post — but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on. Email me your nominations, and please include a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links, perhaps including excerpts from reviews or background articles. For TV shows, please include links to trailers/previews on YouTube and advice on where to stream them. This week’s green light is from reader Bill Minor:
One of the very few books I’ve read twice is “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal,” by Christopher Moore. It’s not for very conservative Christians, but my pastor and I both loved it. It’s crude, vulgar, irreverent, well-researched, hilarious, and surprisingly moving. After the first reading, I almost immediately read it again, this time with pencil in hand so I could highlight passages.
The ideal audience for this is people who have a Christian background but who are not easily offended by vulgarity or outrageous depictions. One example: Biff is in one room with a prostitute while Jesus is listening from the adjoining room with his ear to the wall. This is so Jesus can learn about sin without having to do it. Afterwards, Biff comments to Jesus, “Yes, greater love hath no man than he lay down for his friends.” There are lots of little comments like that that will resonate with people who have Sunday School backgrounds. 
Another example: Jesus: “I love all the little children, red and yellow, green and white.” Biff: “Wait, green?” Jesus: “Just fucking with you."
I discovered Christopher Moore when I was browsing in a bookstore to find an edition of “Moby Dick” that I’d want to read. A few feet to the right of Melville was Moore’s book, “The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove,” the story of a sea monster created by nuclear waste dumped into the ocean that comes ashore and tries to mate with a tanker truck, thus causing an explosion during the week when the town psychiatrist had decided to take all of her patients off their meds. Obviously, I had to buy it, and after that I was hooked. I have now read most of Christopher Moore’s books. All are quirky and entertaining, but “Lamb” is especially good.
Info
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. Browse and search back issues here.
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
Email the Picayune Sentinel
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.
If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.
Social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn 
Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social 
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5
Help?
If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.
Thanks for reading!
Give a gift subscription
Share
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

2025-06-05 Eric Zorn
Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:01:34 GMT
Mistakes were made 
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Mistakes were made
Jun 5

READ IN APP

6-5- 2025 
A couple of minor gaffes made it into this morning’s Picayune Sentinel that I have fixed in the online version and will note next week, but one I wanted to call your attention to quickly is that  CNN’s live airing of the Broadway stage production of “Good Night, and Good Luck will be SATURDAY at 6 p.m. Chicago time.  THis morning’s edition had the wrong day.
The play, which closes Sunday at New York City’s Winter Garden Theatre, stars George Clooney as Edward R. Murrow. News reports say this is the first time a Broadway play has been broadcast live, but don’t make any bar bets on that.
It will also stream live at  CNN.com without requiring a cable login and on Max (HBO Max) across all subscription plans.
I regret the gaffes and the extra email!
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

2025-06-12 Eric Zorn
Thu, 12 Jun 2025 10:01:38 GMT
Advice to protesters: Keep calm and carry signsChicago, Illinois and national politics with a dash of humor, music and sports
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Advice to protesters: Keep calm and carry signs
We are at a potential turning point in the public's view of Trump's deportation policy. Let's not blow it
Jun 12

READ IN APP

6-12-2025 (issue No. 197)
Thank you for your attention to these matters:
Rally, don’t riot
Last week’s winning quip
Terry Moran had to go
It’d be a shame if you didn’t order tickets to Trump’s birthday parade
RFK Jr. also has to go
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week
Good Sports — The internet has come up with a new statistic for Sky forward Angel Reese and the Colorado Rockies remain intriguingly awful
Green Light — A recommendation of the MeidasTouch podcast
Subscribe or upgrade your subscription
Rally, don’t riot
I’m fully behind the protests here, in Los Angeles, New York and many other U.S. cities against the Trump regime’s aggressive, ominous and seemingly indiscriminate mass deportation of noncriminal foreign nationals. The deployment of the National Guard and Marines on the streets of Los Angeles against the wishes of the city’s mayor and California’s governor has been a provocative overreaction that seems aimed at creating chaos rather than quelling it.
My advice to those taking to the streets — and I may be among them this weekend — is don’t fall for it. Keep calm and mind the optics. Don’t throw rocks or other projectiles at police, don’t set anything on fire and wave American flags — not Mexican or other flags — as a reminder to your mainstream, moderate voting audience that you are patriotically demanding fealty to American values and that the hardworking, taxpaying immigrants now getting the summary heave-ho share those values and contribute mightily to our country.
The goal has got to be to flip these polling numbers:
A YouGov/CBS News poll conducted June 4-6 found 54% of Americans support Trump's deportation program targeting undocumented immigrants, surpassing his ratings on the economy (42%) and inflation (39%). Additionally, 51% approve of ICE conducting searches.
An RMG Research poll echoed that result, with 58% backing the deportation efforts. And in an Insider Advantage survey, 59% approved of Trump's decision to send National Guard troops to Los Angeles in response to the protests.
And we ain’t going to do that by setting fires, scuffling with authorities or vandalizing businesses. We’re going to do it by focusing attention on the ordinary, admirable people caught up in Trump’s frantic dragnets and the frightening flex of military power in American cities.
There are glimmers of hope in the polling data:
Fifty-six percent disapprove of how (Trump’s deportation policy is) being implemented, according to the CBS/YouGov poll. A separate YouGov survey found only 39% approve of the administration's overall approach to deportations, while 50% disapprove. …
A June 9-10 YouGov poll found only 34% of Americans support sending Marines to Los Angeles, while 47% disapprove. A majority — 56% — say state and local governments, not the federal government, should handle the situation.
This image at the top of the Atlantic’s website Wednesday morning is a reminder:
The associated article (gift link) contains this passage:
One widely circulated photo—showing a masked protester standing in front of a burning car, waving a Mexican flag—has been embraced by Trump supporters as a distillation of the conflict: a president unafraid to use force to defend an American city from those he deems foreign invaders.
“We couldn’t have scripted this better,” said a senior White House aide granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. “It’s like the 2024 election never ended: Trump is strong while Democrats are weak and defending the indefensible.”
Jordan Zakarin, editor of Progress Report, takes issue with the call for protests to remain peaceful. He criticizes the mainstream media for “dedicating significant time to examining the etiquette and accessories of the protesters” at the expense of the actions of authorities:
As (Trump’s) shock troops stormed the streets of LA, beating and arresting protestors for impeding access to the Home Depot parking lot, conservatives have almost effortlessly shifted the narrative to a referendum on those who are standing up to the iron fist of the police state. … The destruction of a few driverless taxis has received far more attention and condemnation than efforts by plainclothes federal agents to seize children from elementary schools by lying about having parental consent. … Americans have been drilled into reflexively siding with law enforcement and demanding perfection of the oppressed.
I’m not sure Zakarin is right about the balance of coverage, but it’s certainly true that mayhem of any sort attracts more media attention than chants and marches. But when it’s the protesters initiating the mayhem, that attention is likely to backfire. Being a perpetrator is no way to focus attention on victimhood. And it’s likely to help justify, in the mind of the public, declarations of dire emergencies, insurrections, invasions and other excuses to declare martial law, suspend elections and so forth.
Substacker Robert Hubbell shares my view of the strategic advantage of calm but massive protest: 
Trump is engaging in a slow-rolling coup designed to undermine our Constitution. He has hijacked the news cycle by provoking anger and scattered violence over militarized immigration raids. We must redirect the protests to focus on the unconstitutional actions of Trump. The ICE and DHS agents are bait. Ignore them. Focus on Trump's unconstitutional actions. Those unconstitutional actions include deportation of immigrants without due process—but much, much more. DOGE. Travel bans. Illegal layoffs. Retaliation against universities, law firms, and states. Weaponizing the DOJ and FBI. Redirect the protests to Trump's actions. … Whether there is a violent backlash is entirely within our control. If we de-escalate, there is no basis for the succeeding steps in the logic chain of cascading fears.
The data seems to confirm this: Harvard University political scientist Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, director at the U.S. Institute of Peace, studied 323 “campaigns for regime change or self-determination worldwide from 1900 to 2006 … (and) found that major nonviolent campaigns are successful 53% of the time, while violent campaigns are successful only 26% of the time,” according to NPR.
As these protests grow in Chicago and many other big cities, let’s be sure not to give the Trump regime the fiery spectacle it so clearly wants. 
Last week’s winning quip
To all the people who said I wouldn't accomplish anything because I procrastinate too much ... Just you wait. — @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.
Terry Moran had to go
ABC News really didn’t have a choice but to part company with senior national correspondent Terry Moran in light of Moran’s splenetic late night social media posts over the weekend: 
The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism. Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy. But that's not what's interesting about Miller. It's not brains. It's bile. Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He's a world class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate. Trump is a world class hater. But his hatred (is) only a means to an end, and that end (is) his own glorification. That's his spiritual nourishment.
Backed up with some examples and trimmed judiciously by an editor (“let’s not impugn his appearance”), this could have been some powerful punditry. But Moran was not a pundit. He was ostensibly a straight-news reporter. And straight-news reporters are bound to keep their opinions to themselves or to couch them in the genteel categorical swaddling of “analysis.”
Readers and viewers need to trust that straight-news reporters will go where the facts lead them and relay information untainted by any ideological or preconceived bias. That trust is increasingly frayed, as Gallup reported in February:
About two-thirds of Americans in the 1970s trusted the “mass media -- such as newspapers, TV and radio” either “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to “[report] the news fully, accurately and fairly.” By the next measurement in 1997, confidence had fallen to 53%, and it has gradually trended downward since 2003. Americans are now divided into rough thirds, with 31% trusting the media a great deal or a fair amount, 33% saying they do “not [trust it] very much,” and 36%, up from 6% in 1972, saying they have no trust at all in it. 
Someone with a thoroughgoing contempt for White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller can still write a fair and objective news story concerning him. I’m sure many reporters in Washington share Moran’s dark view of Miller and pull off this trick every day. But when a reporter puts that contempt on the record, it sows further public skepticism and undercuts not only the reporter’s work but also the work of his (or her) colleagues both at the news organization and in the mainstream media at large.
Though at first his punishment was announced as a suspension, there was no coming back from “He's a world class hater. … He eats his hate.” I would never accuse Moran of being at all impaired when he fired off the above broadside shortly after midnight on Sunday morning, but I will say that it has all the hallmarks of a drunk tweet — a rant unleashed in an angry, oh-what-the-hell moment of wretched judgment.
Those who were angry that ABC News chose not to renew Moran’s contract when it expires this week pointed to all the gasbags on cable news and tendentious print columnists who offer similarly withering assessments of political figures yet keep their jobs. But they — we — are designated gasbags. The public expects us to be accurate but not necessarily even-handed or objective.
Moran, 65, is now free to join the ranks of pundits and provocateurs. The hard-left MeidasTouch network (see my Green Light feature below) has already offered him a job in a public posting:
Your comments were proof that you believe in telling the truth without fear or favor. That’s exactly the kind of journalist we stand with. … You’ve covered the Supreme Court, foreign wars, the White House — and you've done it with clarity, nuance, and guts. We respect your record. But more than that, we respect your voice. And at MeidasTouch, your voice will never be silenced. … Join us. Speak freely.
 With a post titled “Independence Day,” Moran inaugurated a newsletter Wednesday here on Substack, where all the cool kids now hang out. He’ll be fine.
Just in case you’re going to be in D.C. over the weekend …
You might want to sign up for two free tickets to the “50th Anniversary of the U.S. Army Grand Military Parade and Celebration” in Washington, D.C., on President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday this weekend. I mean, yeah, tickets are reportedly limited and you might not make it and the crowd might therefore look thin and that would be a shame. But contingency planning is always good.
By the way:
The administration has insisted that the Army’s anniversary and Trump’s birthday are a coincidence and that the parade is justified to honor soldiers’ sacrifice.. … Yet as focus squares in on the U.S. Army's 250 years of existence, other branches are notably left out. The Navy, which also celebrates its 250th anniversary this year in October, has no plans for a similar parade, a spokesperson told USA TODAY. Neither does the Marine Corps, for its 250th in November. 
How’s that makey-healthy stuff workin’ out for ya?
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has promised to “Make America Healthy Again,” fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent vaccine advisory committee Monday. 
He said: “A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science,” failing to acknowledge the role he’s played in undermining that confidence.
NBC News reported:
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, known more commonly as ACIP, consists of medical and public health experts — including pediatricians, epidemiologists and geriatricians — who make recommendations to the CDC about who should get certain vaccines, including the schedule for childhood vaccinations. … Kennedy … rose to prominence as a high-profile figure in the anti-vaccine movement, has made a variety of specious and debunked claims about vaccine harms. 
Public health officials, already aghast at Kennedy’s wild, conspiratorial ignorance and manifest incompetence related to most medical matters, nearly unanimously expressed fear and alarm.
The “clean sweep” ought to begin by giving this dangerously unqualified nutjob the broom. 
Land of Linkin’
“Doin’ It Live — A timely televised play won’t save the republic” in the  Columbia Journalism Review is Jon Allsop’s take on CNN’s live telecast last Saturday of the Broadway production of “Good Night, and Good Luck.” “I found the play to be confusingly paced and somehow off-key. … And the invocation of journalistic ethics—which climaxes with a hellish montage of modern-day cable-news clips playing over one another while Murrow stands onstage looking sad—is desperately unsubtle; at times, I felt as if I was watching a dramatized civics lesson rather than a work of art about real people who once lived and breathed.”
“17 ‘The Pitt’ Behind-The-Scenes Facts That'll Make You Watch The Show In A Totally Different Way” is a typically breathless Buzzfeed headline, but if you’re as engrossed in this HBO Max series as I am, you’ll enjoy these nuggets. 
Related: “It Takes Two Puppeteers and a Custom Rig to Birth a Baby on `The Pitt’” is a Vulture article on the impressively vivid medical special effects that had some viewers turning away in moments.
Harris Meyer’s article in last December’s Chicago Magazine — “The Day and the Hour: Should terminally ill patients be able to get help in ending their own lives? The Illinois legislature is grappling with that question” — sheds useful light on the topic still unresolved in the General Assembly. 
Related: In “What it's like to die slowly,” Substacker Colleen K. describes the harrowing deaths of her father and her sister and concludes, “I’ve seen the deaths of two of my loved ones inhumanely drawn out because of the limits of palliative care. We have to do better if we want a truly compassionate society.”
Related: The results of last Thursday’s Picayune Sentinel click survey on this question (see also Zmail on the topic) showed overwhelming support for the idea:
1272 votes

