Chicago -
By Natasha Julius
Editor’s Note: The Papers will return on Tuesday.
The end of December is traditionally a time for reflection on the events of the past year. We’ll have none of that here at the Weekend Desk, where our focus is always down our nose and straight ahead. As we prepare for the arrival of 2007, one thing is absolutely clear: Our job has already gotten a whole lot tougher.
Posted on December 30, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
1. Rick Kaempfer salutes his favorite newsmakers of 2006, including future president Pierce Bush.
2. Oh, that silly pardon thing? That was just something between friends.
3. Prediction for 2007: Journalists will remain alarmingly naive.
Posted on December 29, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
Wait a minute, I’m confused. Did Abe Lincoln die or Jerry Ford?
Jerry-Rigged
Let’s review. “Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws, not men.”
And then he pardoned Richard Nixon.
*
Ford was not a great president, he was a caretaker. And not even a very good one.
*
He wasn’t even a very good ex-president.
Posted on December 28, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
1. If the NFL can’t honor those who have bought tickets to one of their games and made plans, they may as well take the next logical step and play their games in TV studios or hire crowds to appear at their televised events, instead of screwing fans who have made the commitment to show up in winter on their own dime.
2. This is both necessary and bad news for those still planning to go to the Bears game.
3. My guess is the mayor is privately livid at the NFL, given the near-certainty that tragedy will result from a Bears game on New Year’s Eve.
4. “Spike Lee To Direct James Brown Movie.”
5. James Brown will lie in state at the Apollo.
6. “Mr. Brown’s innovations reverberated through the soul and rhythm-and-blues of the 1970s and the hip-hop of the next three decades,” Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times. “The beat of a 1970 instrumental ‘Funky Drummer’ may well be the most widely sampled rhythm in hip-hop.”
Public Enemy shows how.
Posted on December 27, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
The Sun-Times asked a few prominent Chicagoans if they got what they wanted for Christmas. I found these replies to the most instructive.
1. “The adult in me wanted ties – I need ties but its so stereoptypically boring no one wants to give them to me.”
– Antonio Mora
Antonio Mora wanted ties? Don’t they have a wardrobe department at Channel 2?
2. “[I wanted]peace in the world,” but did not get it.
– Cardinal Francis George
Um, because you were bad this year? Because sometimes God says no? Just curious.
3. “Really it’s nothing material: I wanted to make sure that my family was happy and safe. I really thought a lot about the young men and women in Iraq – gosh, they’re not with their families.”
– Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke
Plus, you already got a seat on the state supreme court in a back-door maneuver that the press has lost all interest in asking you about. Besides, it’s much easier to attack Todd Stroger.
Posted on December 26, 2006
By Natasha Julius
Editor’s Note: The Papers will not appear today because we’ve got to bail Santa out of jail. Just a little misunderstanding at Beachwood HQ. In the meantime, check in with our Home for the Holidays diary. Sadly, it’s all true.
* Home for the Holidays: The Preamble
* Home for the Holidays: Day 1
* Home for the Holidays: Day 2
* Home for the Holidays: Day 3
* Home for the Holidays: Day 4 (Christmas Eve)
* Home for the Holidays: Day 5 (Christmas)
New entries will be posted throughout today and tomorrow, when the full Beachwood Reporter will roar (or crawl) back to life. And now back to our regularly scheduled Weekend Desk Report.
Make ours a virgin eggnog. We’ve got work to do.
Saparmortal
Here at the Weekend Desk, we often hold Death responsible for robbing the world of the chance to call aging deposed tyrants to account for their crimes. However, when the world hasn’t gotten around to deposing said tyrant, we’re all for a swift backhand from the guy with the sickle. So this week, we issue an unconditional, “well done, Death!” It seems 66 years is exactly long enough for humanity to tolerate a vicious, delusional nutjob in power. Far be it from us to tell Death how to do his job, but we just thought we’d mention another special someone whose magic birthday is right around the corner.
Posted on December 25, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
Aides to Barack Obama, Richard M. Daley and Sun-Times-endorsed Todd Stroger have converted a public elevator in the County Building to a private elevator for their boss, the Sun-Times reports.
“It’s really for expediting his schedule so we can get him places and get everything completed,” spokesman Bill Figel gamely told the paper. “It’s one of the many features to modernize county operations, but it also speaks to his inclination to stop and talk to everybody.”
Nice try, Bill.
“The new perk comes on the heels of other moves by Stroger that keep him away from the public and press,” the Sun-Times‘s Steve Patterson reports. “He has demanded that reporters not talk to him while he’s in the hallways near commissioners’ offices. And he has put an end to public comments at County Board meetings, meaning residents can no longer stand up and address elected officials as they gather there.
“There has also been a stiffer security presence around Stroger at those board meetings – though his staffers admit there have been no recent threats against him.”
Posted on December 22, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
1. If you’re thinking about a career in journalism.
2. State regulators also gave ComEd permission to open a chain of pawn shops.
3. I don’t mean to be a killjoy, but I’d rather see the city enforce the foie gras ban than the ban on pot.
4. The papers today don’t fully convey the horror that was the president’s news conference yesterday. It was so bad that Joe Scarborough – a conservative who twice voted for Bush and supported the war – called the president “delusional.” He didn’t mean it rhetorically. He really meant it; he even raised the specter of impeachment to resolve a potential impending crisis of one man waging a war that the military, Congress, and public no longer wants. To see the remarkable segment, go here and click on “President Bush Goes It Alone” in the middle column.
5. “A former operations manager for Chicago Public Schools admitted in federal court Wednesday that he took $1,000-a-week bribes to hand out fencing and snow-removal contracts to a politically connected contractor,” the Tribune reports.
Mayor Daley praised the man’s fine character.
Posted on December 21, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
1. Breaking news on Orange Line investigation: Drivers using wrong map.
2. Better than an E-ticket.
3. Daley’s Rumsfeld. Except he’ll be fired before the election.
4. Kass investigates the Ice Bar’s ownership and liquor license. Guess what?
5. When the Daley camp wants to get a message out, they just whisper in Fran Spielman’s ear and voila! And they get to remain anonymous because, you know, this is dangerous whistleblower stuff. Let’s play Guess the Source/s:
A) Bill Daley
B) David Axelrod
C) Jackie Heard
Posted on December 20, 2006
By Steve Rhodes
I don’t know enough about the 7th Ward to handicap the aldermanic race there, but if Sandi Jackson wins, she figures to be a compelling and sophisticated fresh face on the moribund City Council – and a potential future mayoral candidate.
Still, she seems to be trimming her sails already.
“Asked her view on the mayor, Jackson said, ‘I think he’s a great mayor. I’d like to see some of those great things that he’s done for the City of Chicago come further south,'” Channel 5 reports.
“It’s been my sense that your husband, the congressman, does not regard him as a great mayor,” Carol Marin asked. “Would that be a correct assessment?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that,” Jackson answered. “He would like to see it spread around . . . We don’t see it in our own back yard, and the question is why?”
That’s a good question, but the Jacksons are either being disingenuous now or were being disingenuous then, when they rose up as voices against the rampant corruption and injustice of the mayor’s tenure.
Posted on December 19, 2006
