Dear Asses Of Chicago Commuters:

How are you doing down there? Are you cozy? Warm? Efficiently supported by a minimally-cushioned CTA train or bus seat? Oh good. What a relief.
I’m writing on behalf of the rest of the body to which you are attached. Your argument down the years, if I understand correctly, has been that your comfort should be paramount to all other concerns. Apparently you’ve been quite vocal – or perhaps guttural – about it, because the CTA agrees. It recently launched a “crowding reduction plan” aimed primarily at making sure you never have to stay upright again. You win.
The rest of your human? He or she just wants to get to work on time.

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Posted on January 29, 2013

Dear Pentagon:

Marijuana is seldom the answer to a military issue. It is not cited as an element of strategy or tactics by luminaries such as Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, or Chuck Norris. Still, don’t dismiss marijuana out-of-hand.
Consider this week’s interview on All Things Considered with Gretchen Peters, author of Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Peters explained that the Taliban earn money through crime, and in Afghanistan a prime example is heroin. Many Afghan farmers are forced to grow poppies due to a long drought and the destruction of irrigation systems.
Peters said U.S. commanders have told her there’s a real concern about troops getting poppy-derived drugs in Afghanistan. Soviet troops in Afghanistan, she noted, had a huge heroin problem. In the U.K and Canada, Peters said Muslim gangs are “getting involved in smuggling heroin that is coming from Afghanistan. And they’ve actually given interviews to the British press and they’re referring to it as a chemical jihad, making addicts of infidels in the West.”

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Posted on December 11, 2009

Dear Sears Tower:

Don’t let the sky scrape your ass on the way out. There is only one downside to your imminent renaming: Sears Tower by any other name is still Sears Tower.
My antipathy toward you is two-fold. I despise the craven avarice of your former corporate master, and aesthetically, I loathe your every I-beam.
If only there was one single aspect of you which I did not despise, I could easily work up some feeling for this passing piece of Chicago history. Normally my nostalgia knows no bounds. Two of the chairs in my dining room are seats from the original Comiskey Park. I eat my breakfast cereal every day with a spoon I stole from the Berghoff about 20 years ago. It has “The Berghoff” written in a graceful script on the handle. I still miss the Magikist sign at 85th and the Dan Ryan, which I rank right up there with the Water Tower. It was prettier, too. It glowed red.

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Posted on March 16, 2009

Dear Illinois African-American Community:

Please let me make a point on the unfolding debacle formerly known as Roland Burris, despite the fact that I have no recent ancestors from Africa. (I considered not writing this at all, but then I picked up the paper and found Eric Holder was already calling me a coward.)
The single most reliable strategy to ensure that President Obama’s former Senate seat will ultimately go to a white politician is to keep Roland Burris in it right now.

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Posted on February 24, 2009

Dear Laurence Msall:

I am shocked and appalled by your callous disregard for the welfare of the citizens of Cook County. Let’s review:
* Your Civic Federation has long supported transferring management of the Cook County Bureau of Health Services from the Cook County Board of Commissioners to a separate group of actual health care professionals. That goal was finally achieved as a compromise in the Board’s recent 2008 budget agreement, in order to win Commissioner Larry Suffredin’s vote for County President Todd Stroger’s odious increase in the county sales tax.
* The Civic Federation and Friends of the Forest Preserves have just come out with a report advocating that governance of the “beleaguered” Cook County Forest Preserves also be wrenched from the Cook County Board, and handed to a separate elected Forest Preserve board.
* The Civic Federation’s analysis of Stroger’s originally proposed 2008 budget called for “privatizing the delivery of programs or functions for which a competitive private sector exists,” up to and including County print shops.
Trees, sick people, anyone who needs a quick Xerox – these you deem important enough to protect from the villainous Cook County Board. But not the average Cook County citizen? Where is your compassion? Please, Mr. Msall. Don’t leave us behind. The next step for the Civic Federation should be obvious: You must call for the Cook County Board to relinquish its authority to a newly-formed elected body. As your report on the forest preserves put it, “A separate board will allow voters to elect Commissioners on the basis of candidates’ positions, credentials, experience and interest in the forest preserves.” Just take out the “forest preserves” part and insert “welfare of Cook County”.