Tim Roznowski sent along “The day Milwaukee was the center of the women's basketball world,” a look back 47 years at the first-ever women’s professional basketball game. In the December 1978 debut of the Women’s Professional Basketball League, the Chicago Hustle beat the Milwaukee Does 92-87.
Do you prefer it when streaming TV series drop all their episodes at once or do you prefer that the episodes be doled out one at a time? Here’s a my view and a request for yours.
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:
■ “I hope you have plans for this coming Saturday”: Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob encourages everyone to “show up at one of the many ‘No Kings’ protests … to declare our support for a government of the American people, not just the lobbyists, the tech bros, the crypto investors, the Heritage Foundation, the Murdochs, and the Qatari royal family.” Here’s where to find one near you—pointedly, though, not in Washington itself.
■ “Martial flaw”: Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein: “The U.S. military wants you to know—in spit-shined Pentagon statements, press releases, and social media posts—that it’s got everything under control in its deployments to Los Angeles. Except they don’t.” 
■ Tuesday TACO trepidation: Message Box columnist Dan Pfeiffer sounds cautionary notes about Democrats’ embrace of the funny acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
■ Indicator reports that Amazon is selling hundreds of seemingly AI-generated biographies targeted at children.
■ Editor & Publisher columnist Rob Tornoe: AI is gutting the news industry.
■ 404 Media: “A spam scheme is filling university, government, and tech giants’ sites with AI trash.”
■ “Equal parts funny and amazing”: LateNighter critic Bill Carter praises Jimmy Kimmel’s new web series, “The Rabbit Hole,” satirizing online conspiracy theorists.
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Quotables
A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
This year, (the National Institutes of Health) budget …. wipes out $18 billion that we fought for over 10 years. And I can't understand that. … To think that this nation would walk away from medical research — for God's sake! We lead the world in medical research. Why would we give up on it? And I look at the specifics here: In 2025, 2 million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and 600,000 people will die from that disease. Yet your budget requests a 38% cut to the National Cancer Institute. Seven million people nationwide are living with Alzheimer's. This disease, of course, is devastating to families. It robs them of their loved ones. Yet your budget requests a 39% cut to the National Institute of Aging. … Northwestern University has not received a penny for NIH grants in 11 weeks. One thousand, three hundred and fifty-nine NIH Awards to Northwestern have been frozen or terminated, halting $81 million in research to date. … It includes $9 million in clinical trials for brain cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, childhood cancer. How are you able to reconcile these budget decisions with the reality of research and what it means to alleviate suffering and more importantly to give people hope? If research is underway, you at least have the hope that maybe there’ll be a cure, maybe in the lifetime of someone I love. How can you walk away from that? — U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., questioning National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday
Torturer time has certainly laid out his grim devices and I am paraded past them, like Galileo forced to view the Inquisition's flails and pincers and spikes. — Neil Steinberg on his 65th birthday
The easiest way to declare a state of emergency is to create the emergency. — Jake Vig
Calling Stephen Miller “Voldemort” is fun, but ffs “Baldemort” is right there. — Kealan Patrick Burke
Streaming (TV)’s tendency to expand stories over multiple episodes undercuts the propulsion needed to keep everything frothy and moving with enough economy that you’re less likely to question whether any of it makes sense. — Nina Metz
Ask yourself why ICE is conducting these raids in cities like LA and Chicago where they face vociferous opposition but huge agribusinesses in places like Kristi Noem’s South Dakota go untouched. — Jonathan Weisman
The worst part is that, after the divorce, Donald gets to keep the house that Elon bought him. — Uncle Duke
To anyone who wondered, what could go wrong if we elected as president a highly volatile, deeply dishonest, simple-minded cretin with a revenge fetish, the answer is this. All of this. — Betty Bowers
Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals. His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses. That’s just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength. … Democracy is under assault right before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our Founding Fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government. There are no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility. The rule of law has increasingly been given way to the rule of Don. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom
Eggs have come down 400%. Everybody has eggs now. They’re having eggs for breakfast again. — Donald Trump
Why didn’t Trump call out the National Guard and the Marines when there was a true insurrection on January 6, 2021? — Marine73-77
The guy telling you that Los Angeles is on fire is the same guy who told you Mexico was going to pay for the wall and that people in Ohio were eating cats and dogs — unknown
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. First, here is the winner from last week’s contest, which I neglected to include:
And here is the winner of this week’s contest: 
Here is a quip from an unknown source that I considered too obscure to include in the written-quips poll below: 
86 57309 
Obscure because it relies first on knowledge of the mini controversy over former FBI Director James Comey’s social media post that showed seashells in the formation “86 47,” which some interpreted as a threat of violence against Donald Trump (86 being slang for “get rid of” or “discard,” and Trump being the 47th president of the United States). It also relies on memory of the 44-year-old pop song "867-5309/Jenny" by the band Tommy Tutone. You’re humming the chorus to yourself right now, aren’t you, Boomer?
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
The Hamburglar is a criminal and I do not respect him. — @viktorwinetrout.bsky.social
Conflicted: I love playing baseball. Yet I also love crying. — @jakevig.bsky.social
“Sounds like a plan!” (Me when I wasn’t listening and can only hope there is now a plan.) — @donni.bsky.social
Sound cool, confident, and in complete control by starting a sentence with "Here's what's going to happen ..." Especially when ordering at the drive-thru. — @jakevig.bsky.social
Idea: A Glade PlugIn that smells like a gas leak for when guests won’t leave. — @woodyluvscoffee.bsky.social
I have been pressing “remind me tomorrow” on my computer update for 7 years now. — @traciebreaux
One of the lines I've inherited from my dad is, when an ambulance passes, you say, “You'll never sell ice cream going that speed.” — @hum_dunkin
This morning my son said his ear hurt. I asked, “On the inside or outside?” So he walked out the front door, came back in and said, “Both.” Moments like this got me wondering if I'm saving too much for college. — unknown.
You Don’t Have the Cards, Charlie Brown. — @huntergraybeal
I never chose to love Classic Rock, when I hit a certain age, it chose me. — @Brock_Teee
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.”
Subscribe and don't miss a single poll!
Minced Words
Cate Plys, Brandon Pope and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We discussed/debated the actions of the Trump regime in Los Angeles and the tactics of anti-deportation protesters, ABC handing Terry Moran his walking papers, the proposed tax hike on sports wagering, the proposed $1,000 “baby bonus” investment and the probable length of the sentence that former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan will get at his upcoming sentencing hearing.
John guessed 3 1/2 years, about a quarter of the 12 1/2 years prosecutors are requesting. Cate guessed 3 years, I guessed 4 1/2 years and Brandon guessed that Madigan will get house arrest but no prison time. One of our regular panelists, Austin Berg, who wrote the highly critical documentary “Madigan: Power. Privilege. Politics,” was traveling and couldn’t make the show, so I texted him to ask for his prediction:
“I wouldn’t dare guess!” he replied, “But former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver got 6 1/2 years.” Silver was 76 at the time of his sentencing, and Madigan is 83, which may figure into the judge’s calculations. I’m not going to make this poll complicated and so will simply set the over/under line at 4 years:
POLL
What will be the sentence handed down to former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan? 
Under 4 years
Four years or more
Traffic-light recommendations:
John — A green light for “42 Balloons,” a new musical running at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater through June 29.
Cate — A red light for “The Four Seasons” a Netflix series that, according to Cate, somehow manages to be terrible even though it stars Steve Carell and Tina Fey. 
Brandon — A green light for “Josh Pate's College Football Show,” a CBS Sports podcast. (He also seconded Cate’s red light for “The Four Seasons.”)
My green light is below in the Green Light section.
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.
Good Sports
Neologism watch: ‘Mebound’ 
Until a week ago or so I’d never heard the term “mebound,” meaning rebounding the basketball after one’s own missed shot. Detractors of WNBA Sky forward Angel Reese have been pointing out that Reese’s gaudy rebounding statistics are padded by numerous mebounds since she tends to play very close to the basket yet makes just 36% of her shots.
Essentially Sports noted that, last season, Reese more than doubled the previous WNBA record for mebounds in a season, though back then they were known as “z-bounds” after NBA player Zach Randolph who was known for the same thing. And this video is one of many out there suggesting that Reese’s statistics really aren’t that impressive.
I’ve seen estimates of Reese’s mebounds to rebounds ratio, but none that feel   authoritative enough to cite. If you Google the term, however, it appears that it was her clunky performance around the basket that inspired this new and illustrative term.   
So far, she’s just not a particularly impressive force. It was therefore astounding this week that BET named Reese as its Sportswoman of the Year for the third year in a row, beating out such top performing Black female athletes as Simone Biles, Sha’Carri Richardson, Claressa Shields and Coco Gauff, even though the Sky didn’t make the eight-team WNBA playoffs last year. And, as currently the last-place team in the Eastern Conference, they appear unlikely to make the playoffs this year. 
Race to Rocky bottom
We here at the Picayune Sentinel have our eye on two questions: 
Will the Colorado Rockies lose 122 games this season and take the record for most games lost in an MLB season away from the 41-121 2024 Chicago White Sox?
Will the 2025 Colorado Rockies finish with the winning percentage under .235, the low-water mark in MLB’s modern era (post-1900) set by the 1916 Philadelphia A’s? That team went 36-117 in a 153-game season (roughly equivalent to a 38-124 record in today’s 162 game season).
While these are still intriguing questions, I will post hypothetical standings featuring a team on pace to lose 121 games (a .253 winning percentage), a team on pace to lose 124 games (a .235 winning percentage) and the 2025 Rockies. As of Thursday morning after 67 games:
 The Rockies could be close to pulling out of this season-long slump, given than 12 of their losses have been by just one run and another 11 have been by just two runs
Green Light
Green Light features recommendations from me and readers not only of songs — as in the former Tune of the Week post — but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on. Email me your nominations, and please include a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links, perhaps including excerpts from reviews or background articles. For TV shows, please include links to trailers/previews on YouTube and advice on where to stream them.
This seems like the week to point my overwhelmingly lefty readers to “The MeidasTouch” podcast, a ferociously anti-Trump offering on audio and video that won the 2025 Webby Awards podcast of the year honor. 
Here is the Webby’s proclamation:
The MeidasTouch Podcast has emerged as a defining voice in political media, blending sharp analysis, cultural awareness, and a fierce dedication to democratic values. Hosted by brothers Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas, the podcast has become essential listening for millions seeking truth, clarity, and action in today’s polarized climate. With bold commentary and unfiltered conversations, the show has reshaped how political storytelling thrives in the digital era.
In February 2025, The MeidasTouch Podcast reached the top of both Apple and Spotify's podcast charts. This landmark moment was a triumph of reach and resonance. The podcast has sparked widespread civic engagement, challenged misinformation, and galvanized a new generation of politically active listeners across platforms. 
For its cultural influence, fearless approach to truth-telling, and its remarkable success as a driver of political engagement in the digital space, it is our great privilege to honor The MeidasTouch Podcast with the 2025 Webby Podcast of the Year.
They release several short episodes a day. They’re one-sided and over the top, often not quite delivering on their breathless titles:
GOP Reps Lose It on Live TV as Trump Goes to War With LA
Trump Kills His Term When He Does the Unthinkable
Trump Has Disaster AM as Past Words Incriminate Him
MAGA Mike Gets Bad News as GOP Betrays Him
And so on. Not fair and balanced, but often comforting. I’m not a fan of how the commercial reads in the podcast blend so smoothly into the commentary that you can’t always tell when the pitches begin. But I like that episodes are often short enough —15 minutes or so — that I can finish them while washing dishes after dinner.
The podcast is part of the MeidasTouch Network, which includes 13 other podcasts, a home page of news articles and a newsletter.  
Mistakes were made
When I become aware of errors in the Picayune Sentinel, I quickly correct them in the online version, but since many of you read just the email version, which I can’t correct after the fact, I will use this space periodically to alert you to meaningful mistakes I’ve made. (Not typos, in other words.)
Last week, I confused the date of the publication of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It was 1960. And I transposed the numbers when I projected the final 2025 record of the Colorado Rockies. As of last Thursday, they were playing at a pace to finish 31-131 (now they’re on a 29-133 pace).  The errors have been fixed online, and the responsible party has been duly shamed. 
Info
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. Browse and search back issues here.
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
Email the Picayune Sentinel
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.
If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.
Social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn 
Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social 
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5
Help?
If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.
Thanks for reading!
Give a gift subscription
Share
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

