By David Rutter
1. Embattled Carla Oglesby, WTF?
We all enjoyed the perp walk by county board president Todd Stroger’s deputy chief of staff on Monday (What is this title fetish? It’s like the bridge command for Battlestar Gallactica).
According to the Trib, “A message left on Stroger’s cell phone was not immediately returned” but that’s because he was too busy screaming “Son of a bitch!” at the top of his lungs.
Carla ain’t be going down by her own good self. Nosiree, Bob. It was an all-around bad day for Olgesby. If you entered the words “Carla Oglesby arrested” on Google, it reported 78,000 hits.
We could regale you with the juicy details of this scam, but it’s the pathetically usual taking-money-for-nothing at county government headquarters. She was very clever and was totally in the clear because she made all the filched contracts cost $24,900, which avoids the law that requires the county board be advised of $25,000 deals. What she forgot was that it was still illegal to steal the money. A minor detail, sure, but that’s one of the quirks in felony theft law.
And speaking of Nosiree, Bob . . .
2. Tony Peraica, WTF?
County Commish Tony Peraica had a beaming Cheshire Cat smirk permanently stitched onto his face when local TV graciously asked for his view on the Embattled Carla matter. Even Tony, who has all the political instincts and charm of a dead person, knows that Todd Stroger has a red laser dot on his forehead.
Even Stroger, who has worse instinct than The Walking Dead, knows that now, and it didn’t take Peraica to educate him.
Who figured that law enforcement eventually might achieve what the voting people of Cook County could not? Until Monday, it seemed to embody the concept of the blind leading the blind. And the visually impaired, too.
3. Randy Michaels, WTF?
The WTF staff has worked for ignoramuses, ingrates, dolts and raging nincompoops. Some of us are dolts, too, but none of has enough money to ever be true media thugs. So we’ve been around and, as Al Pacino says in Scent of A Woman, I have seen things, ya know?
But how did we miss the chance to work for Randy Michaels, the Trib’s reigning king of everything?
Maybe it’s a sign of our inept higher brain function that we don’t know exactly what his “intention to create a fun, non-linear creative environment” means. Not a clue. It sounds vaguely like a Craigslist “date.”
Speaking of the New York Times story that compared Tribune Tower to Animal House, the unanswered question is: Did Michaels offer $100 to a Loop bar waitress to show him and his pals her breasts? Both breasts? Was it $50 for each? Is that the going rate or was the Trib trying to get a better deal? And were they good breasts? For a guy trying to invent a non-linear creative environment, it seems rather pedestrian. Scummy, sure, but insipid.
4. Carlos Zambrano, WTF?
Headline Sept. 30, 2010: “Zambrano won’t agree to trade until Cubs win World Series.”
Headline: Oct. 30, 2087: “Cubs finally win Series; Zambrano, 106, OKs trade.”
5. Brian Dorian, WTF?
We’re glad they finally caught the Crazed Bee Killer of Crete, but gosh, we’d rather meet the dumbest cop in Indiana. Someone identified as an “Indiana officer” stopped Dorian during his several-day spree and ordered him out of his truck at gunpoint. And then they let him go. We know that because Dorian laughed about it on his Facebook page before they arrested him.
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David Rutter is the former publisher/editor of the Lake County News-Sun, a Sun-Times Media property.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on October 10, 2010