By Steve Rhodes
The best Oscar preview on the planet starts here with our man on Sepulveda Boulevard setting the stage. Our coverage will continue through the weekend and wrap up next week, provided our fearless correspondents don’t get too drunk or stay too sober.
Geffen Goof
In the wake of the David Geffen dust-up that ended up with Barack Obama’s campaign casting Coulter-like aspersions on Hillary Clinton, Obama tells The New York Times that “My preference going forward is that we have to be careful not to slip into playing the game as it customarily is played.”
Aside from the raising money from David Geffen part.
Geffen’s Green
For all of David Geffen’s apparent bitterness at Bill Clinton’s failure to pardon Leonard Peltier (which Geffen apparently has reason to believe Obama will deliver), he still wrote big checks to Hillary for her two Senate campaigns and donated $1 million to Bill’s presidential library, the Times reports.
Barack’s Mouth
“Everytime I see [Robert] Gibbs as Obama’s campaign voice, I get further and further from seeing Obama as a candidate that is strategically smart, different, or an effective transformative leader. I really don’t know what Obama is building,” Kos writes. “Sometimes I get the sense that he believes he can start the progressive online movement all over again, this time in his camp. I can tell though that whatever the Obama camp is building, his spokesman is not our partner.”
Robert Gibbs “embraced” a primary ad in 2004 “that slowly moved in on a Time magazine cover featuring bin Laden, zooming in on a close-up of Osama’s eyes, while saying that Howard Dean was an unqualified Democratic candidate because of his lack of military or foreign experience,” Jerome Armstrong writes.
More on Obama’s RNC talking points, and John Edwards on truth serum.
Torture Chamber
You’d think headlines like “Daley Faces Torture Query” and “Court Orders Daley To Talk” would merit screaming front-page treatment. You’d be wrong. Or, you’d be right, but you’d have failed to consider that the media is afraid of this story.
“There is evidence that in February 1982, the state’s attorney’s office, and perhaps Mr. Daley personally, was put on notice of allegations of physical abuse of suspects,” Magistrate Judge Geraldine Soat Brown ruled on Thursday.
“Daley’s attorneys argued he had already answered questions from special prosecutor Edward Egan for a grand jury report,” the Sun-Times account says.
“Brown rejected that argument, writing ‘The statement taken by the Special Prosecutor from Mr. Daley contains little useful information. It consists almost entirely of leading questions posed by the counsel for the Special Prosecutor, often prefaced by long, factual recitations.'”
In other words, a mayor in the midst (theoretically) of a re-election campaign has been ordered by a judge to face allegations that he sanctioned torture because the special prosecutor’s four-year, $7 million taxpayer-funded investigation completed earlier this year was a whitewash.
Hey, here’s an idea. The next time you run into Madison Hobley, tell him “Yeah, but the city has never looked better!”
Vote Daley
“The campaign limps on quietly,” John Kass writes today. “The media politely decline to demand that Daley debate his challengers. Ex-con aldermen ran for their old jobs. The comic antics at the Cook County Board, with the media punching bag named President Todd Stroger, reinforced City Hall’s subliminal message: Without Daley, all is lost.
“It is a lie, artfully told.”
Pundit Patrol
* Mary Schmich again takes up valuable Metro column space with yet another weather report. I will not link.
* Jennifer Hunter, continuing her tour of the States, explains Iowa to us (anyone can be an expert after a couple days there, as long as you are well-versed in all the right cliches) as she genuflects at the altar of Obama.
Back to Kass: “I’ve been in [the mayor’s car], with Sam driving, the mayor reading the papers, joking, wisecracking about his critics, heaping even more contempt on those who try to curry favor by genuflecting in prose.”
Gay Games
“A state lawmaker fired up the gay marriage debate in Illinois Thursday by introducing a bill that would legalize marriage between same-sex couples,” the Tribune reports.
“Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama said Friday that his Christian beliefs dictate that marriage should be between a man and a woman, although he supports civil unions that give legal rights to gay and lesbian couples,” the AP reported in 2004.
Just FYI.
Rickey Rich
“[State Sen. Rickey] Hendon, a former county employee and longtime political supporter of [Bobbie] Steele’s, resigned his county job Sept. 5 and was signed to a contract the next day that doubled his monthly paycheck, records show,” the Sun-Times reports.
Torture Tale
Legal eagle Obama must have already concluded ahead of the court that Daley was not aware of “the open secret” of Jon Burge’s policing tactics, because it’s not like he would endorse a mayor who turned a blind eye to such things, right?
Taxicab Journal
There are more than 6,000 cabs in the city of Chicago. We intend to review every one of them.
The Periodical Table
Our weekly magazine roundup.
Remembering Kirby
From the vault.
Alderpalooza
The Fighting 15th.
Bears Down
Who knew there’d be so much fallout from this?
The Beachwood Tip Line: Business as usual.
Posted on February 23, 2007