2025-06-19 Eric Zorn
Thu, 19 Jun 2025 10:03:32 GMT
AI video technology is getting scarier by the day & why Mayor Johnson should at least give the "snap curfew" idea a chance
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
AI video technology is getting scarier by the day 
& why Mayor Johnson should at least give the "snap curfew" idea a chance
Jun 19

READ IN APP

6-19-2025 (issue No. 198)
This week:
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
A transcript of a portion of Jon Stewart’s scathing monologue Monday 
Google’s Veo 3 AI video generator is both impressive and ominous
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week
Good Sports — Angel Reese plans to trademark “mebounds” and the dreadful Colorado Rockies are showing discouraging (to Sox fans) signs of life
Red Lights — This week, we go on the search for books everyone else seemed to love but that you hated
Subscribe or upgrade your subscription
Last week’s winning quip
This morning my son said his ear hurt. I asked, “On the inside or outside?” So he walked out the front door, came back in and said, “Both.” Moments like this got me wondering if I'm saving too much for college. — unknown
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: Over the vehement objection of Mayor Brandon Johnson, the Chicago City Council narrowly passed an ordinance Wednesday that would allow police officials to impose preemptive “snap” curfews to discourage teens from taking over city streets.
View: The mayor should give it a chance. He blasted the proposal Tuesday, saying, “It doesn’t make any sense. It’s a sloppy form of governance,” and adding that alders instead should have approved funding for an additional 1,000 summer jobs for youths.
But  Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, usually a Johnson ally,  said, “I believe we can and should do both. I’m not down here doing lazy governance. I’m down here to actively work and do what is necessary to protect my community. Stopping these potentially chaotic and violent gatherings will help everybody.”
Johnson has argued that research has not shown curfews to be effective in curbing youth violence — though my fellow “Mincing Rascals” panelist Cate Plys observed that Johnson has not acted to roll back the earlier curfews imposed by his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot. And he and others have said that hastily imposed restrictions — the geographically limited curfews would go into effect in just half an hour — risk criminalizing hapless kids who just show up somewhere to have a little fun. 
That’s why I have suggested a trial period — snap curfew authority that will expire in three months and then be scrutinized, tweaked and perhaps abandoned.
Johnson told us to “ask deeper, more profound questions about why young people are gathering in spaces in the first place,” but he’s living in a dream world if he thinks kids come downtown to raise hell simply because they don’t have summer jobs or recreational opportunities in their neighborhoods.
And even if the snap-curfew idea is a lousy one, the next time a teen “takeover” gets out of hand, Johnson will get the blame for not at least giving the idea a chance. 
In promising to veto the ordinance Wednesday, the mayor claimed it was “counterproductive to the progress that we have made in reducing crime and violence in our city. It would create tensions between residents and law enforcement at a time when we have worked so hard to rebuild that trust.”
I can’t speak for all residents, but it’s my sense that what most of them want is a mayor committed to trying creative solutions to keep a lid on chaos as he ponders “profound questions.”
News: A Highland Park resident reported to police receiving a threatening, antisemitic letter Sunday.
View: This is grotesque and ominous, and should be thoroughly investigated. But it should not have been a news story. The person who sent the letter was seeking attention and got it in a way that seems likely only to encourage more such acts. And as we saw in Minnesota over the weekend, the truly dangerous people tend to strike without warning. 
News: Senate Republicans are holding hearings on Biden’s mental fitness when he was in office
View: Let it go! Look forward. Unless the Republicans want a full-blown retrospective on Trump’s deranged pronouncements once he finally leaves office. In the hearing Wednesday, Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin played video clips of Trump speaking that Durbin said cast doubt on Trump’s “cognitive ability.”
News: Tribune Publishing Co.’s new buyout offer to its unionized newsroom employees offers an incentive equal to the money members would be entitled to receive in the event they are laid off, according to the union.
View: What part of “incentive” do these corporate ninnies not understand? Taking a buyout is supposed to be something of a gamble:  Take the money and go off in search of another job, or stay on the job and hope you won’t get laid off so quickly that you’ll end up with far less money.  
Those of us who accepted the Trib’s buyout four years ago weighed a far more attractive offer than today’s offer against the possibility that the cost-cutters at Alden Global Capital, which owns the paper, would lay us off at the first opportunity.  But when the financial outcome is the same either way, the smart move is to hang on and keep cashing paychecks as long as you can. 
Either way — buyouts or layoffs — the looming newsroom reduction at the Tribune is bad news for Chicago.
Land of Linkin’
“100 Students in a School Meant for 1,000: Inside Chicago’s Refusal to Deal With Its Nearly Empty Schools” by Mila Koumpilova, Chalkbeat, and Jennifer Smith Richards, ProPublica: “There are 47 schools … operating at less than one-third capacity, by the district’s measure. That’s almost twice as many severely underenrolled buildings as Chicago had in 2013, when it carried out the largest mass school closings in the country’s history, Chalkbeat and ProPublica found. The most extreme example is Frederick Douglass Academy High School, which has 28 students this year and a per-student cost of $93,000.”
The Chicago Audiomakers Collective will present an evening of innovative, short-form audio from around the world with audio icon Julie Shapiro, co-creator of Audio Flux.  Shapiro will be joined on stage by my wife, Johanna Zorn, with whom she co-founded the Third Coast International Audio Festival, to talk about how creative audio fits into today’s podcast landscape. It takes place at Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont Ave., on July 31 at 7 p.m. More details and ticket info.
My father turns 94 today and remains as sharp as ever as he faces the physical challenges of aging. He was a physics professor in his first life, but has had an amazing second career as a sculptor. Check out his work here. 
Is waving the Mexican flag at immigrant rights rallies and protests a good idea or a bad idea? I presented both sides in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus and asked you to vote.
A benefit of the so-called “Pizza Tax” that I hadn’t thought of.
“Are em dashes really a sign of AI writing?” Grammar Girl — delightfully nerdy podcaster Mignon Fogarty — says no.
Tip of the press fedora to Minnesota Reformer’s Patrick Coolican, who quickly and emphatically debunked right-wing lies that sprang up after the assassination of Democratic Minnesota House leader Melissa Hortman and her husband over the weekend. 
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:
■ Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein: Minnesota cops fueled an “insane conspiracy theory” about the Minnesota assassin. 
■ Columnist Mitch Jackson: Mike Lee “must resign, be expelled, or be voted out by the people.”
■ “America has just passed an important test”: Economist Paul Krugman compares Trump’s Saturday military parade with the nationwide “No Kings” rallies.
■ Columnist Andy Borowitz declared the protests “Trump’s worst nightmare” come true.
■ The Daily Beast: A billionaire Walmart heiress’s full-page newspaper ads condemning Trump and cheering on the protests has sparked a MAGA backlash.
■ Organizers have targeted July 17 for a “No Kings” sequel.
■ Columnist and former Democratic Illinois Rep. Marie Newman hypothesizes that the U.S. may have illegally deported someone who could have cured cancer.
■ Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was columnist Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week.
■ Andy Borowitz offers a two-line “Noem Poem”—and invites you to submit your own.
■ Evan Hurst at Wonkette: “Trump embarrassed himself and America at the G7, just like the good old days.”
■ Your Local Epidemiologist offers guidance for dealing with benighted folks who insist on “doing their own research” about health matters.
■ Pulitzer winner Mary Schmich: The late Brian Wilson “created the first, and to this day most beloved, record I ever owned.”
■ Motel 6’s longtime commercial voice—and NPR veteran—Tom Bodett is suing the chain.
■ A Square reader perk: Save 30% on tickets to “Faith is Funny: Comedy Writers on God and Religion” with Hari Kondabolu, Gibran Saleem, Kate Sidley and Peter Sagal under the auspices of the American Writers Museum—Monday (June 23), 6 p.m., at Chicago’s Studebaker Theater. The code AWM at checkout brings admission down to $18.
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Jon Stewart goes off on the ‘one death is too many’ Republicans
During an epic monologue on “The Daily Show” on Monday night, host Jon Stewart played several clips of Republican lawmakers justifying the harsh crackdown on immigrants because one death caused by an undocumented resident is “too many.” 
Jump to the 20-minute mark in this video to follow along with the transcript below:
One is too many. One death, by the way, true, it is too many. Violence should never be accepted. It should never be tolerated. But that's for their issue. In the wake of Sandy Hook, and Uvalde, and Parkland, and El Paso, and Lewiston, and Aurora, and Buffalo, and Boulder, and Binghamton, and Highland Park, and Monterey Park, and San Bernardino, and San Jose, and San Francisco, and the Pulse Nightclub, and the Colorado Springs nightclub, and the Little Rock nightclub, and the Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks, and the Ned Peppers bar in Dayton, and the Waffle House in Nashville, and Virginia Tech, and UVA, and MSU, and UCSB, and FSU, and NIU, and SMC, and the Sutherland Springs church, and the Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, and the Living Church of God, and the Tree of Life Synagogue and the Allen mall, and the Westroads Mall, and Fort Hood and Lockheed Martin. And what are we fucking doing? What are we doing? By the way, that is a wildly incomplete list. We kept it to the last 25 years, and it's still not everything. And what's their response to all that? …
Turns out, when it comes to mass shootings, one’s not too many. Actually, a shitload isn't too many. And, by the way, you can say “Second Amendment” all you want, but you definitely don't seem to mind throwing out the Constitution when it comes to deportation. And I am legitimately asking this question. This is truly legitimate, right? … I am genuinely baffled. Why is it when a foreigner or someone that shouldn't be here kills one of us, we're going to put $150 billion into border security. We're going to militarize our cities. We're going to spend trillions of dollars to bomb and destabilize foreign countries overseas. We're going to ban people from random countries from ever visiting here. We're going to take our shoes off at the airport forever. But when we do it to ourselves, nothing. Is it that the only acceptable deaths are those that are made in America? 
AI AI AI! 
It’s not terribly hard to tell that the video below is fake — generated by AI. The lip-syncing is a bit off, and though Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark is a bit of a trash talker, she would never say, “Angel Reese said people watch the WNBA because of her, too. That’s why you could get in to a game for a can of SpaghettiOs while I was gone. Nobody watches to see her shoot 22% and miss 17 layups. If it wasn’t for me, Angel would be playing at a Lifetime Fitness and getting worked by a 5th-grade boy.”
But, as I’ve noted several times, this technology is still in its relative infancy, and it certainly won’t be long before only video forensic experts will be able to sort out real videos from deepfakes. The recent introduction of Google VEO 3 has been as impressive as it is ominous and almost certainly spells the end of generic commercial acting as a career.
Here’s Mashable in “Google's Veo 3 AI video generator is unlike anything you've ever seen. The world isn't ready.”
Veo 3 brought with it several innovations that separate it from other video generation tools. Crucially, in addition to video, Veo 3 also produces audio and dialogue. It doesn't just offer photorealism, but fully realized soundscapes and conversations to go along with videos. It can also maintain consistent characters in different video clips, and users can fine-tune camera angles, framing, and movements in entirely new ways. … If you're not on your guard and simply casually scrolling your feed, you might not think twice about whether the videos are real or not.
The short film "Influenders" is one of the most widely shared short films made with Veo 3. 
"Influenders" was created by Yonatan Dor, the founder of the AI visual studio The Dor Brothers. In the movie, a series of influencers react as an unexplained cataclysm occurs in the background. The video has hundreds of thousands of views across various platforms
“We used Google Veo 3 exclusively for this video, but to make a piece like this really come to life we needed to do further sound design, clever editing and some upscaling at the end," Dor said in an email to Mashable. "The full piece took around 2 days to complete." Dor added, "Veo 3 is a massive step forward, it’s easily the most advanced tool available publicly right now. We're especially impressed by its dialogue and prompt adherence capabilities."
Italics mine.
