The latest on Rev. Andrew Greeley, injured in a taxi-related accident in November of ’08, update as of 3/17/10:

Father Andrew Greeley and family wish to express their profound gratitude to all who have kept him in their prayers. On his behalf, we ask for your continued prayers for him and for all victims of traumatic brain injury and their families.

We express our thanks to the skilled medical personnel, caregivers, and rehabilitation therapists who have cared for and encouraged him during this difficult time.  We will continue to work so that, in spite of his injury, he can enjoy a quality of life in keeping with his imagination, intelligence, and service to his Church and community.

Through the years, we have observed first hand his deep commitment to his friends, academic colleagues, readers, fellow priests, and parishioners. We know that Fr. Greeley blesses you for your concern.  Happy Easter to all!

Earlier:

Health update 05/15/09 from downtown Chicago

Father Greeley still has therapy three mornings a week. He continues to make good
progress in physical, speech, and occupational therapy, and his family and friends are
hopeful he will continue his recovery.

On May 5 he celebrated his 55th anniversary as
a priest.

Yet earlier, the first such update:

Health update 04/05/09 from downtown Chicago

Father Greeley is home where he continues intensive therapy. He has been making some excellent progress. The sessions are hard, but Fr. Greeley is tenacious. He and his family continue to appreciate your kind messages. Thanks to all.

More to come, when available, says the site.

Both major all-metro dailies looked tired today — a beautiful Sunday morning, yes, when people, or “folks” as Obama always says, are out and about early, with little time for Chi Trib and Sun-Times. But how boring and inconsequential can you be, even on a late-July Sunday, and still lay claim to excellence, not to mention stay afloat financially?

So: weak outing for the two major metros today.

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* But first, not part of their weak outing, Obama is widely quoted saying he “gave the impression [he] was maligning” the Cambridge MA cop and department, a day after telling a prime-time national audience that the cop acted “stupidly.” Q: How does O. sound when he really does malign someone?

Plus: To say you give “the impression” of doing something implies you did it inadvertently. He makes inadvertent statement on prime-time national TV? Does he do that often? Also when he negotiates without preconditions with the Iran president et al.? Q: Is he ready for prime time?

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Getting back to the two majors, Sun-Times got to p. 5A (Sneed item) with first news of the day, after:

* Pure puffery for the Urban League’s president who is candidate for governor, with flattering head shot (“Convention a boost for Senate bid?”),

* Report of hackneyed advice in a “Latina” adress to grads of an online “university” (!), namely, guess what?, don’t drop out.

* Health story, on 5A, recounting a (self-promoting) Chi doc (who supplied his nicest head shot), disputing a “nationally known” doc about letting babies cry.

Finally the Sneed column, with its usual heard-on-the-Rialto stuff, including birthday hellos to Sandra Bullock and Mick Jagger (permitting an editor to run head shots of those consummate newsmakers), but — and this the news — a not-bad item about Michelle O’s wearing a $2G (!)sweater made in France, which I take as nouveau riche extravagance. Maybe it’s not such a bad country after all, eh Michelle?

And at least Sneed keeps it short and more or less newsy, something worth the 90 seconds needed to read it.

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As for Chi Trib, it was time to take dry cleaners to the cleaners again with an old pollution story, “Cleaners leave toxic legacy,” a longtime staple of ecology crusading — DRY CLEANERS SAY NEW EPA RULES ARE LEAVING THEM OUT TO DRY, July 4, 1993; A DRY RUN – CLEANER PRESSES CASE FOR NON-CHEMICAL METHOD, June 9, 1993; DRY CLEANER LOSES BID TO ADD MACHINE – ARLINGTON BOARD SHIFTS ON VARIANCE, May 24, 1991 to name a few stories — and just the thing for Sunday morning breakfast, when we all want to get mad as hell at Koreans.

