Chi Trib’s “Civil rights groups go slow: Leaders say they are withholding judgment as they study Roberts” on p. 13, is basically puffery for those groups; there nothing in it that could not serve as a press release.  And it’s cheek by jowl on the page with “MEMOS RELEASED: On paper, praise for the right” about a 1981 (! is this reaching or isn’t it?) memo in which Roberts recommended conservatives for Justice Dept. jobs BECAUSE OF THEIR CONSERVATISM!  One can hear the “Gotcha!” all the way to Oak Park.

The civil-rights-groups story is essentially damage control for the anti-Roberts camp in the wake of the just-recalled NARAL ad that got shot down by a watchdog group.  We’re not like those people, say civil-rightsers, and WE’RE STILL MAKING UP OUR MINDS (!).  Frank James offers as unadulterated fact their claim of a “deliberate approach” to the nomination:

It’s all meant to avoid the appearance of a rush to judgment. The groups may eventually announce they’re opposing Roberts.

They claim?  Did James forget that part?  Did a copy editor forget it too?  It’s how they want to be perceived, isn’t it?  James doesn’t get that?  Between playing or being dumb is a Hobson’s choice which I would rather not face in my morning Trib, if you don’t mind.

James does close with good quotes from the groups in question in which they present or inadvertently disclose their strategy: no name-calling, press Roberts on how he will vote, get (lots of) documents.

“We do not intend to demonize this man, we’re not going to call him names,” said Alfreda Robinson, head of the judicial nominations committee of the National Bar Association, an 80-year-old black lawyers organization.  [Vs. those who say they intend to demonize him]

“But we have a view that there are some questions that he needs to answer,” said Robinson, associate dean at George Washington University Law School. “For example, his view on reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, the scope of that act and whether it should be expanded [she means whether given legislation is constitutional, doesn’t she?], because … that’s one of the very important issues to civil rights organizations.”  [Or does she think Roberts is nominated as one of our supreme legislators?]

The officials from civil rights groups interviewed said one of their most pressing concerns with the nomination is transparency: The Bush administration has not provided Roberts’ entire record [memos, etc.] as an official in previous administrations.

“Without having all of the relevant documents released . . . it’s going to be difficult for any civil rights organization … to really have an informed position on where he stands,” said Aimee Baldillo, a staff attorney with National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium.

Cough up the documents, we’re dying for ammo.

If Illini and Illiniwek are out for U. of Ill. teams, per NCAA correctors, so is Illinois out for the whole damn state, says Bill McClellan in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who suggests “Fighting Jews” for the team name, arguing that “Jews are not known for being drunken brawlers,” like the Irish, and won’t be offended.  He has other ideas but concludes with “Fighting Corrupt Pols,” with a nod to past secretaries of state Paul Powell and George Ryan.  May I humbly add that Powell and Ryan mascots would not be out of order.

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Meanwhile, local talent will out, as in Rick Morrissey in Chi Trib bringing to bear all the controlled, saddened but not  angered, school-marmish prudery he can muster on the irrepressible Ozzie, the winningest manager maybe in all Chicago history.  Ozzie greeted a friend vulgarly, effusively, insultingly as “a homosexual . . . a child molester,” IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY — Morrissey, that is, and other writers. 

No, no, no! said Morrissey.  You can’t say that!  It’s not true!  Homosexuals are not child molesters!  Stop, stop!  But Newsday beat him to it, without giving Ozzie a chance to defend himself!  So Morrissey, patient, longsuffering, a born teacher (yes!), reads a version of the riot act to our Winningest Manager:

In a vacuum, the insinuation in his words is that being gay is bad and, worse, that it logically follows that homosexuals are child molesters. I know people who are gay and I can’t imagine their seeing anything playful in that. But Guillen says he meant nothing hateful by what he said and that was my immediate impression. But I did roll my eyes. What if someone in the group were gay?

Morrissey knows people who are gay?  Egad, where did he meet them?  Hey, patient schoolmarms spell things out.  You readers be patient too.  It’s a Tribune writer working his way through something.  It’s worth it.  He elicits THE APOLOGY:

“I have no problem with [homosexuals],” Guillen said Wednesday. “I don’t deal with that. To me, everybody’s the same. We’re human beings created by God. Everybody has their own opinion and their own right to do what they want to do. You have the right to feel the way you want to feel. Nobody can take that away from you.”

There.  Morrissey feels better already.  He still has to work things through, however, slogging his conscientious way:

If an Italian came to this country and used ugly words about blacks, would it be explained away so easily? But Guillen says he comes at it from a Venezuelan perspective.

A little cultural awareness, ok?  There’s more, but Morrissey finally lets the whole thing go with a peroration:

Guillen acknowledged he “said the wrong thing at the wrong time,” but it’s more than that. There’s no right time for what he said. The clubhouse and the locker room might be the last place where men can be men, but Guillen has to live in the bigger world. He’s the manager. He’s not Don Rickles.

“I don’t worry about losing my job,” he said. “I just worry about respecting people. I worry about respecting the integrity of people. I represent a city and a team. I have to be careful what I say and when I say it. But I don’t say anything to offend anybody.”

Did ever Father Morrissey impose such a penance?  Finally, he takes a crack at being Aesop but taking three times the space:

In Ozzie’s world, life is to be lived fully, people are to be embraced and jokes are to be made. Problem is, not everyone gets them.

True!