In “I've been watching Google Veo 3 videos, and they're genuinely terrifying,” Tom May, the former editor of Professional Photography magazine, writes: 
As a society, we're not ready for this. Not even close. For centuries, humans have relied on a simple rule: seeing is believing. If you could film something, it probably happened.
Sure, movies have had special effects for decades, but those required massive budgets, teams of specialists, and weeks of post-production. Now, any teenager with a Google account and $249 a month can create footage that would have required a Hollywood studio just five years ago. …
Just like fake news and fake images, fake videos will get shared faster than fact-checkers can keep up. By the time someone debunks it, it's already been viewed by millions and shaped public opinion. … We're about to be hit with a tsunami of synthetic media that's exponentially harder to detect and debunk. … The technology is advancing faster than our ability to respond to it. By the time we figure out how to detect Veo 3 videos, there will be Veo 4, and then Veo 5, each one more sophisticated than the last.
Quotables
A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately.
The governor of Minnesota is so whacked out, I’m not calling him. Why would I call him? The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. So, you know, I could be nice and call, but why waste time? — Donald Trump on why he didn’t contact Gov. Tim Walz after the former Minnesota House speaker was assassinated over the weekend
This is the central dynamic to most of the Trump Administration’s legal strategies, including, most notably ‘til now, the deportations to El Salvador: A law says, “Under condition X, the president can do Y.” Trump says, “I declare X is happening! So I can do Y.” — Peter Sagal‬
If you lost your administrative job as a federal employee there are plenty of strawberry picking jobs in Oxnard now. — Frovo
What we're seeing right now … is not consistent with American democracy. It is consistent with autocracies. It is consistent with Hungary under Orbán. It’s consistent with places that hold elections but do not otherwise observe what we think of as a fair system in which everybody’s voice matters and people have a seat at the table and nobody's above the law. We're not there yet completely, but I think that we are dangerously close to normalizing behavior like that. — Barack Obama
I am confused. Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been arrested and charged with the crime of providing transportation for undocumented migrants from Texas to northeastern states. This is exactly what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott did on numerous occasions. So why wasn’t Abbott arrested? — Michael DeLollis
Millions upon millions of undocumented immigrants live in red states. In cities like Houston, Dallas, and Miami. They live and work in rural heartland areas, on farms in states like Iowa and Indiana. The President’s true motivations seem to be about political power. If they were truly about deporting “illegals,” why just target some but not all of the places they reside? — Paris Schutz
Well, I certainly hope (that the MLB All-Star Game comes to Chicago). I do. Look, I think at some point Jesus the Christ is going to return and claim my soul for eternity. We just have to wait till that great gettin' up morning, won't we? — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson
I want to thank the Chicago police officers who worked the “No Kings” protest over the weekend. I witnessed great patience and forbearance as protesters were given space to be seen and exercise their rights. At the same time, everything I experienced felt safe and peaceful at all times. I expect there will be more protests in the coming months, but I am impressed and encouraged to believe that CPD will be an asset to the citizens of Chicago who need to express themselves this way. — Drew Saunders in a letter to the Sun-Times 
There is an argument to bring back the Mrs. degree, and just be clear that's why you're going to college. Don't lie to yourself. … ‘I'm studying sociology.’ No you’re not. We know why you're there, and that's OK. … That's a really good reason to go to college. … College is a scam, but if you're gonna find your life partner, like that's actually a really good reason to go to college. … And so yeah, you could go learn some stuff. That's fine, I guess, or whatever. Just don't listen to your professors. But (finding a husband) actually was the reason why a lot of women went to college in the 70s, 80s and 90s. And it worked.  — conservative activist Charlie Kirk, responding to a request for advice from a 14-year-girl interested in studying political journalism
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest: 
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
Dentists hate this one simple trick: Putting cellophane over the toilet seat. —@wheeltod.bsky.social
I’m getting a teardrop tattoo so anyone who wants to mess with me knows I cry easily. — @TheAndrewNadeau
If you show me a book cover, you best believe I'm judging that shit. — @jakevig.bsky.social
No offense your honor, but I disagree with your whole aesthetic. — @donni.bsky.social
If I ever see “a little silhouetto of a man,” I ain’t singing a song about it. I’m getting the hell out of there. — @oldfriend99.bsky.social
Susan B. Anthony is actually the perfect drag name. — @Cactuscali1991
Marinara is just ketchup that did a study abroad program — @lacroixboi.dadguy.online
Sometimes I feel like I'm a minor character in an interesting person's dream. — @MelvinofYork
Do rich people still drive around looking for mustard? — @BobGolen
Acting is really the only profession where you can put all your mistakes at work in a fun little blooper reel and people think it's great. Wouldn't fly for a plumber would it? Or an anesthetist. — @hlndtsn
Vote here and check the current results in the poll.
For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.
Why “quips”? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.” Also, I’m finding good stuff on BlueSky now as well.
Subscribe and don't miss a single poll!
Minced Words
Cate Plys, Marj Halperin and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. Topics included the City Council’s approval of the “snap curfew,” the effectiveness and purpose of “No Kings!” rallies, and the role of objectivity in journalism.
Recommendations:
Cate — A green light to the Trump regime’s plan to allow foreign nationals to gain a path to citizenship with the purchase of a $5 million “Gold Card” with Trump’s face on it. The 70,000 reported applicants so far would be investing $350 billion into our coffers, which, I pointed out, would pay for a lot of military parades.
Marj — A green light for “The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth,” a graphic novel by Ken Krimstein.
John — A red light for the “Trump Phone,” a vaporous offering from the grifters in the Trump Organization. 
Eric — A red light for “A Gentleman in Moscow,” a novel by Amor Towles. It is my contribution to today’s Red Lights feature.
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.
Good Sports
Angel Reese seeks to trademark ‘mebounds’
I have no idea how trademark law works, but it doesn’t seem particularly wise for Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese to try to trademark the term “mebounds” that her critics came up with to highlight how many of the rebounds she is credited with are rebounds of her own missed shots. (See last week’s “Good Sports” entry.)
What, is she going to make T-shirts and caps with “mebounds” on them? All that’ll do is call attention to what a comparatively lousy shooter she is, which is the nub of the argument made by those who contend that she is merely a sturdy role player in the WNBA and far from the superstar she imagines herself to be.
The Tribune’s basketball writer Julia Poe did the research and, before Tuesday’s loss to the Washington Mystics, reported that just 15% of Reese’s league-leading rebounds were off her own misses. But Poe added:
The “mebounds” fixation misses the heart of the problem: Reese is a poor finisher at the rim. She’s shooting 38.2% within 5 feet of the basket, a decline from her 44.5% accuracy in the same zone last season. If her efficiency matched that of other bigs in the league — between 65% and 80% — Reese could score at least five more points per game. 
The way for her to silence the “mebounds” critics is not to reclaim their insult — they’ll simply switch to “Reesebounds” or some other derogatory term — but to start making more shots in the paint. She currently ranks 57th in the league in field-goal percentage, which, for a forward who scores 64.5% of her points close to the basket, is dismal.
Reese has a fervent fan base — 5.6 million followers on TikTok, 4.9 million followers on Instagram and 692,000 followers on Twitter —  that categorizes those who criticize her performance on the court as “haters” who, they say, are animated not by an analysis of her performance but by her brash confidence, on exhibit here in a video posted Saturday.
@angelreese10💋
Rough transcript:
Oh my God, you see that body? … Look at me! … Whoever came up with the “mebounds” thing, y'all ate that up because rebounds, mebounds, crebounds, keybounds, tebounds ... anything that comes off that board, it's mine. It’s mine. And a brand? That's six figures right there. Whoever came up with that? The trolling, I love when y'all do it because, like, the ideas be good. Like, when y'all have to alter my face and shit because I'm cute, alright, whatever, like, that doesn't get to me. But when y'all came up with “mebounds” — because statistically, all the rebounds that I get aren't always just mine. They're, like, the defense’s, too, or somebody else who’s on my team — but, when y'all came up with “mebounds,” y'all ate.
(To my older readers, “ate” “is a slang phrase used to express admiration and praise for someone who has done a great job at something.” Do not attempt to use!) 
Reese has the quintessential “influencer” attitude — the narcissistic “look at me!” aesthetic that has rocketed many people of far lesser talent and beauty to fame and fortune — which is bound to be polarizing among those of us who like to make our own judgments. 
We are truly in an age when — to cite a quote often attributed to David Lee Roth, former frontman of the band Van Halen — an ounce of image is worth a pound of performance. Waiting for others to extol your cuteness or other fine qualities is very yesterday. The phenomenon is real, and finding it baffling to annoying may in part be a generational thing.  
Reese has preened her way into a celebrity status that she has yet to earn on the basketball court.  She’s an accomplished, tenacious, valuable rebounder, no question, but she’s only 47th in the WNBA in “Player Impact Estimate,” or PIE. From WNBA.com:
The PIE formula compiles everything a single player does in a game — points scored, rebounds, blocks, missed free throws etc. — and weighs that number against the same stats generated by everyone in that same game. … The formula then computes a percent value for each player which gives us, in layman’s terms, the percentage of positive things attributable to that player in that game. … Quantifying individual excellence is something that is not easy to do in a team sport such as basketball. The PIE equation, however, does just that.
Will Reese become the Sky’s go-to player at crunch time? The one everyone knows is going to get the ball with the game on the line and the clock ticking down? Maybe. She’s only in her second year as a pro. Until then, the jokes about “mebounds,” trademarked or not, will continue. 
Break up the Rockies!
The hapless Colorado Rockies, still on pace to be the worst team in modern Major League Baseball history, have found a little hap. Since last Wednesday, the Rockies have gone 5-2, and are now on an auspicious four-game winning streak. After 74 games, their record is 17-57 (.230)
We here at the Picayune Sentinel have our eye on two questions:
Will the Rockies lose 122 games this season and take the record for most games lost in an MLB season away from the 41-121 2024 (.253 winning percentage) Chicago White Sox?
Will the 2025 Rockies finish with the winning percentage under .235, the low-water mark in MLB’s modern era (post-1900) set by the 1916 Philadelphia A’s? That team went 36-117 in a 153-game season (roughly equivalent to a 38-124 record in today’s 162 game season).
While these are still intriguing questions, I will post hypothetical standings featuring a team on pace to lose 121 games (a .253 winning percentage), a team on pace to lose 124 games (a .235 winning percentage) and the 2025 Rockies. As of Thursday morning:
For the record, the 1916 A’s never won more than two games in a row;  the 2024 White Sox won four in row just once (from May 8 to May 11).
Red Lights
This week, I’m breaking format on the Green Light feature — recommendations from me and readers of songs, TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — to ask you to help build on this letter published in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus:
Shelley Riskin — Have you ever read a book that everyone loved but you hated? Mine was “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold. It wasn’t spiritual! It was awful awful awful!
Supporters can post their red-light book nominations in comments. Others can email me your nominations and please explain briefly your antipathy. 
Info
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. Browse and search back issues here.
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
Email the Picayune Sentinel
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.
If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.
Social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn 
Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social 
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5
Help?
If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.
Thanks for reading!
Give a gift subscription
Share
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe

