Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Friday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

1. Why Bears fans without Super Bowl tickets won’t be able to watch the game at Soldier Field either.
2. Not everyone is in love with the Tribune‘s proposed teen-driving legislation.
3. “A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps,” the president said in his State of the Union addresss Tuesday night. “Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. And it would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time.”
Yeah . . .. bringing you the Peace Corps, except without the peace part.
– Scott Buckner
4. The Daily Southtown‘s Kristen McQueary has the solution to the county budget mess: a nepotism tax.
5. Make it stop.


6. How about pay toilets to offset Olympic building costs?
– Brian Rhodes (my brother)
7. The Tribune editorializes today against allowing aldermen found to have taken bribes not disguised as campaign contributions to run again for office.
8. Tribune: “Obama Confident He’ll Appeal To Blacks.”
And he very well might. Missing from the story, though: An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Hillary leading Obama among African American Democrats by a 57-23 margin. After all, she is the wife of the country’s first black president.
9. “In the first such account from Vice President Dick Cheney’s inner circle, a former aide testified Thursday that Cheney personally directed the effort to discredit an administration critic by having calls made to reporters in 2003,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Cheney dictated detailed ‘talking points’ for his chief of staff, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, and others on how they could impugn the critic’s credibility, said Catherine J. Martin, who was the vice president’s top press aide at the time.
“Libby is on trial on charges of obstructing an investigation into how the name of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, became public. The government says her identity emerged in conversations Libby had with several reporters. It is illegal to knowingly divulge the name of a CIA employee.”
Question considered on one of the cable-news channels last night: Should Cheney be forced to resign?
10. On The View yesterday (hey, I work at home – and the show’s gotten really good!), Rosie O’Donnell asked Lou Dobbs if the president should be impeached. “Oh boy,” he sighed, and then appeared to seriously consider the question before stammering out a non-response. Later, on his own show on CNN, Dobbs completed his answer. “Would you really prefer Dick Cheney to George Bush?”
11. Illinois Entertainer picks the most essential local albums of the last ten years.
12. Jim DeRogatis takes a look at the best of the current scene.
13. Note how a story about city scofflaws is framed as an 11-year effort by the mayor to crack down on city employees not paying their parking tickets.
14. “The City Hall scofflaw scandal broke in October 1996 when then-city Clerk Jim Laski embarrassed and infuriated Daley by blowing the whistle on millions of dollars in unpaid water bills and parking tickets owed by government employees.”
Note how Daley was infuriated at being embarrassed by the scandal being exposed, rather than infuriated at the scandal itself.
15. “Daley responded by releasing a list of deadbeats that included mistakes and the names of employees who had already paid.”
Note how Daley sloppily responded to the scandal with a media strategy rather than a solution.
16. Bears spike circulation.
17. The federal campaign contribution report of WGN radio host Orion Samuelson.
The federal campaign contribution report of longtime Tribune Company executive and current Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller.
The federal campaign contribution report of the late Ann Landers.
18. The Tribune‘s public editor says newspapers don’t publish rumors, gossip and falsehoods. Where exactly would I start with that one?
19. Maybe here: the public editor column was published in the same space occupied the day before by Jonah Goldberg.
20. Georgie Anne Geyer, in a column on the Trib’s Op-Ed page, recalls that candidate Bush “acknowledged that he didn’t know much about foreign affairs but said he was a ‘quick learner.'”
Which was enough for Geyer and her cohort, who found Bush delightful and the know-it-all Al Gore just too smart for his own good.
21. When Bobby Rush was a Chicago alderman, he had his wife on his payroll. Later he backed his sister for his old seat. So AT&T was a natural benefactor for Rush, given their Friends & Family plan and all.
22. The Sun-Times editorial board chides the mayor today for not consulting with aldermen and area residents about the plans for an Olympic Village and stadium. Hello? Daley’s lack of consultation was not an oversight. As Ald. Toni Preckwinkle said this week, that’s how he operates. It’s called one-man rule. Daley isn’t interested in being slowed down by other people’s opinion. Prime Exhibits: Soldier Field and Meigs Field. And when left to his own devices, which he always is, the result is always a mismanaged embarrassment.
23. The fine print on Donald Trump screwing a bunch of rich people. Originally broken by Crain’s, if I’m not mistaken, and followed up by the Trib.
24. This Is Our White House Correspondents Association.
25. Tons of great stuff inside the Beachwood. Read up.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Working on our Rich Little impression.

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Posted on January 26, 2007