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Posted on March 19, 2008

Dear Urban Bicyclists:

Yes, yes, we know: You’re better than us. You care about the planet. You have a vast wardrobe of colorful biking outfits that you imagine make you look like you’re racing up an Alp in the Tour de France rather than the gentle slope of a paltry Lake Shore Drive overpass. You assume the people you leave in your two-wheel wake are marveling at the reds, greens and oranges, envying you.
We’re not. We’re thinking that most of you are a bunch of smug, self-satisfied, frequently dangerous jerks. We’re thinking you should lose about ten pounds before subjecting the world to those bike pants again. We’re wondering how you manage to keep on that ten extra pounds if you’re so damn active and healthy and wonderful.
That’s just a small part of what makes Mayor Daley’s proposed new ordinance for fining cars that even come close to bikes so incredibly annoying.

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Posted on March 7, 2008

Dear Macy’s:

The Walnut Room may have improved the quality of its food this holiday season. Perhaps now it’s on par with Burger King’s French Toast Sticks. I don’t know. After last year’s vile experience at our family’s annual Walnut Room breakfast, preceding the traditional visit to Santa, we vowed never to return. [See last year’s letter to Macy’s below for the nightmarish details.] It was an easy promise to keep, admittedly in part because our youngest child no longer believes in Santa, just in presents from Santa.
You have, to your credit, settled on a theme for the Christmas windows on State Street that actually has something to do with Christmas – the Nutcracker – after several years of stories which were complete holiday nonsequiters. However, you are simultaneously continuing the recent and unconscionable practice of decorating the giant Walnut Room tree not in tandem with the window displays, but as a crass merchandising push.

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Posted on December 19, 2007

Dear Hyde Park Co-Op:

So long. Farewell. Auf Wiedersehen. Good night. Good-bye, good-bye, good-by-y-y-y-y-ye!
You, too, should take some inspiration from the Von Trapp children, and leave good-naturedly in a burst of song when it is so clearly your bedtime. Co-Op, it is time for the big sleep.
As you know, Co-Op members are now voting on whether to shut you down. From the recent press coverage, many Chicagoans think you are a beloved 75-year-old neighborhood grocery store and institution beset by villainous creditors and its landlord, the nefarious University of Chicago.

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Posted on November 28, 2007

Dear Enabling Aldermen:

Kill two birds with one stone. Invite an exorcist to say the prayer opening your next meeting and then put him to work on Ald. George Cardenas (12th).
Cardenas lacked only a spinning head at the City Council budget showdown Tuesday, so clearly was he possessed by the spirit of the first Mayor Daley. And the first Mayor Daley was ready to hurl green vomit at aldermen who dared vote against the current Mayor Daley’s 2008 budget with its $83 million property tax increase.
“It’s easy to talk about! It’s easy to criticize!” Cardenas/Richard J. Daley sputtered, nearly levitating above his microphone.

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Posted on November 14, 2007

Dear Chicago City Council:

None of you wear ruby slippers. For the most part, it’s wingtips, tassled loafers and some tasteful heels – though I have often seen one of your female members wearing gym shoes with her business skirt and jacket on the council floor. Any of these will do. Now, click your heels together three times and say:
There’s no reason we can’t vote against Mayor Daley’s budget.
There’s no reason we can’t vote against Mayor Daley’s budget.
There’s no reason we can’t vote against Mayor Daley’s budget.
That’s right, you’ve always had the power to vote against his budget. It’s the law – you can look it up. You probably won’t believe me, though; you have to learn it for yourself. But I’m afraid you won’t figure it out in time for the budget showdown this week, so I’m going to lecture a bit anyway.

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Posted on November 12, 2007