2025-06-26 Eric Zorn
Thu, 26 Jun 2025 10:01:33 GMT
Pritzker's reelection bid is a smart move no matter what his other aspirations might be 
͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     ͏     
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Pritzker's reelection bid is a smart move no matter what his other aspirations might be
Thank you for your attention to these matters!
Jun 26

READ IN APP

6-26-2025 (issue No. 199)
This week:
Why it’s a good idea for Ill. Gov. JB Pritzker to run for reelection whether or not he’s running for president
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
Trump said “fuck.” Yawn
A whole generation has no idea why this “save” symbol look like it does
More than 32 years after the fact, a new book on the Brown’s Chicken massacre
Books everyone else seemed to love but that you hated
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week
Good Sports — On Sophie Cunningham, enforcer. And following along the Colorado Rockies’ race toward destiny
Green Light —  A recommendation that you watch a particular opening montage from “The Bear”
Subscribe or upgrade your subscription
Pritzker’s smart move: An incumbent governor will have a better chance at winning the presidency than a citizen billionaire
Reportedly, Gov. JB Pritzker will announce Thursday that he’s running next year for a third term as Illinois governor, evidently disregarding the advice of at least two respected Democratic consultants. This from an article last month at WBEZ about Pritzker’s interest in running for president in 2028:
David Axelrod, former chief strategist and senior advisor to President Barack Obama in his winning 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, said if Pritzker harbors White House ambitions, he ought to think hard about leaving Springfield after two terms because of the political volatility that being governor can bring.
“Third terms are notoriously perilous, and things that can go wrong tend to go wrong in third terms,” Axelrod said. “If your attention is divided between running for president, which is a hellacious job in itself, and … dealing with crises at home, that is a very difficult balance to strike.
“I honestly think time may be better spent for him if he wants to run for president, traveling the country and interacting with people and not just speaking, but listening. It would enrich him as a candidate and give him a head start. So you have to balance the risks and rewards of each decision. And in my view, the risks of running again [for governor] are greater than the possible rewards,” said Axelrod, a CNN commentator and host of the political podcast, “The Axe Files.” …
Democratic political strategist Pete Giangreco had roles in nine presidential campaigns dating back to 1984, including Obama’s two victories and the 1992 and 1996 wins by Democrat Bill Clinton. Like Axelrod, Giangreco sees more time in Illinois’ Executive Mansion as a move fraught with risk for Pritzker if the governor has any desire to seek the White House.
“In my mind, there’s no reason to run for a third term as governor to improve your chances of being president,” Giangreco said in an interview, adding that Pritzker already has “got a great record to run on.”
Both Axelrod and Giangreco are far more experienced and knowledgeable than I about politics, but my guess is that the bully pulpit of the governor’s office is better than the gilded pulpit of a citizen billionaire when it comes to motivating voters. Six sitting governors have won the White House, most recently George W. Bush of Texas in 2000 and Bill Clinton of Arkansas in 1992. Seven former governors have done the trick, most recently Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Jimmy Carter in 1976. 
I’ll note up front that I doubt Pritzker will win the presidency in 2028, which is part of the reason I’m glad he’s running for reelection. I think he’s overall been a fine chief executive for the state, and I’ll be happy to have him for four more years.
Here’s Rick Pearson in Wednesday’s Tribune explaining the case that Pritzker has been a good governor:
Perhaps Pritzker’s biggest accomplishment as governor was to bring a state of fiscal stability to a notoriously unstable Illinois — particularly after the financial problems caused by his GOP predecessor’s two-year stalemate with Democratic lawmakers that left the state without a budget, causing severe cuts in social safety net programs and racking up a vast amount of unpaid bills to state vendors.
The state’s credit rating has been upgraded nine times during Pritzker’s tenure, from a low point of being one step above junk bond status. …  
An unabashed progressive, Pritzker has increased protections for abortion access for women and availability of health care, defended the state’s sanctuary policies against Trump’s push to deport immigrants, signed bans on assault weapons and so-called ghost guns and required universal background checks on firearm sales in the state. 
At the same time, he enacted changes to the state’s criminal justice system that ended cash bail for nonviolent offenders, expunged minor cannabis-related arrest records and approved the legalization of marijuana for recreational sale and use.
He also approved a $15 an hour state minimum wage and a massive $45 billion capital plan, Rebuild Illinois, to modernize the state’s infrastructure. He adopted programs offering tax credits for electric vehicle development and is pushing to make the state a center for quantum computing. He also legalized sports betting and helped create six new casino licenses.
 And here’s Pearson in the same article explaining the case against him:
His stewardship of the state during the COVID-19 pandemic was roundly criticized as overreach by Republicans with some municipal leaders ignoring business shutdown orders. Several GOP county sheriffs vowed not to enforce the state’s assault weapons ban.
A state audit faulted Pritzker’s Department of Public Health for its tardy response to a COVID-19 outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home in 2020 that killed 36 elderly military veterans. An inspector general’s report ordered by Pritzker was found to have focused too narrowly on the state Department of Veterans Affairs while largely ignoring Public Health’s role in the crisis.
Another state audit found Pritzker’s Department of Employment Security paid out more than $5 billion in fraudulent jobless benefits in the rush to fulfill jobless claims during the pandemic.
And another 300 state employees engaged in wrongdoing by receiving more than $7 million of pandemic-era business grants to assist businesses in paying workers.
The conservative/libertarian Illinois Policy Institute think tank gave Pritzker straight F grades last year on growth in gross domestic product, jobs, population, employment and wages:
It is harder for Illinoisans to find a job than it is for residents in almost any other state in the country. When they do find jobs, they’re often lower-paying and offer slower wage growth than what their peers receive in other states. With results like that, it’s clear why so many Illinoisans are fleeing. … Pritzker has also overseen a decline in educational outcomes for Illinois students. Academics got worse despite the state spending $2.5 billion more on public schools annually.
An extra couple of years in office for Pritzker —  assuming he beats whichever candidate the feckless Illinois Republican Party runs against him next year — will give him some runway to address some of the problems his critics identify and to make the inevitable slogan, “JB Pritzker will do to American what he’s done to Illinois,” seem like a promise, not a threat.
Last week’s winning quip
Susan B. Anthony is actually the perfect drag name. —  @Cactuscali1991
In a statistical dead heat, the runner-up was “Marinara is just ketchup that did a study abroad program” by @lacroixboi.dadguy.online.
I have much to say below about the quip that finished dead last in the poll.
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: The U.S. joined Israel’s bombing attacks to dislodge Iran’s nuclear program.
View: As one who was fooled by ululations of urgency back in 2003 prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I ain’t falling for this one. No one in the civilized world wants Iran to get a nuclear bomb, but as a Tribune editorial noted: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (has been) talking about the imminence of an Iranian nuclear bomb as far back as 1996.”  
Maybe this will turn out to have been the wisest course of action that will lead to increased safety and stability in the Middle East, and I will once again have been wrong. But I wish President Donald Trump had gone about this deliberately, building the case by presenting evidence and then seeking the consent of Congress, as I have no confidence whatsoever in his gut feelings and rash actions. 
News: “Trump calls for special prosecutor to investigate 2020 election.”
View: Is there a sorer loser in all of human history than this wretched man? Wasting government time and resources on his grievances and desire for revenge. Tsk.
News: “New Texas law will require Ten Commandments to be posted in every public school classroom.”
View: This again? The argument favoring the idea goes something like this: The American system of laws is rooted in absolute moral truths as handed down by the Judeo-Christian God in the Ten Commandments. Therefore, a display of the commandments is like a relief statue of the blindfolded Dame Justice above the courthouse door, simply a symbolic reminder of the principles upon which all this jurisprudence is, ultimately, based.
But like hell it is.
Taken as a whole, the Ten Commandments are explicitly based upon and reflect a particular — and, I might add, not very widely practiced — religious belief.
How many of the Ten Commandments reflect actual laws? Three.
Don’t steal, murder or bear false witness.
Another four — honor your folks, stay faithful to your spouse, don’t be covetous and refrain from profanity — are simply positive exhortations, not generally matters of law anymore.
