By David Rutter
1. Blago, WTF?
The WTF team of experts, consultants and sump pump installers wants just one last thing from former Guv Blago. Please, for crying out loud, SHUT THE F UP! This trial is like the punch line to the old joke: “No, you dummy. You were supposed to ride the camel to town!”
2. Channel 2, WTF?
In a contest, which local institution do you think is the worst-run in town: the Cubs or Channel 2 news? It’s a tie!
Channel 2 has been strapped aboard Rob Johnson’s long, agonizing solo anchor trek for four months and now has hired a New Yorker to cohabitate the set. The 10 p.m. slot (that’s TV news talk) is the Channel 2 news equivalent of javelin catching – 10 anchor combinations in 11 years. Anchors at Channel 2 have to bring their own chairs
We’d analyze her bio, but what’s the point? Before you can get used to her name and her perky Irish come-hither looks, she’ll be thrown overboard and escape to anchor in Boise.
This station is so dyspeptic that it wants Bill Curtis and Walter Jacobson to return as anchors – honest to gawd, it’s true – thus locking up the much-sought-after Living Fossil Demo.
Live from the funeral home and sitting up, more or less on their own, it’s Bill and Walt!!
Apparently Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow said no.
3. Cubs, WTF?
So Sweet Lou, who claims he hasn’t been home since 1968, figures it’s time to go and check out if he’s still married. Can’t argue him out of that. He’s endured longer here than a sane man should. Think of it as a humanitarian parole. Doesn’t he look like a very tired grandpa looking for the nearest Barcalounger?
What now? Here’s a WTF moment for Cubs fans to ponder:
A) Lou did pretty well with a lousy team. Only Cubs fans think they have a great team that suffers from underperforming. No, they were a pretty lousy team that Lou got to perform well intermittently. Winning the division two years ago was a WTF optical illusion that came into clearer focus during a total and humiliating collapse in the playoffs.
B) No, Tony LaRussa or Joe Torre are not coming to manage the Cubs. Grow up! This rumor-ginning for Cubbie fandom is a regular ritual staged by local media every time the franchise chews up another manager. As St. Louis scribe Bernie Miklasz notes, LaRussa has survived 30 other managers in the NL Central since he took over the Cards in 1996 – five of them Cubs. Why LaRussa, who turns 66 in October, would want to end his career in the Wrigley miasma is something only Cubs fans can rationalize.
C) Torre is 70 and lives in LA. ‘Nuf said.
D) We’d guess it’s going to be Ryne Sandberg, because hiring professional managers hasn’t worked out.
4. Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, WTF?
“Autopsy tools used to embalm and prepare Elvis Presley’s body for his funeral in 1977 and a toe tag used on the singer for identification purposes are set to go under the hammer at a Chicago auction house,” Reuters reports. “The instruments up for sale at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers on Aug. 12 include rubber gloves, forceps, lip brushes, a comb and eye liner, needle injectors, an arterial tube and aneurysm hooks, all of which the auction house say were used only once.”
WTF plans to attend just so we can photograph the winning bidder. Wouldn’t want to show up at a pork chop cookout next month and have that guy standing over the Weber Genesis E-310 super grill with a Kiss-The-Cook apron around his waist and a strangely crooked grin on his face.
5. Bob Dold, WTF?
Now that Jim Oberweis isn’t running anymore, our choice for the Creepiest Candidate in Illinois is Bob Dold, a Tea Party devotee seeking Mark Kirk’s seat in the 10th district. He’s a big backer of a trade group seeking to deregulate corporations that produce pest killing chemicals. Dold inherited Rose Pest Solutions from his father.
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David Rutter is the former publisher/editor of the Lake County News-Sun, a Sun-Times Media property.
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Comments welcome.
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Previously in The Week in WTF:
* TWIWTF: Walter Jacobson, Mark Kirk, the Sun-Times
* TWIWTF: Conrad Murray, Jim Laski, Notre Dame Nation
* TWIWTF: Chris Zorich, Eddie and Jobo, Blago.
* TWIWTF: Burge, Zambrano, Tyree
* TWIWTF: Pundits, LeBron James, Lake County
* TWIWTF: Stroger, Transformers, Six Flags
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Also by David Rutter:
* The Lords of Ireland.
* Speaking of Notre Dame . . .
* Scheduling Notre Dame.
* Spade Robs Farley’s Grave.
* Gov. Fester.
* Black Talks, Zell Walks.
* Roeper’s Games.
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Plus:
* An excerpt from Rutter’s Olga’s War
Posted on July 23, 2010