More:

* “Human cost of budget crisis” on page one has same old artsy (mournfully gazing into distance) shots of Suffering People — black male schozophrenic looking like a youthful Paul
Robeson doing “Old Man River,” a mentally handicated adult woman, an autistic girl with Afro features. Read it and weep.

* John Kass on page 2 with expose of yet another state boondoggle, with graduitous reference to Bad Bill Cellini, super-connected and under indictment.

* Michelle again! In major headshot-decorated story about how she bobs her curls, etc. on p. 3. (Axelrod, stop them; she’s overexposed.)

* On p. 4 the polluted dry cleaner sites, listed and mapped and bemoaned.

* Story of hotel strikers now six years on the line — included here because they were happily ignored a few weeks ago by Society of Midland Authors on their way to their annual dinner, as they were by thousands of others before them who continue to use the worn-looking, even seedy Congress Hotel.

* On p. 6 at the bottom a many-paragraphed (one per sentence) Mary Schmich column sucking her thumb — “We talk a lot about untangling the mess of race in this country” — giving us an over-back-fence chat available in any neighborhood. She has words meant to sooth a savage breast. (But for police union waiting presidential apology for “stupidly,” go to Trib’s web site, we are told in a bottom right column inch.

* On p. 8 Annie Sweeney, late of Sun-Times, has story with a head for the ages, “Few surprises in state traffic study.” [I give up, Trib online ed., where is it?]  Thanks of course to a copy editor with a grudge against Annie, for all we know. Q: If there are few surprises, why bother? This is a news-paper, not one that announces no news today.

Sometimes I think they are just all tired out at these papers, undermanned (womanned) and overworked and suffering a malaise . . . .

Talking Crap at Pajamas TV: Right here

Amid the paroxysms of reminiscence about Walter Cronkite, one must reflect on his role as a skilled news reader.  As such, he was an elocutionary paragon, less actor than salesman. 

Where is there a salesman who would not have done anything for his on-air sincerity and avuncular integrity?  He was Uncle Walter, in the right place at right time to become one of our many icons, a sort of household god such as the old Romans kept on their mantle, someone to turn to at dinnertime five days a week to find out how things were. 

Yay Walter, he’s our man; if he can’t convince us what to think, nobody can! was our shout-out, lo these many years ago.

Forty years ago, Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island after a party, submerging the car.  He managed to get out, but not his companion.

It was here where Kennedy’s true nature came about. He claimed he called out for [Mary Jo] Kopechne several times and rested for fifteen minutes until deciding to walk back to the party. On his walk back to the party, he passed several houses with telephones but he did not summon help.

He eventually fell asleep in a hotel room and later woke up but did not immediately contact the police, but instead had a casual conversation with someone about sailing. It was not until after the dead body of Kopechne had been discovered that Kennedy went to a police station. [Italics added]

A bona fide Kopechne tragedy became in due time a spurious “Kennedy tragedy,” one of many.  And whom can we thank for that?

This fellow has Biden’s number:

It takes years of yoga to learn the posture necessary for speaking clearly with all your feet in your mouth. But for some the skill comes naturally, which brings us to Joe Biden.

Those who saw Dick Cheney as an evil genius crouched silent in the shadows of the Oval Office like Nosferatu must enjoy Biden’s high profile: he’s out there daily with the sunny enthusiasm of Ronald McDonald opening another store.

And, quite often, telling everyone to have a Whopper.

It’s James Lilek in NY Post.  Can’t remember when I’ve read anything that good in a Chicago newspaper, unless Kass and before him Royko.  Any other suggestions?  I might have missed someone.

Explaining one of the “gaffes,” he says:

What Biden meant to say, in his puckish way, that they misunderstood what an economy is, and how it works. Piling up a mountain of proposed taxes, mandates, regulations, do-nothing programs and pork unseen in such dimensions since Pink Floyd floated a dirigible pig over an outdoor concert might, in fact, prevent recovery.

Yes.  They have the formula for that.  In any case, go easy on Joe, by whom “truer words have never been babbled.”