The remaining three — keep the Sabbath holy, make no graven images and have no other God before the Judeo-Christian God — are religious prescriptions, plain and simple.
Making graven images may or may not be a good idea, but unless I misread my Constitution, we’re all free to do so and risk the consequences. Any sign in any courtroom or public school classroom that implies otherwise is in serious error.
I would add to this that making graven images, or at least the freedom to do so, is precisely, exactly, what America is all about.
Ever ask yourself why in the name of all that is putatively holy do religious zealots insist on posting the Commandments instead of, say, a nice solid list of Principles of Good Behavior?
I mean, if you’ve got room in your classroom or courtroom for 10 rules, why would you spend one telling people not to make graven images? And another telling them to keep the Sabbath holy?
These are not big problems in our society.
And when it comes to actual problems, does anyone really need a sign to remind them not to murder people?
Of course not. The content is not critical.
The messenger is the message: As a whole, the Ten Commandments on the wall say that God, a divine and all-powerful being, is the source of morality; that without God telling us what is moral and what isn’t moral and defining the absolutes of right and wrong, there can be no right and wrong.
This is a perfectly fine belief for an individual to hold to regulate his own conduct.
I’d neither endorse it nor criticize it as a matter of personal conscience. It’s not my business, as long as no one tries to make it my business.
But as a civic belief, the notion of God as the source of morality is not benign — it’s dangerous because it removes questions of law, customs and morals from the arena of human logic and reason.
If the courts don’t recognize this — as they have already done in the case of a similar law in Louisiana — then God help us as we fall into a theocracy.
News: The former owner of the “Home Alone” house in Winnetka has written a book about the experience. 
View: A book? The Sun-Times article about John Abendshien’s “Home But Alone No More” sated my appetite for learning what it was like to own the home that was the setting for filmmaker John Hughes’ 1990 classic “Home Alone.”  
News: Former teen idol Bobby Sherman dies at 81.
View: Sherman will always be the cute guy heartthrob whom many of us aspired to be as teenagers in the 1970s. I’m not saying he was the only idol who inspired the unfortunate haircut in my senior yearbook photo, but, well, there is some evidence …
Land of Linkin’
Streetsblog Chicago has the most comprehensive coverage about the hit-and-run incident early Saturday on DuSable Lake Shore Drive that killed Misericordia Heart of Mercy social service worker, musician and actor Brendan Siddal.
“A compassionate letter to my first-year teaching self” by Joe Lynn, a newly retired high school English teacher, contains good advice not only for new teachers but also for anyone starting a new job.
For years, President Donald Trump promised things would happen “in two weeks,” but then they didn’t. Was he just playing the long game to spring a surprise on Iran last weekend? 
A bill in the Alabama legislature “would eliminate protections for pregnant people and subject them to murder or assault charges for the termination of fetal development at any stage.” 
Meidas Touch: “Amendment Abolishing Slavery Missing from Trump's Bible”
Was the mailing of a threatening, antisemitic letter to a home in Highland Park really newsworthy? PS readers had their say in Tuesdays’ bonus edition.
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 cynical and un-bylined newsletter Closer to the Edge: Trump “accidentally sums up his entire presidency.”
■ Chicago radio, NBC and NPR veteran Jeff Kamen flashes back to a newspaper piece he filed 19 years ago—“The day after Israel attacks Iran”—adding now: “I so want to be wrong about this.”
■ Durbin out: In a mic drop moment, retiring Illinois U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin gave a rhetorical middle finger to Republican-led hearings on Biden’s mental fitness by playing the Judiciary Committee a short video spotlighting Trump’s cognitive shortcomings … and then he walked out.
■ Weekly Dingus: Columnist Lyz Lenz bestowed her dubious achievement award on Utah Sen. Mike Lee.
■ A young man awarded an American flag by Lee in 2016 is sending it back.
■ Indicted on fraud charges in Chicago, a former executive of Loretto Hospital is waging what the Tribune calls a “bizarre PR campaign” from Dubai (gift link, funded by Chicago Public Square supporters).
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: “Once upon a time I looked down on columnists who wrote about the weather. It seemed a failure of imagination. And I can report, on good authority, that is indeed exactly that.”
■ The Sun-Times: A forthcoming memoir from a retired health care executive who lived in Winnetka’s “Home Alone” house says it was a “dystopian dream” without end.
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
‘The F word’ has become more like a firecracker than a bomb
An Associated Press article Wednesday began:
A fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel appeared to hold Tuesday after initially faltering, and U.S. President Donald Trump expressed frustration with both sides, saying they had fought “for so long and so hard” that they do not know what they are doing.
The seventh paragraph elaborated that the president had used “particularly strong words.” It was not until the 26th paragraph that the article got more specific in quoting Trump:
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f--- they’re doing,” he said. 
(Video link)
Most mainstream news outlets bleeped or obscured the word “fuck,” according to a Poynter review of the coverage. 
In earlier, gentler, more genteel times, I can see it having been a hard decision — the president used a swear for emphasis! What shall we do that won’t upset those who are deeply concerned about coarse language infecting our civic discourse?
But this particular oath has been so attenuated by its use on streaming TV and by other politicians, including the foul-mouthed Trump, that it shouldn’t even raise eyebrows anymore. 
Resurfacing what I wrote on this topic a year ago, we’re all adults here — the idea of a “family newspaper” that must protect the sensitivities of young readers is increasingly silly. First, very few minors read the newspaper anymore. And second, those minors who do read the paper are unlikely to be shocked by these protean, garden-variety intensifiers that we consider impolite.
I find it patronizing and paternalistic when publications and cable news outlets censor words that everyone in their audience knows, hears all the time and, in many cases, uses freely. Most magazines and online publications, like most podcasts and most streaming TV shows, season their offerings with salty language to excellent effect.
Media outlets ought to be descriptive, not prescriptive — they should communicate to people in language they understand using words that convey precise sentiments. Vanishingly few people are shocked or even offended by the word “fuck” as it is commonly used.
I even took a poll back then:
March 2024
 Images that fall into the generation gap
Yeah, that thing was called a “floppy disk,” even though the housing for this particular storage medium was rigid. And those of us of a certain age remember having to manually save our work to them every few minutes in order to have a recent backup for when the inevitable blue screen of death would appear on our computers. 
Automatic backup programs and cloud backup services now do the job far better and behind the scenes, and thumb drives have replaced floppies for the storage minded. The thumb drive also seems to be on the way out, according to PC Mag, so it might one day join this gallery of images likely to confuse the younger set:
Can you think of others? 
A good book about a very bad memory
Tuesday is the publication date for “Something Big: The True Story of the Brown’s Chicken Massacre, a Decade-Long Manhunt, and the Trials That Followed,” the second major book about the ghastly 1993 slaying of seven employees of a Brown's Chicken & Pasta restaurant in northwest suburban Palatine. 
The first book, “The Brown’s Chicken Massacre” by my former Tribune colleague Maurice Possley, came out in 2003.  I asked “Something Big” author Patrick Wohl, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who grew in in Park Ridge, what he considered new in his book. Here is a portion of his answer:
(Possley’s book) was written before the trials in 2007 and 2009. While Possley was no doubt deeply sourced, the passage of time allowed me access to things like trial transcripts and I believe people were more willing to talk after 30 years. …
There's also this myth that the Palatine police somehow botched the case. I think that's unfair and inaccurate. Specifically, a lot of people in Chicagoland have this belief that the Palatine police were very protective and parochial about the case, but that's just not true. They brought in outside help from the Chicago police, FBI and elsewhere immediately. And very frequently, it was the outsiders insisting they knew better than the Palatine police who led the case in the wrong direction. …
What's not "different" in this book is any twist or new take on who did it. James Degorski and Juan Luna are responsible, so readers should not expect any surprises on that specifically. 
Charles Keeshan at The Daily Herald wrote, “There likely are anecdotes and nuggets of information in the book that will be new even to those familiar with the case.”
That was certainly true for me, but I don’t know exact what was new and how much I’d simply forgotten about that searing event from 32 years ago — for instance, a quote Wohl used from one of the columns I wrote about the crime at the time in which I accused ABC-Ch. 7 of “having wanted to play the role of Sam Spade gut ended up playing Barney Fife.”  
The author includes lots of deep background about the chicken franchise, the victims, the false suspects and the secondary players that, candidly, I skimmed. But the retelling of the crime, the investigation and the trials is excellent reading.
