Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Tuesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

1. The Beachwood Radio Hour #21: Federal Judge Rules The Koschman Conspiracy Worked.
Plus: Rahm’s Super PAC vs. Daley’s Family PAC; He Worked At A Tastee-Freez; Remembering The Queen Bee Of Wicker Park; Feasting On Human Tears.
You don’t have to listen to the whole thing; just use our handy Show Notes to guide you to the segments of your choice!


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2. Beachwood Fall Fundraising Drive!
It’s underway! To those who have contributed in the past, I hate to ask you again, so I won’t. To those who haven’t, c’mon! Feed me and keep me out of debtors’ prison! Go here for donor options.
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Also, with the arrival of fall I have some outside projects coming to a close and others starting anew. I’m still seeking new revenue streams Beachwood-related and not, though, so feel free to contact me if you’re finally ready to get on the Beachwood Media bus and turn this company into a money-making monster, or if you simply have freelance work for me.
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3. “On a typical school night, Nicole Bankowski averages about five hours of sleep,” the Tribune reports.
“She is taking four AP classes, along with serving as editor of the school newspaper, treasurer of the student council and member of the show choir.

“It’s probably not the healthiest way to live, but it’s the only way to get everything done,” said the Buffalo Grove High School senior, who typically doesn’t start her homework until 10:30 p.m.

“With the school year just underway, students like Bankowski are already sleep-deprived. Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued what it hopes will be a wake-up call to the nation’s educators: Push back school start times to 8:30 a.m. or later.”
Okay, these calls for later start times aren’t new, but I’ve always been in full agreement with them, especially given that every morning that I was in high school began in excruciating pain when that alarm clock went off. I’m very much about punctuality, but I was late to school often enough that I once got double-secret detention. And I had a ’75 Camaro! I wasn’t waiting on no bus!
Of course, I wasn’t late – and basically sleepwalking until lunch – because I was holding down a schedule like Nicole Bankowski’s. I wasn’t exactly an activities person, though I did work on the high school newspaper, natch. I also got hopped up on all the free Coke I could drink working the press box of Minnesota North Stars games back then, which didn’t help in the sleep department on school nights.
And true enough, I suffered undiagnosed depression that often meant no amount of sleep was enough. I tended to get 10 hours a night back then – twice as much as Nicole!
But come on! I can only guess school starts as early as it does because somehow it’s convenient for the adults, though I have no idea why they would want to get up so early either. Or maybe it’s left over from the agrarian calendar. And yes, some of us worked after-school jobs which might not have been available with a later start. But geez, we’re just killing our kids. And what with the AP classes and testing madness. Starting your homework at 10:30 p.m.? I don’t even remember ever doing homework! And I was basically a straight-A student attending a well-regarded suburban school. It’s all too much, and the real reason behind it is disgusting as hell: It’s all about turning out corporate-compliant zombies whose only value as humans is their economic output. Education wasn’t always about preparing people for jobs; it was about preparing people for life (and democratic citizenship). When journalists do articles asking if college is worth it if it doesn’t result in a high-paying job, I want to tear their eyes out and puke into their dead skulls. Is that really the right question to ask? I don’t accept the premise.
Likewise, we shouldn’t be preparing elementary school kids simply for getting into a selective high school, and then preparing high school kids for getting into a selective college, in order to ensure a selective job that almost certainly has deceit at its core. That’s a system that’s designed to produce – or protect – a few winners and make losers of everyone else. It’s also a competition that breeds selfishness, anxiety, greed, ego and psychopathologies. I have a better idea: Let’s just all be cool, y’all!
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By the way, I never took an ACT or SAT in high school. I rebelled even back then against a testing regimen that now seems quaint. I just saw madness all around me, from spending hundreds of dollars on Stanley Kaplan courses (I didn’t understand why they were even legal; even studying for tests seemed a bit like cheating to me because tests are supposed to determine what you have learned and carry around in your everyday life, not what you managed to memorize the night before) to college application embellishment (like the friend of mine who worked one day as a photographer – one day! – on the yearbook staff so he could add yearbook staff to his list of extracurricular activities) to ensure acceptance into an Ivy League school to just the generalized agitated state that envelops a class of teenagers made to feel that every move they make is momentous (as if high school doesn’t already feel that way) – and that a mistake could ruin their entire future.
All of which was just to set up this clip:

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4. Mayor Rahm Emanuel Discusses School District He’s In Charge Of That’s Good Enough For Your Kids But Not His, Who Go To A School With Policies Diametrically Opposed To Those That He, As A Noted Education Expert, Is Autocratically Imposing On Everyone Else.
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5. I’m really not gonna get things cranked back up until Wednesday. Sorry.

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The College Football Report Top Ten
Remember kids, keep your head on a swivel out there.
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Swivel. That word looks funny to me right now.
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SportsMondayTuesday: Chris Conte Lurks
And Manny Ramirez shirks.
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Hey, that’s pretty good.
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Here’s the note I sent to Coffman after posting his column:
1. 11-5? No way. I might have predicted that if the defense grew the way I expected it to, and if the special teams didn’t look so iffy, but no. In fact, I’m thinking of downgrading my 10-6 to 9-7. I put the Over/Under at 9.5!
2. Holy cow on Manny! I did not know that. I love all those stories about what a changed man Manny was that the media bought hook, line and sinker – just because Theo said so! If his main job was to be a coach, well, WTF! Maybe he was there strictly to work with Baez . . . what’s interesting is how it looks like he won’t be back with Iowa next year. So another FAIL.
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The White Sox Report: In The Thick Of The Race!
Fascinating account of how the White Sox are potentially the most impactful non-playoff team in baseball right now.
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The Cub Factor
Should appear on Wednesday.
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The Weekend In Chicago Rock
Should appear on Wednesday.
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BeachBook
* Are Airlines’ Making Money By Fleecing Customers?
Hint: Yes.
* Taxes Aren’t The Only Thing Bruce Rauner Dodges.
I should get a job as a headline writer. I learned, really, from Gawker and the Onion. The old days of stupid puns are over, though the old days of boring as fuck remain because it works so well with SEO. But the real prize in the digital headline writing is boiling down a story to its real, absurdist nub.
* Artist Trading Cards Exchange.
By Chicago’s Jennifer Hines.
* Huge Consolidation In The Mattress Industry.
Where dreams come true.
* PBA Moves Administrative Headquarters To Chicago.
That strikes me as big news.
* Lessig To Lecture On Corruption At University Of Chicago.
Good. Start with the University of Chicago and work outward.
* How Big Business Buys The Right To Dodge U.S. Taxes.
When they – and people like Bruce Rauner – say they are only playing by the rules, they neglect to tell you they paid for the rules to be written that way in the first place.
* U.S. Supreme Court Just Making Shit Up Now.
Related: Seeking any old idiot to start cranking out Beachwood amicus briefs; salary negotiable.
* PR Firm For Putin Now Walking A Fine Line, According To The Scrupulously Even-Handed New York Times.
Alternate: Hideous People Willing To Work For Anyone To Make A Buck.
Key Passage: “In the filings, the company said it worked with Time magazine to have Mr. Putin named the magazine’s Person of the Year in 2007.”
* Prisoner Exonerations At An All-Time High – And Not Because Of DNA Testing.
Our prisons are full of innocent people because they don’t pay as well as Putin.
* ADM Selling Chocolate Business To Cargill.
Cargill has a sweets division?
* Locally Laid Partners With Amish Farmers.
Too easy.
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Posted on September 2, 2014