By Steve Rhodes

The embarrassing folly that is the Sun-Times‘s coverage of the city’s 2016 Olympics bid continued over the weekend with a front-page story billed as an “Exclusive First Look” at the proposed Olympic Village that wasn’t much of a look at anything at all – “more an idea than a real design at this point,” said Skidmore, Owings & Merrill managing partner Tom Kerwin, who is also an advisor to the city’s Olympic committee.
The rest of the story – I know, shocking for the Sun-Times – was impossible to differentiate from a press release. This unquestioned spin point in particular caught my attention: “The [Washington Park] stadium would have 15,000 more seats than an earlier Olympic arena concept for downtown, in part because it’s now anticipated that the excitement of the Chicago Games would create ‘an extraordinary appetite for tickets,’ [advisor Doug] Arnot said.”
Right. Under the previous proposal, city officials did not anticipate such an appetite for tickets. The change has nothing to do with the fact that the previous proposal was untenable; how could it have been, the Sun-Times must be thinking, when we “reported” how great that plan was too?

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Posted on September 25, 2006

By Natasha Julius

Following all the latest gossip from the steamy world of global leadership.
It’s Not Coup, It’s Me.
2006 has seen some pretty ugly splits, from Heather Locklear and Richie Sambora to Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. But those bust-ups pale in comparison to the Thai military’s brutal dumping of Thaksin Shinawatra while the prime minister was out of town preparing to address the United Nations. While the junta may have gotten its way, its reputation has taken a beating in the media.

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Posted on September 22, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

The only explanation I can think of for how Fran Spielman has kept her job so long as the Sun-Times‘s City Hall reporter is that the mayor somehow has clouted her into her position and for some unknown reason her editors are unable to do anything about it. They must also be under orders not to touch her putrid copy. Because she has no business being a reporter on a high school or college newspaper, much less on a major metropolitan daily. Much less in a city like Chicago that is supposed to be the home of journalism so tough your mother’s expressions of love are met with intense skepticism. Boy, those were the days.

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Posted on September 22, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

Mayor Daley’s surprising new proposal to move a proposed Olympic stadium and other venues from the downtown lakefront to Washington Park on the South Side is being greeted in some media corners as a masterstroke. And that’s becaue the mayor has a lot of allies in the media – people who seem to think their jobs are to be stenographic cheerleaders rather than journalists. But the truth is that the mayor’s new plan represents a stunning reversal and acknowledgement that the original plan was fatally flawed and wasn’t going to pass muster with the United States Olympic Comittee.
How do I know? Because the USOC’s doubts about the temporary stadium originally proposed for the lakefront have already been reported. The mayor changed his plan because he had to, not because he suddenly had a brilliant idea. And he did it quickly – some might say it was even in a panic.

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Posted on September 21, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

The deadly drip-drip-drip of the federal investigation into the Blagojevich Administration has begun.
“A criminal investigation into whether lucrative state pension business was being traded for campaign contributions to Gov. Blagojevich has developed a Hollywood storyline:
“Federal authorities want to know if an investment firm then co-owned by the Oscar-winning producer of “Million Dollar Baby” was pushed to donate money to Blagojevich as it vied for a $220 million state deal, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
“The producer, Tom Rosenberg, and Capri/Capital Advisors were approached in 2004 about contributing to the governor and were told it was a condition for securing investment funds from the state Teachers’ Retirement System, sources familiar with the investigation said.”
You can expect to read successive versions of this story in the coming weeks with different players trapped in the same scheme. You can also expect this investigation to reach the governor’s door.
That’s why the federales call him Public Official A.

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Posted on September 20, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

I’ll be attending to some business matters this morning so there won’t be a column, but the links below from The [Monday] Papers are just as fresh today as they were yesterday. You can also catch up on the rest of the site, including Mick Dumke’s latest excellent Bin Dive on the Clash’s Sandinista! as well as such Beachwoodian features as the travails of our Life at Work columnist, who no longer has a job, and our wacky resident football expert, who might no longer have a job if he doesn’t start picking some winners. Then again, it’s almost more fun when he doesn’t. See you on Wednesday.

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Posted on September 19, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

1. This George Ryan phishing scam is so hilariously and simultaneously clever and stupid it would almost be worth it to invest some time and money following its trail. Then again, maybe Ryan himself is behind it.

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Posted on September 18, 2006

By Natasha Julius

Whatever happens this weekend, just remember that the terrorists are coming to kill us all.
Texas Hold ‘Em
President Bush this week angrily defended his proposal for detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists, saying that the language of the Geneva Convention is too vague. The president took particular issue with Article 3 of the Convention, which prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity.” Compliance with this statute, Bush noted, could dismantle the fabric of American college life.

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Posted on September 16, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

Yes, this makes perfect sense. A couple years ago, union leaders held a secret meeting in order to determine how best to screw Chicago’s poor African Americans. Out of that meeting emerged the big-box ordinance. “Let’s threaten higher wages and better health care!” one union leader proposed, according to sources close to the situation. And their hateful plan worked perfectly until Super Mayor Daley of the Racial Justice League stepped in to save the day. Thank God we have the intellectual giants who make up the Sun-Times editorial board to help us navigate a complex world with reason and clarity.

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Posted on September 15, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

In “The Real Story Behind The Armitage Story,” syndicated Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak writes that critics of the president “cannot fit Armitage into the left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson. The news that he and not Karl Rove was the leaker was devastating news for the left.”
Novak then proceeds to tell a tale that precisely fits Armitage into that “left-wing fantasy.”

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Posted on September 14, 2006