By Steve Rhodes

[UPDATE 11:30 a.m.: The [Endorsement] Papers and The [Rod & Stu] Papers are now posted. The Political Odds have also been adjusted.]
Growing up in Minnesota, my perception of Chicago was of a grim, gray city shrouded in factory smoke and saddled with a perennially lousy football team. My view of Chicago didn’t really change until about 1990, upon several visits to a friend who had taken a job here after college. Mostly, I discovered Chicago’s tightly-packed and vibrant neighborhoods – the bars and narrow streets and graystones and the El running through people’s backyards – and fell in love.
But even in the grim years, I never thought of Al Capone when I thought of Chicago – at least not in any meaningful way beyond the historical. That is, until I moved here in 1992 and heard incessantly in the years that followed – through the media – that Michael Jordan had finally erased the “Capone, bang-bang” association people the world over had with our fair city.
Jordan, we were told, had finally put Capone to rest.

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Posted on October 30, 2006

By Natasha Julius

“L” Lines
We’ve been wracking our brains trying to figure out the hidden meaning of all the recent CTA misfortunes. After all, it can’t simply be because the transit organization is plagued with aging equipment and financial mismanagement, right? Then last Sunday, it finally hit us. The CTA and its color-coded train lines of woe comprise the greatest predictive tool for picking against the NFL spread. Just follow the dominant jersey colors and match them up with the latest commuter nightmare. What else would’ve predicted red-clad Arizona’s shocking loss to Oakland? Cracked rail, anyone?
Based on this new system, we are prepared to make the following bold predictions for this week’s games.

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Posted on October 27, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

1. “Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaeda suspects to an interrogation technique called ‘waterboarding,’ which creates a sensation of drowning,” a McClatchy/Tribune report says this morning.
Kind of like the Bush Administration’s war policy.
2. The best part of the report is this: “Scott Hennen of WDAY Radio in Fargo, N.D., told Cheney that listeners had asked him to ‘let the vice president know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we’re all for it.'”
Hennen, who is also the station’s general manager and whose e-mail address is scott@wday.com, went on to ask Cheney: “Would you agree that a dunk in the water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?”
Yes. A no-brainer.
Cheney went on to say the United States does not engage in torture.
Seriously.
3. “You ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it’s complicated, it’s difficult,” Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld admonished reporters Thursday asking about the latest dire developments in Iraq.
He then announced all further press conferences would be held only with Scott Hennen of WDAY Radio in Fargo. “It’s a no-brainer,” he said.
4. “The Iraq war was a mistake,” Jonah Goldberg admits this morning. “[T]ruth is truth. And the Iraq war was a mistake by the most obvious criteria. If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq – at least not the way we did.”
Goldberg suggests we now poll Iraqis to see if we should stay or go. That’s a fine idea. Here’s another one: poll Americans.

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Posted on October 27, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

The new Worldwide Press Freedom Index is out and guess what? America ranks 53rd. Among those ranking higher: The Czech Republic; Estonia; Slovakia: Bosnia and Herzegovina, and; Trinidad and Tobago. We are tied with Botswana and just ahead of Uruguay.

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Posted on October 26, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

It’s no secret to readers of this column that I do not like George W. Bush. I found the president oddly likeable for a brief moment, however, at his press conference this morning. When the president spoke honestly and openly about the struggles in Iraq, it was impressive. There is an enduring appeal of the honest officeholder. If only this president had been so frank in his assessment of the war from the start. Americans will forgive mistakes and even incompetence, if joined by authenticity and accountability.
And then the president stopped reading from a script and turned into himself again.

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Posted on October 25, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

Sorry for the delay on The [Endorsement] Papers promised yesterday. Hope to wrap it up and post today.
1. Rick Morrissey says it so I don’t have to.
2. “Democrat Alexi Giannoulias borrowed more than $1.4 million from his mother for the final leg of his campaign against Republican Christine Radogno for the treasurer’s office that Topinka is vacating,” the Sun-Times reports.
Choose from among these punch lines:
A) Why doesn’t his mother just run for the office?
B) Can’t his mom just put that money directly into the state treasury?
C) Hey Mrs. Giannoulias, ever think about funding a website?
D) No? Well, nobody likes a 30-year-old rich kid whose mom is still paying the bills.
E) And then the Sun-Times endorsed him! Ba-dum-dum.
Oh. D is actually true.
3. It’s a bit unfair to review The Rod & Todd Show while its still workshopping.

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Posted on October 24, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

Inexplicably, the Sun-Times has endorsed Todd Stroger for Cook County board president. I’ll deal with that and the rest of the locals’ endorsements in The [Endorsement] Papers later today.
Viet Baghdad
“Academics and critics of the White House compare Iraq to Vietnam, but the violence today in Iraq is more splintered and complicated, with sects, ethnic groups, Baathists and foreign terrorists set against each other and the government and coalition forces in a conflict that defies sound-bite answers,” the Tribune editorial page says today.
The Trib editorial board is exactly right without meaning to be – in Vietnam, U.S. forces were clearly aligned with one side of the war fighting against another side. In Iraq, we are on nobody’s side but our own, fighting against everyone. That’s what happens when you go to war with a president who didn’t know the difference between Sunni and Shia (and many in our government still don’t) until days before the invasion.
The edit page also forwards figures from the Defense Department on the number of trained Iraqi troops that have never been right and no one believes anymore, except editorial boards who can’t face the truth of how wrong they were about this war.

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Posted on October 23, 2006

By Natasha Julius

Market Update
Humor analysts today expressed optimism that the longest laugh drought since the Cuban Missile Crisis could soon be eased. It seems one of Europe’s chief suppliers is poised to release an extra 1 million barrels of rape jokes each day until the crisis has passed.

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Posted on October 20, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

U.S. troops can’t even secure Baghdad, which the Tribune rightly plays across the top of its front page today. The war is a disaster, and anyone who argues otherwise is being intellectually dishonest. Even the president is now invoking the moment in Vietnam when America realized it was losing the war.
In the Sun-Times, as much a war cheerleader as any paper the world over, “U.S. Admits ‘Disheartening’ Results” can be found on page 36.

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Posted on October 20, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

1. It turns out Nelson Muntz is running for governor.
2. Tribune Company has sold a corporate jet valued at $30 million. Just for perspective, Tribune Company paid $35 million when it bought Chicago magazine in 2002.
3. I don’t understand the Sun-Times today. A judge finally decides on the driving arrangements in Brian Urlacher’s child custody case, which the paper plastered over its front page last week, and the story is nowhere to be found in the The Bright One. A deal is struck in the teen iPod case, which seems a natural for S-T front page treatment, but the story is relegated to a brief. And the fate of Illinois’s hottest bachelor in Cosmopolitan magazine’s “Bachelor of the Year” contest is all but ignored. (He lost, but still.)Instead, the paper put real news on its cover today. What in the world is going on over there?

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Posted on October 19, 2006