Red light books
Last week, following up on a letter from reader Shelley Riskin, I asked for the titles of books everyone else seemed to love but that you hated. Here are some of your responses:
Cecelia Kafer — "The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver. I hated the character of that awful preacher and, a few chapters in, I skipped to the end to see if he got his comeuppance.
Conor Mac — “The Outsiders” by S. E. Hinton. I never got the fascination with Pony Boy, never found it a compelling story, and the movie did nothing for me!  
Randy Curwen — “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole. More than 40 years ago, I took this novel on a four-week trip around Brazil. It made it through Rio, Sao Paolo, Iguazu, Minas Gerais. But there’s a trash bin on a hillside park in Belo Horizonte where it ended its trip only 2/3 finished. A one-note joke/book. Won a Pulitzer Prize mostly, I suspect, because the author died pre-publication. 
Jeanne DeVore — “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. I did finish it (good thing it was short), but it's one of the only books I've ever thought "well there's x hours I won't get back." Trite, repetitive, boring, badly written (yes, I know it was a translation, but still ...). I certainly didn't find it meaningful or important. I honestly don't know why it's so popular.
Michael M. — “The Red Tent”  by Anita Diamant. The book was divided into two halves, and I couldn't finish the second half. This was for a book club, and I figured I'd wing it, but only one other person showed up for that month. It occurs to me now that it probably was a hard and/or boring read for everyone.
Jean Graddy and Beth Bales — “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn.
John Houck — "Insomnia" by Stephen King. I’m a fan of King’s, but this book turned out to be the perfect cure for its title. I stopped halfway through because I couldn't stay awake reading it.
DancesWithDogs — "It" by Stephen King. I loved the premise, the reviews, but King's novels are too long and drawn out by details. Four pages to describe the end table next to the chair. I've tried a half dozen times — but can't get into it.   
Steve T — “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey. I don’t get the love for this novel. It won the Booker Prize, so I figured I’d at least appreciate the author’s skill with language and narrative (plus it’s pretty short). After reading the thin characterizations and recurring descriptions of orbiting over different places on Earth, I was hoping for a meteor strike.
Patricia Motto — “Where the Crawdads Sing.” by Delia Owens. I have no idea why people loved this novel. I did not believe that lead character for one minute.
Melinda A K — “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez. Read it in college (not for a class, just personal reading) because my boyfriend and so many others raved about it. Ugh. I slogged through but hated almost every moment of it. I have tried a couple other "magical thinking" novels since and couldn't stand them. I found my "nope!" genre.
Nancy Poch — “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. I tried reading this book several years ago due to the recommendations. I could not get past a couple chapters. It was too convoluted, and I just didn’t want to slog through. I rarely give up on a book, so found it hard to figure out its popularity.
Thanks to all who wrote in, with special thanks to Nancy Poch who, judging by the scorn I received, may be the only other person in the world who could not get into “A Gentleman in Moscow.” And thanks to Melinda A.K. for reminding me what a slog I found “Love in the Time of Cholera.” I’d blocked out memories of reading that book until her nomination appeared.
But remember, folks!  These are books that nearly everyone else seemed to enjoy, so you might want to consider this a summer reading list.
Quotables
A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately.
I want to just thank everybody, in particular ... God. I want to just say we love you, God. — Donald Trump, concluding his remarks about bombing Iran
CNN is a gutless group of people. …CNN is scum! And so is MSDNC. — Donald Trump 
If you are kidnapping your citizens with no due process to take away their freedom and trying to silence media, law firms, and universities for exercising free speech, you don't get to call yourself "Leader of the Free World." — Betty Bowers
I know a lot of us (Republican U.S. Senators) are hearing from people back home about Medicaid. But they’ll get over it. — Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky
Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed. — Albert Einstein
Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our country$BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed. The workers don't want it either! Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every …  working day of the year. It must change if we were going to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN — Donald Trump on Juneteenth 
(Chicago Mayor Brandon) Johnson tried to float a $300 million tax hike — and failed. He tried to pass a “mansion tax” that would’ve hiked the real estate transfer tax — and failed. He’s built too few affordable housing units for too much money. He’s isolated himself from many of the state and federal officials he hopes will come to his financial rescue, and he’s done egregious special favors for the people who got him elected — namely, pushing an incredibly costly new contract with the Chicago Teachers Union. He forced out a highly competent schools chief who wouldn’t cow to his desire to borrow recklessly. His city is broke, but he wants to spend more. — The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board 
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest: 
Professor Zorn explains the joke
More consternation and confusion than usual last week over this tweet:
Dentists hate this one simple trick: Putting cellophane over the toilet seat. — @wheeltod.bsky.social 
It finished 10 out of 10, and I received many comments and emails from people saying they just didn’t get it.  I will try to help, but first let me pay tribute to “Professor Kenilworth,” the dour, fictional academic whose pitiless critiques of jokes appeared every so often in the National Lampoon from 1982 to 1985.
Professor Kenilworth’s mission was to explain why jokes were not funny. Here, he might point out that no one victimized by using a toilet where clear plastic wrap has discreetly and invisibly placed on the seat (though I’m told that under the seat works better) loves this “simple trick.” So it’s unfair and illogical to single out dentists as hating it. Furthermore, the act described is not so much a “trick” as a “prank.”
Noted.  
The setup uses “trick” in order to prepare the listener to learn of a helpful, inexpensive and little-known way of reducing cavities and clearing off plaque to reduce the need for costly dental care — gargling with olive oil, say, or chewing on dandelion stems (though I do not recommend either of these). The punch line then inverts that expectation by describing something that everyone hates, and that has the vague additional value of hinting at potty humor.
Jokes tend to be rooted in the twist on expectations, as noted in “Academics just created a theory that explains why your favorite joke is funny.”
Humor most reliably originates from the “violated expectations” definition of incongruity—that is, when something upsets your idea of how things should be, rather than just how they usually are. The type of stuff that makes you say “That’s so wrong,” as opposed to “That’s not typical.”
Take this joke:
Shortly after her elderly father went out for a drive, a woman saw a TV news report about a problem on the freeway and called her dad’s cellphone. “Pop,” she said, “Be careful out there. They’re saying that there’s a car going the wrong way down the interstate.”
“One car?” says her father. “There are hundreds of them!”
Even if you anticipated the twist, you are likely to be amused at how the father doesn’t express awareness and alarm, as you’d expect, but insouciant surprise and a little indignation.
Had the father responded, “Yes, that’s me, I made a terrible mistake turning onto the exit ramp, and I’m very afraid I’m going to cause an accident,” that would turn the joke into an anti-joke, funny for not being funny.
Class dismissed!
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
Anything you say can and will be used against you in a future argument. — @nayele18maybe
“If I’ve got both Democrats and Republicans mad at me, then I must be doing something right.” … Ted Bundy, 1975 — @wheeltod.bsky.social
The Riddler: How did you catch me? Batman: From the riddle explaining how to catch you. Mrs. Riddler: I told you, Steven. — @TheAndrewNadeau
The expression "skeletons in the closet" comes from when people would murder other people and hide the skeleton in their closet, and then if people tried to open the closet they would be all, "Don't go in there!" because there was a skeleton. — @jakevig.bsky.social
"The Iranians moved their uranium" sounds like the start of a Dr. Seuss book. — @WilliamAder
For the absolute last time: I never said I thought E.T. dressed in the wig and the dress was sexy. I said I could see why people would think that. — ‪@pftompkins.bsky.social
Vaping: When you feel like smoking but don't want to look cool. \— @_NatalieWould
Fun fact: Australia's biggest export is boomerangs. It's also their biggest import. — @ThePunnyWorld
I opened the umbrella to shield myself from the sun, and that's when the Werther's Originals descended from the sky. — @notincharge7
I’m commenting “How dare you! Delete this now!!” on random innocuous social media posts. — @RickAaron
Vote here and check the current results in the poll.
For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.
Why “quips”? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.” Also, I’m finding good stuff on BlueSky now as well.
Subscribe and don't miss a single poll!
Minced Words

