By Steve Rhodes
* Bears Super Bowl victory headline neither Chicago paper will be willing to use: “Crown Their Ass!”
* More likely Indy victory headline after Adam Vinateiri kicks the game-winning field goal as time runs out: “Money!”
* The city’s best Bears coverage, all week in Beachwood Sports:
1. Lessons and observations in a Top Ten season review.
2. The Bears are in the Super Bowl. Emery tries to wrap his head around it. In The Blue & Orange Kool-Aid Report.
3. Super Bowl Shuffling.
4. What the NFL taught us this year. In Over/Under.
Clothes Line
The Sun-Times has declared Friday “Wear the Bears to Work Day.”
So now they’re going after the dork demographic.
Lovie Smith Drive
In Big Sandy, Texas.
Tank Johnson Way
“More than anything, Tank Johnson needed to know he wasn’t alone,” the Tribune‘s David Haugh writes. Johnson had just lost his best friend, Willie B. Posey, in a nightclub shooting and feared he was close to losing his spot on the Bears roster after defying team orders following a weapons arrest. That’s when Lovie Smith picked up the phone to pick up his defensive tackles’s spirits.”
Maybe Lovie should have picked up the phone after any one of 30 visits police made to Johnson’s home as he terrorized his neighbors and put his children at risk from pit bulls and unsecured guns.
Minnesota Way
Tony Dungy chose the University of Minnesota to pursue his college football career “because it was one of the few universities that would allow for the possibility of a black quarterback,” The New York Times reports.
Chicago Way
Illinois has third most segregated school system in nation.
Readiness
When people – pundits, the media – ask if America is “ready” for a black president (“No, let’s lay some more groundwork until we’re just a little more comfortable”), it really means “Is America still such a racist place that an African American can’t get elected president?”
But the media doesn’t want to put it that way. Too uncomfortable to discuss the real question.
If America’s ability to elect a black president is still legitimately under question, what does that say about our daily interactions, particularly in the workplace, and how does that square with those who think we should just be color-blind now?
Barack’s Law
People are who they are.
Chuck Roast
NYT: Did you read his book, Audacity of Hope?
New York Sen. Charles Schumer: I just read little pieces of it.
NYT: You couldn’t finish it?
Schumer: I skimmed the parts that were interesting.
Obama (D-Daley)
1. Barack Obama just lost my vote and respect when he endorsed that crook Mayor Daley,” Marvin Harrison of Berwyn wrote to the Sun-Times on Sunday. “Even if he didn’t endorse the other candidates, he should not have endorsed the man who has been allowing his friends to steal the city blind!
“Daley claims he knows nothing about all the illegal activity during his watch. Politics 101: Quid pro quo. That’s a shame, Mr. Obama.”
2. “I have been a huge fan of Sen. Barack Obama ever since he began his political career in the Illinois Legislature. This was a guy who seemed very sincere and totally genuine: a politician you could trust, or at least believe.
“I am still an Obama supporter, but I cannot understand his endorsement of a mayor who has reigned over nearly 20 years of blatant corruption – corruption that was orchestrated by those close to him, in offices next to him,” Cornelius Foster of Douglas wrote. “I cannot imagine why Obama, who has enjoyed such overwhelming support, felt it necessary to attach his name to a figure who is so widely presumed to be corrupt.”
Big Picture, Local Focus
The latest CNN poll has Hillary Clinton leading the field with 38 percent of Democrats polled in her corner. The next three: Obama 18; John Edwards 6; Al Gore 12.
Electability
. . . won John Kerry the nomination. Pundits and strategists are never right about this stuff.
Kerry Case
On the other hand, if Kerry had won Ohio he’d be president. Yet, the media caricatures him as a loser, just as it caricatured Gore for years despite the indisputable fact that Gore won the 2000 election.
How silly is this, for example?
“Mr. Kerry’s hopes were probably most damaged by what he said was a botched joke he told while campaigning on behalf of Congressional candidates in the final week of the 2006 election campaigns,” The New York Times says.
This is how we choose a president? George W. Bush botches a war, he gets re-elected. John Kerry bothces a joke about Bush’s botched war, and he gets ridiculed into oblivion.
Readiness Redux
When people ask if America is “ready” for a woman president, consider the text in the (syndicated) editorial cartoon that ran in the Trib on Saturday –
“Countries That Have Already Had Female Heads of State: England, Norway, Finland, Israel, Switzerland, Germany, Serbia, India, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia, Liberia, Burundi, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, Ireland, Latvia, and Iceland.”
Overdrive
Hillary might want to re-consider using a song for her campaign with the opening line “I met a devil woman.”
Rock Star Buzz
If Obama becomes president, he’ll be at least the second coke snorter in a row to attain the office. And quite possibly the third.
Color Bind
WGN-AM led the way in 2006 radio revenue with $48.4 million, Robert Feder reported last week. WGCI-FM finished fourth with $28.6 million in revenue – even though they battled all year for ratings supremacy. The Chicago Reporter explains why.
Fickle Fingers
The slipstream media loves bloggers (and political activists) in other countries a whole lot more than those in this country.
Motor City Marine
Ted Nugent wants to provide hunting trips for wounded soldiers and their famlies. Somehow I don’t think soldiers want hunting trips when they come home.
Maybe Nugent ought to volunteer for duty in Baghdad instead of pretending in Michigan.
Quick Pick
“The Lottery’s Next Big Loser: Illinois.”
The Beachwood Tip Line: Bearing with it.
Posted on January 29, 2007