By David Rutter
1. Oprah, WTF?
Really, WTEffinF. Chicagoans apparently have underdeveloped gag reflexes. We get second-by-second coverage of her launch into California orbit, sort of like a Space Shuttle liftoff except all the O-rings work.
This just in. Oprah has left. We’re still here. Sort of like Saturday’s Rapture. (Being heathens, WTF’s staff is not making plans. But you can save Fluffy if you’re worried.)
As for O’s liftoff, Chicago apparently has not fallen into Lake Michigan in a mass suicide pact. It was a close call. More proof that the terrorists have defeated our national sense of self-worth and dignity.
2. Bishop Daniel Conlon, WTF?
He wanted to be bishop in Steubenville, Ohio, for the rest of his life. Like the smallpox contagion, sin had been permanently eradicated there, and it’s an easy bishop gig. But the Pope said go to Joliet, my son. They need help.
As recently as five years ago, the Joliet Diocese, under pressure, revealed the names of 22 priests involved in sexual abuse. Critics said the list didn’t come close to being complete.
So this new guy must be a reformer? Nah.
National defenders of sexual abuse victims rap Conlon as an old-style hide-the-predator, ignore-the-victim cleric.
Just what the Pope must think Joliet needs.
3. Starbucks, WTF?
This isn’t strictly a Chicago story except that we have Starbucks here too. Or so I’ve heard.
Anyway, be very careful the next time you’re in a store before asking for the short latte.
4. Residency Rule, WTF?
Whatever the philosophical value for why city employees must live in the city, the policy slapped the new mayor upside the head on his second day in office.
Retaining Diana Ferguson might have come in handy when it came to fixing schools’ financial woes. It might be defensible for police, firefighters and teachers to be anchored in town because that puts them closer to the job and the people. Frankly, there are a lot of people in Chicago that WTF doesn’t want to be that close to.
But Ferguson was a financial officer. Doubtful she’s going to be smarter or more dedicated in Streeterville than she’ll be in Wheeling.
Meanwhile, she’s going to work on the budget for free until a replacement is hired. Sounds like just the sort of public servant we should run out of town. But rules are rules and she wants to get married and live in the ‘burbs.
5. Doctor Oh No, WTF?
We give this fake doctor props for nerve.
He used toothpicks for acupuncture. Patient said he felt lots better afterwards, except for the splinters.
6-ish. Other stuff that WTF couldn’t pass up.
A) We have a natural selection view of old people who go out onto Lake Michigan, get trapped by a sudden storm and need to be rescued. Saving them is meddling with nature. Old people on lake trips is just the universal order’s way of saying, “Check, please.”
B) We admit a morbid fixation on this story out of all portion to its larger societal implications. This is one of those stories that has you screaming “WTF!” after each successive sentence.
Personally, we don’t think it was the heroin that was so dangerous. Anyone who drinks “bacon milkshakes” is daring the Supreme Diet Deity to strike them down in mid-gulp. It’s the dietary version of old people on the lake.
C) Let WTF get this straight: The head waterfixer of Chicago doesn’t want to clean up the human effluvium he dumped into the Chicago River because that would make it cleaner.
Thank goodness. We prefer our water crunchy, oozy and full of brown floating items.
D) Here’s what sitting in front of a teleprompter and reading someone else’s words is worth.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on May 20, 2011