By Steve Rhodes
The Monday papers are pretty barren, and maybe we all need a break from the Siege of City Hall and the Stroger Family Circus which have dominated the news lately anyway.
Then again, there’s always the governor.
1. Rich Miller reminds us today that Gov. Rod Blagojevich appears to be in a load of trouble.
2. Make him watch TV.
3. “While Illinois has made some inroads in closing the paths to poverty, the state remains among the worst in the nation when it comes to 15 key poverty indicators according to the 2006 Report on Illinois Poverty.” (via Capitol Fax Blog)
4. By “Daley’s Dupes,” does he mean the men just convicted or the media?
5. “[W]hen the case is exposed as the unmitigated farrago of lies and defamations that it is, the exhilaration at having defeated the most powerful organization in the world – not just the so-called Justice Department, but the SEC, IRS, and their Canadian quislings as well – will be very great and I will resume my career fortified.”
– Conrad Black, in “Conrad the Underdog: ‘I Am Undaunted,'” Toronto Globe and Mail
6. Jack Fuller is tabbed as “the silent mastermind” of the Tribune Company-Times Mirror deal, but John Madigan was the CEO who pulled it off.
7. It depends on what the meaning of non-core assets is.
8. “Before the Iraq war, we were probably at war with no more than a few thousand people around the world who would consider martyring themselves and causing nihilistic damage to the United States. The scale of the problem has grown because we have unleashed a maelstrom.”
– Francis Fukuyama (via Tapped)
9. “Search hard enough and you might find a pundit who believes what George W. Bush believes, which is that history will redeem his administration. But from just about everyone else, on the right as vehemently as on the left, the verdict has been rolling in: This administration, if not the worst in American history, will soon find itself in the final four. Even those who appeal to history’s ultimate judgment halfheartedly acknowledge as much. One seeks tomorrow’s vindication only in the context of today’s dismal performance.”
– Alan Wolfe, Washington Monthly
10. “By this time I was associate managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, and all the talk among the news management was about editing the paper for the top two quintiles of the income distribution. That means that 40 percent market penetration is the goal, not 100 percent, and that the Trib cares little about 60 percent of the people who might be its readers. And these people are the men and women in the bowling alley. Why doesn’t the Trib care? Because these days nonaffluent people shop at Wal-Mart, and advertisers like Lord & Taylor and stores that sell fancy wines don’t want to pay for circulation among people who can’t afford their wares. It’s as simple as that.
“Now almost all metro dailies want only the affluent readers. Everybody else is what advertisers call ‘waste.’ So publishers simply ignore the interests of the bowling alley set, or write about ‘them’ only as statistics or as the objects of debates among economists and policy analysts. I am absolutely confident that it takes these ‘waste’ readers – more than half of all Americans – very little time perusing their metro daily to see that reading further is a waste of their time.”
11. Bedazzling is back.
12. JetBlue’s customer-friendly changes/canceling/fare rules. (Seen somewhere else first, but I can’t remember where.)
13. “It’s an outrage to me that so much ‘Christian’ art is in fact artistically inferior crap. Why? First and foremost, I don’t think my Savior, the love of my life, would want His holy name spackled onto something so ham-fisted as most ‘Christian’ music. Talk about violating the commandment of taking the Lord’s name in vain! Jesus as the marketing equivalent of Adidas. A brand name.”
14. Found.
From: The Puerto Rican community in Humboldt Park
To: Yuppies
You Stole Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, West Town, and now you want Humboldt Park. Those R flags are 30-feet deep.
15. Catch up with The [Sunday] Papers and The Weekend Desk Report. Pay to play here.
The Beachwood Tip Line: A patronage army of its own.
Posted on July 10, 2006