By Steve Rhodes

First, some housekeeping.
* CORRECTION: In Thursday’s column, I excerpted this from the Tribune: “[CTA Chairwoman Carole] Brown complained that she saw four CTA buses broken down on the street, with passengers inside, while she was driving home from work on Tuesday,” with a link to the story strategically placed on “while she was driving home home from work.”
In the comment section of this posting on her blog, Brown says: “Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I did not drive to or from work on Tuesday. As I have said many times, I take the bus to and from work several times a week, depending on my travel schedule.”
* CLARIFICATION: I erred yesterday saying Cathleen Falsani is leaving the Sun-Times. She is leaving her beat to work on two books she has agreed to write for Zondervan in the next two years, but she will continue to have a presence at the paper by retaining her Friday column. Apologies, I goofed.
* COULTERFICATION: I also erred, I have concluded after reading my mail, in the way I handled an Ann Coulter link in yesterday’s column. I regret running the item the way I did, rather than just sticking with showing it with the other link to a Fox News parody as examples of right-wing Obama backlash. As vile and disgusting as Ann Coulter is, I think it’s important to track the backlash from both left and right, and to be aware of the fulminating hate out there – which is obviously much different than merely being critical of Obama and the fawning coverage surrounding him, as I have been. As I previously wrote of a Mark Steyn column, it’s enemies like him and Coulter that could drive people like me deep into the heart of Camp Obama – and in some ways is the stated rationale for his campaign; to drive that ridiculousness, on left and right, out of our discourse.
Because I admitted I found a few of Coulter’s lines “undeniably funny,” I added an air of approval to the link, and while I did and do find some of Coulter’s lines in that column clever and funny – I do, I wish I didn’t, but I’m not going to lie – I was wrong to lend any sort of validation to the type of work she does.
And now . . . the Friday funnies.
1. Is this Todd Stroger blog real or a dead-on parody? (via Bill Baar’s West Side)

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Posted on February 16, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

The Sun-Times puts Tribune Company on trial today for its egregious management of the Cubs, and who can argue with them?
But can you imagine if the Sun-Times had owned the Cubs lo these many years? The mind reels. The Tribune Company hasn’t so much mismanaged the Cubs as managed them just the way they want to – which is to say in their own interest but not necessarily in ours. The Sun-Times would have just mismanaged them out of cheap stupidity.
Mirror Mirror
“The Trib Has Ruined the Cubs,” the Sun-Times declares. And the Sun-Times has ruined the Sun-Times.
Rip Van Sun-Times
The Sun-Times is also stuck in the past complaining about “a Tower full of bean-counters” after an off-season in which the Trib has spent $300 million. You guys just get back from a long vacation?

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Posted on February 15, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

The Sun-Times endorsed Richard M. Daley again today, saying they take the mayor at his word when he says he’s learned from his corrupt past, and warning Daley they expect him to be more vigilant in the future.
He’s been in office 17 years.
B.O.
Barack Obama was right when he said he wasn’t clear on Hillary’s war plan.
Media War
Obama’s getting a lot of credit from the media for opposing the war from the start, but I don’t see any pundits or reporters apologizing to Howard Dean, who displayed the most masterly judgement on the matter when it counted.
Nor do I see very many in media apologizing for their own support of the war, nor acknowledging the 180-degree shift in the way they now frame politicians in terms of their war position.
Obama Alert
The new Obama Kool-Aid Report that I promised yesterday – taking up, in part, the absurd comparisons of Obama to Lincoln, as well as noting the ridiculous statements in Obama’s announcement speech – got waylaid as my attention was unexpectedly diverted. I hope to have it posted today.

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Posted on February 14, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

“Rep. Luis Gutierrez moved ever closer to a race for mayor Monday, arguing that Mayor Daley is besieged by corruption, has been in power too long and has wasted time and money on Millennium Park and attracting the 2016 Summer Olympics at the expense of public schools,” the Sun-Times reported – last May.
“Attention and focus and resources are not infinite. Every hour spent on the Olympics is an hour that could be spent on improving our schools. Every dollar used . . . is a dollar that could be redirected to improving the wages and salaries of our teachers,” Gutierrez said.
“Should I lead this city, I have no interest in my legacy being the number of visitors to a beautiful lakefront park or the year the Olympics came to Chicago. It would be how many more kids graduated, how many quality teachers we hire and how many new schools were built.”
It was, as Crain’s put it, “a wide-ranging attack.”
Now, Gutierrez has taken it back.
So the question is: What did he get?

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Posted on February 13, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

City, county, and state offices will be closed today in honor of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy. In a symbolically-timed gesture, it’s also Lincoln’s Birthday.
–
* JUST IN: Obama Speaks.
* The Obama Kool-Aid Report.
* Lincoln vs. Obama.
* Barack Obama (D-Daley).
* The Trouble With Obama.
–
Slow Zone
The fix isn’t in at the CTA. If only they’d listen to their customers.

