By David Rutter
1. Cold, Cruel Sun-Times, WTF?
Various aging mooks have owned and run the Sun-Times, and we had thought they were mostly greasy and inept. Lots of grease.
But no ept in this crowd. Not a lick of ept.
It turns out they are low down skunks, too. The kind of people who give their word and then pull it back like Lucy tricking Charlie Brown in the eternal field goal he will never kick.
But this is not a cartoon. This is real life.
So an old woman would have been saved from a destitute exit from life had the Sun-Times paid its debt to her. She won a million-dollar lottery it ran in 1996. But then the Sun-Times was excused from honoring the deal by truly odious legal legerdemain. She was the winner who should have gotten $40,000 a year for the rest of her life.
The people who owned the Sun-Times when it went bankrupt, and another group of men who bought it (and escaped the legal duty to pay her because she is an “unsecured creditor” and thus SOL ) were all rich when they owned the Sun-Times, rich when they walked away from it, and were all equally rich together and separately after the fire sale.
A lot of very rich mooks, each of whom could have written one check to cover one fading year of her life. But she is just an elderly nobody they did wrong. Aside from morality, there is no power in her corner.
There is nothing to be done because the law generally protects people with money against those with none.
But remember 84-year-old Joyce Santago the next time the Sun-Times lectures editorially about the obligation to honor your civic duty. Or suggests you should just do the right thing.
2. Dead John, WTF?
At the risk of sounding harsh, this seems like exquisite karmic equilibrium to WTF.
Entropy can be a bitch. And, as it turns out, some sexually transmitted diseases are lethal. The gods chuckled.
3. LeBron’s Mom, WTF?
Where, you might well ask, did LeBron James develop his overwhelming dose of royal hubris, self-involvement and uber-entitlement, his sense of LeBroncenterocity? For the Man To Whom No One May Say Nay, it might come from here.
4. Winnetka, WTF?
The unresolved debate in Winnetka over affordable housing shows that even beautiful, rich people can be ugly.
The social underpinning of this NIMBY subspecies is that not only should nuclear plants, landfills and strip clubs be somewhere else, so should poor people, as defined as anyone who makes less than $75,000 per – which makes the entire WTF family dirt poor. Actually, mud poor.
WTF believes that WInnetkans are missing an educational moment in which a small crop of poor people could be bred, cultivated and housed – sort of like rabbits – for further study; plus, poor people make swell pets.
To be fair, WTF knows Winnetka. This is mostly not who Winnetka is. We hope they come to remember that.
5. Charlie Sheen and Snookie, WTF?
Our WTF “Who’s Dumber?” quiz this week:
In this corner, people who paid up to $185 per ticket to see Charlie Sheen at the Chicago Theatre.
In that corner, the dolts at Rutgers.
It’s close. Sheen tickets speak for themselves. We give it a 10 on the Idiot Meter because even car wrecks can be fun to watch. For comparison, Paul Ryan’s plan to kill Medicare is about a 12 only because no one but Michele Bachmann will vote for it.
Now for Rutgers. Remember when Rutgers was outraged by the Don Imus insult to its women’s basketball team? Now Rutgers has spent $32,000 in student funds to hear the wit and wisdom of Snooki.
Rutgers gets a 13.
Vote early and often.
–
Comments welcome.
Posted on April 8, 2011