Day: April 12, 2006

If you knew sushi like I know sushi . . .

“I’ll be dagnabbed if I know what this is all about,” said I on seeing but not yet reading Chi Trib’s page-one-splashed takeout on Rev. Moon and sushi.  Scanning it on its three pages, with sidebars, I gathered that it’s quite a business success story, all about entrepreneurism and hope in the future that turned out very well for hard-working immigrants and others.  Good for Chi Trib, I thought, celebrating the American way at last.
 
But I sensed a certain antagonism, even finger-pointing.  I mean how many times can you read “controversial church” without feeling uneasy about this business success story?  Frankly, I began to smell a rat.  This story is about something that’s extremely suspicious because it (a) has religious overtones, (b) the religion lacks the eclat of long-time establishment, (c) its practices are bizarre, worse than washing feet on Holy Thursday or baptism by immersion, (d) its founder hasn’t had a new picture taken in years, and (e) he’s conservative and founded the Washington Times.
 
I know the celebrated religion-despiser and columnist Eric Zorn got the message, on-line if not in hard copy: Boycott sushi!  But I’m not as quick as he and have had to think about it. 
 
It’s “a remarkable story that has gone largely untold,” says the story in the fourth ‘graph, in case we readers missed this and might go on eating sushi unawares.  Zorn, in his typical vacuum-cleaner approach to data-amassing — the guy is really industrious — is a sort of backup for the story in his listing what Moon has said that will make sushi taste like ashes. 
 
The story itself warns against “indirectly supporting Moon’s religious movement” by the very sushi we eat.  It points to a Trib “survey of prominent Chicago-area sushi restaurants that use the Unification Church-affiliated True World Foods,” putting teeth into their warning.  It returns to the movement-supporting theme:
Although few seafood lovers may consider they’re indirectly supporting Moon’s religious movement, they do just that when they eat a buttery slice of tuna or munch on a morsel of eel in many restaurants. True World is so ubiquitous [sic: it’s either ubiquitous or not, you don’t compare “ubiquitous”] that 14 of 17 prominent Chicago sushi restaurants surveyed by the Tribune said they were supplied by the company.  [Oh no!]
The story goes into contortions to disprove its claimed non-affilliation with Moon’s church.
 
Etc. etc.  Who gives a hoot?  Who eats sushi that you know?  Among them who cares if Moonies put it on the table?  I don’t know when I’ve seen a story — page one splash, remember, and two complete pages inside the hard copy — that so illustrates elitist, closed-circuit, ax-grinding mainstream journalism as this one.
 
Remember this day, 4/12/06.  It’s when Chi Trib conquered the lost-readership problem with a page one scoop about sushi and where it comes from.

If you knew sushi like I know sushi . . .

“I’ll be dagnabbed if I know what this is all about,” said I on seeing but not yet reading Chi Trib’s page-one-splashed takeout on Rev. Moon and sushi.  Scanning it on its three pages, with sidebars, I gathered that it’s quite a business success story, all about entrepreneurism and hope in the future that turned out very well for hard-working immigrants and others.  Good for Chi Trib, I thought, celebrating the American way at last.
 
But I sensed a certain antagonism, even finger-pointing.  I mean how many times can you read “controversial church” without feeling uneasy about this business success story?  Frankly, I began to smell a rat.  This story is about something that’s extremely suspicious because it (a) has religious overtones, (b) the religion lacks the eclat of long-time establishment, (c) its practices are bizarre, worse than washing feet on Holy Thursday or baptism by immersion, (d) its founder hasn’t had a new picture taken in years, and (e) he’s conservative and founded the Washington Times.
 
I know the celebrated religion-despiser and columnist Eric Zorn got the message, on-line if not in hard copy: Boycott sushi!  But I’m not as quick as he and have had to think about it. 
 
It’s “a remarkable story that has gone largely untold,” says the story in the fourth ‘graph, in case we readers missed this and might go on eating sushi unawares.  Zorn, in his typical vacuum-cleaner approach to data-amassing — the guy is really industrious — is a sort of backup for the story in his listing what Moon has said that will make sushi taste like ashes. 
 