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Posted on February 12, 2007

By Natasha Julius

Market Update
There was a surprise run on media feeding frenzies this week, pushing shares of human dignity sharply lower.
Lean Times, Part 1
In a good faith gesture this week, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger cut a whopping 20 patronage jobs from his payroll. Critics were quick to point out this figure falls well short of Stroger’s proposed 17% across-the-board budget slash. His supporters note, however, that he plans to announce a further 35% reduction from the bloated non-Stroger staff rolls to make up the difference.

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Posted on February 10, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

The life and death of Anna Nicole Smith is surely a metaphor for contemporary American (even self-) exploitative celebrity culture, as well as its attendant greed, ambition, and self-esteem issues, and what happens to women who are only valued by society for their bodies and imagined sexual availability. You know who would have been great at that essay? Hunter Thompson. His specialty, after all, was the contorted pursuit of the American Dream in all its grotesque and outsized varieties.
Offensive Rush
“They’re dumping on this guy – Rex Grossman- for one reason, folks, and that’s because he is a white quarterback.”
Rush to War
Why is the press reluctant to challenge authority at times when the country most needs a vigorous, questioning fourth estate – like on the eve of war?
Or most other times, really.

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Posted on February 9, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

A story in The New York Times on Wednesday really lifted the lid on whispers about how University of Illinois football coach Ron Zook could have recruited such a dynamite freshman class given the awful state of his program.
“Illinois, one of the worst teams among the major conferences in college football in recent seasons, has astounded experts and enraged rivals by putting together one of the nation’s best recruiting classes,” the Times reported.
Among the local follow-ups, Greg Couch of the Sun-Times writes today that “An Illinois official said Wednesday that the school, having been sent so many accusations, hired a law firm to check into them. Understand? While Zook was recruiting, the school was searching to see if he was cheating, paying players and all.”
Teddy Greenstein at the Tribune described Wednesday, national signing day for high school athletes to choose their colleges, this way: “This was a day in which whispered accusations gave way to outright hostility, a day on which two prominent recruits dissed Notre Dame, and Illinois was left defending its recruiting practices after signing a top-15 class.”
Source Material
“The accusations have been all over, mostly in the form of rumors on the Internet. In other words, in places that aren’t credible,” Couch wrote in his account.
As opposed to, say, a Sneed column, or the otherwise wholly credible pages of the Sun-Times.
Meanwhile, Greenstein noted that “ESPNU analyst Mike Gottfried angrily defended Zook over the New York Times story. Gottfried apparently remains close to Zook, whom he hired as his defensive coordinator at Cincinnati in 1981 and at Kansas in 1983.
“After calling the story a ‘cheap shot,’ Gottfried held up a copy and said, ‘This is not true. The Bill O’Reilly [program] on Fox [News], he has been after the New York Times all year about getting on President Bush . . . inaccurate facts and all that. This is inaccurate also.'”
Sigh.

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Posted on February 8, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

Editor’s Note: Thursday’s column will be delayed due to faulty Internet service. We’ll post it as soon as we can.
“Former White House official I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby told a grand jury in 2004 that Vice President Dick Cheney was upset by an ambassador’s public questioning of the Iraq war and that President Bush, Cheney and Libby were involved in a plan — kept secret from other senior White House officials — to leak previously classified intelligence to reporters to counter the criticism,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Libby’s audiotape testimony, played for jurors in federal court here, offered new details about how the White House orchestrated a campaign to discredit the Iraq war critic, former envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson’s wife, undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, was subsequently exposed in the media, triggering a criminal investigation.”
Will a correction and apology be forthcoming from Sun-Times editorial page editor Steve Huntley, who wrote recently that the Plame leak was merely “a casual disclosure, resulting from the daily give and take between government officials and journalists that is as common in Washington as the capital’s steamy summers.”
Once again, I point you as well to similar silliness by Robert Novak, David Broder, and Jack Fuller.
Are they ever right about anything?

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Posted on February 7, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

* “How Manning Cut Out the Bears’ Heart.”
After his playing days are over, he’ll make a championship coach too.
* “Coach Dungy told us only 18 players are left from the team that lost the AFC championship game three years ago.”
Sports is a management game now.
* The Indianapolis Star has a “Super Bowl in 3 minutes” time-lapse that’s kinda cool.
* Subscribe Now and receive a Colts Hat.
* “7:18 PM: First time somebody calls for Brian Griese to play.”
* “WE STILL LOVE OUR BEARS . . . BEARRY MUCH!” says a highly paid grown woman with a column in what used to be a major metropolitan newspaper.
* “Thank You for a SUPER Season!”
– Print ad by Channel 5 calling itself “teammates” with the Bears.
I’d be more irritated if anyone watched local news anymore.
* Super Bowl observations from the American Legion Post in Lansing.
* The caller from Indy to Salisbury & Rosenbloom got it right: San Diego, Baltimore, and New England are also better than the Bears. Salisbury is right when he says blame whoever you want, the Colts are just a better team. Salisbury says five teams in the AFC are better than any team in the NFC, maybe six depending on Kansas City.
* The [Super Bowl] Papers.

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Posted on February 6, 2007