Austin Berg, Marj Halperin and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We pondered the result of New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary and what the victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani might mean for the direction of the party nationwide. We also spoke of “Drop Dead City,” an award-winning documentary about New York City in the 1970s that will be shown next Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. at the Chicago History Museum. Austin will lead a discussion afterward with Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson and   Better Government Association President David Greising. (Ticket link)
We also chatted about JB Pritzker’s prospects, the war in the Middle East and what we think of the following song:
Listen now · 1:06
Everything from the lyrics to the melody to the instrumentation was generated by artificial intelligence, and if you could tell if from a human production,  you’re a more sensitive listener than I am.  The philosophical question here is — or will certainly soon be — if a computer can generate music indistinguishable to the listener from music generated by people, is it “art”?  Will there be any way to tell? 
The Associated Press reports:
According to an AI song detection tool that (the French audio streaming service) Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI generated. … Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey.
Traffic lights:
Marj — A green light for Ping Tom Park in Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood.
Austin — A green light for the YouTube channel Rare African Vinyl, “a project dedicated to honoring African artists who recorded music in the 1970s and 80s.”
Eric — A green light for the WNBA.
John — A yellow light for “Good Game with Sarah Spain,” a daily podcast billed as “your one-stop shop for the biggest stories in women’s sports.” John gave it a yellow light because he likes the idea but hasn’t had a chance to listen yet.
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.
Good Sports
Nailed it!
There was an ugly tussle during a recent WNBA game between the Connecticut Sun and the Indiana Fever prompted by Sun guard Jacy Sheldon poking Fever star Caitlin Clark in the eye with her long fingernails, followed by Sun guard Marina Mabrey shoving Clark to the ground. 
Jacy Sheldon’s fingernails
Later in the game, then, Fever guard Sophie Cunningham rodeo tackled Sheldon as Sheldon was driving for a layup, saying later, “At the end of the day, I'm going to protect my teammates. That's what I do.”
Almost overnight, Cunningham gained 1.1 million new followers on TikTok, and her jersey reportedly sold out at the WNBA website.
Clark reportedly paid the fine that the league assessed on Cunningham. No idea if they’ve fired the referees who let the game get out of hand or if the WNBA will finally put in a rule against long fingernails.
Rocky road to ignominy?
Chicagoans are narrowly rooting for the Colorado Rockies to lose at least 122 games this season and break the 2024 White Sox record for futility, according to an unscientific click poll posted by the Sun-Times. (“Unscientific click poll” is a bit tautological, no?) 
But the Denver-based MLB team has won 5 of its last 10 games, one game shy of halfway through the season, stands at 18-62 (.225), just two victories off the pace set by the White Sox last year (though the 2024 Sox stood at 21-59 after 80 games).
Green Light
Green Light features recommendations from me and readers not only of songs — as in the former Tune of the Week post — but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on. Email me your nominations, and please include a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links, perhaps including excerpts from reviews or background articles. For TV shows, please include links to trailers/previews on YouTube and advice on where to stream them.
This week, in honor of the launch of the fourth season of “The Bear” on Hulu, I’m posting the intro to the seventh episode of Season 1, a video montage that will stir and warm the hearts of all Chicagoans. 
I watched the first episode of Season 4 Wednesday night and would green light that as well for those who have already watched Seasons 1 through 3.  
Info
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. Browse and search back issues here.
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
Email the Picayune Sentinel
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
Some of those letters I reprint and respond to in the Z-mail section of Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, which is delivered to paid subscribers and available to all readers later Tuesday. Check there for responses.
If you don’t want me to use the full name on your email or your comments, let me know how you’d like to be identified.
Social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejzorn 
Twitter: https://x.com/EricZorn
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ericzorn.bsky.social 
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ejzorn
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ericzorn5
Help?
If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.
Thanks for reading!
Give a gift subscription
Share
You're currently a free subscriber to Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Upgrade to paid

Like Comment Restack 

© 2025 Eric Zorn
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Unsubscribe