The story itself warns against “indirectly supporting Moon’s religious movement” by the very sushi we eat.  It points to a Trib “survey of prominent Chicago-area sushi restaurants that use the Unification Church-affiliated True World Foods,” putting teeth into their warning.  It returns to the movement-supporting theme:
Although few seafood lovers may consider they’re indirectly supporting Moon’s religious movement, they do just that when they eat a buttery slice of tuna or munch on a morsel of eel in many restaurants. True World is so ubiquitous [sic: it’s either ubiquitous or not, you don’t compare “ubiquitous”] that 14 of 17 prominent Chicago sushi restaurants surveyed by the Tribune said they were supplied by the company.  [Oh no!]
The story goes into contortions to disprove its claimed non-affilliation with Moon’s church.
 
Etc. etc.  Who gives a hoot?  Who eats sushi that you know?  Among them who cares if Moonies put it on the table?  I don’t know when I’ve seen a story — page one splash, remember, and two complete pages inside the hard copy — that so illustrates elitist, closed-circuit, ax-grinding mainstream journalism as this one.
 
Remember this day, 4/12/06.  It’s when Chi Trib conquered the lost-readership problem with a page one scoop about sushi and where it comes from.

Fitz in retreat . . .

. . . from his claim that Scooter Libby knew he was to tell NYT’s Judith Miller that the declassified intelligence report had as a “key judgment” that “Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium,” as Fitz — Prosecutor Patrick, rattler of Mayordaley II’s cage as in John Kass today — told the court last week, in his special prosecutor life in Washington. 
 
He should have said Libby knew he was to pass on “some of the key judgments of the NIE, and that [italics added] the [declassified report] stated that Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium” and he asked the judge to make the correction in his filing.
 
Do not feel bad if you don’t get the importance of all this, any more than if you can’t follow Fitz vs. Libby in general, which is based not on doing what he’s supposed to have lied about but on his supposedly lying about it. 
 
But if Fitz did things this way — skinning back on what fed a media frenzy only days earlier — in Chicago, he would not have Daley worried about him as Kass says he is today.
 
I still think he’s in over his head with this one and should get back to Chicago immediately.

Fitz in retreat . . .

. . . from his claim that Scooter Libby knew he was to tell NYT’s Judith Miller that the declassified intelligence report had as a “key judgment” that “Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium,” as Fitz — Prosecutor Patrick, rattler of Mayordaley II’s cage as in John Kass today — told the court last week, in his special prosecutor life in Washington. 
 
He should have said Libby knew he was to pass on “some of the key judgments of the NIE, and that [italics added] the [declassified report] stated that Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium” and he asked the judge to make the correction in his filing.
 
Do not feel bad if you don’t get the importance of all this, any more than if you can’t follow Fitz vs. Libby in general, which is based not on doing what he’s supposed to have lied about but on his supposedly lying about it. 
 
But if Fitz did things this way — skinning back on what fed a media frenzy only days earlier — in Chicago, he would not have Daley worried about him as Kass says he is today.
 
I still think he’s in over his head with this one and should get back to Chicago immediately.

St. Edmund rising

St. Edmund RC Church — Oak Park’s oldest, it says on a sign out front (apparently antedating St. Catherine of Siena’s move from Pine & Washington many years ago) — has reduced its debt from $1.1 million to $375,000 in a year, says the pastor Fr. John McGivern in the bulletin.  He’s been there 18 months.  Weekly collections etc. mean no debt is being incurred.  Fr. McG cites “some very generous donors, the reallocation of some underutilized funds . . . two bequests, and the fine fiscal management of the [parish] Finance Council.”
 
Donors can set up automatic direct debit and automatic credit card contributions, so “you’ll never have to worry about your weekly envelopes again!”.
 
A recent “Elegant Evening at the [Brookfield] Zoo netted $66,000.  Weekly collections have to average $13,500.  Apparently they have been at that level, in view of ongoing lack of indebtedness. 
 
All Oak Park should be glad about this.