A liberal friend of mine cancelled her Chi Trib subscription some time back, indignant over its front-page policy of mimicking Sun-Times with sensational grabbers.  The Trib soon thought better of that adventure and at least modified its incipient tabloidism.

But I think something else had her and has other libs cobbed, and it’s John Kass, who combines slam-bang coverage of the Mayordaley II machine with national-framework conservatism.  And I’m not sure which gets them madder, though you’d think the vigilance over Chicago politics would be a no-brainer favorable vote.

Not so, I have come to believe, because so-called social issues and love of government have come to trump all, and Mayordaley II is correct on all related points, willing at least to overlook stuff that sent his father up the wall — race– and gay-related matters come immediately to mind — and love of government remains a rock-solid foundation for him as it was for his father.

His motto could be “Holy mother the state,” to quote Dorothy Day, the reformed Marxist and uncanonized Catholic laywoman saint, and that suits today’s libs.

Anyhow, today’s Kass has MD-2’s “terrifying alter ego” Mayor Chucky, as in horror-movie anti-hero, with

aggravated facial expressions . . . hand waving, great circular motions from the shoulder . . . sneering, the finger pointing, and finally, the angry lip curling

asserting itself in a news conference — scheduled to talk about something else, for gosh sakes!

It happened when Chi Trib reporter Dan Blake and ABC-Channel 7’s Charles Thomas “figured they should act like reporters, not press agents” and asked him about insider-developer (plus Board of Ed President and Olympic committee ethics czar) Michael Scott Sr.’s painfully obvious cashing in on the coming Olympics.

The mayor refused to discuss it.  Blake asked when he would discuss it.

“Oh, I do it every day  . . .  You’ve been with me every day. NEVER insult me with that question! You’re insulting me because every day I’m here, you’re never here. And don’t print that! So I know, you’ll print it.”

Kass:

Huh? What? All Blake asked was a legitimate question about when the mayor would answer a legitimate question.

The mayor discussed it the next day,

but only long enough to deny, deny, deny and say reporters were making it all up just to hurt his feelings and ruin everything. “You come to conclusions, you’re trying to hurt [Olympics year] 2016. I don’t know why. … You come to conclusions!”

Kass:

What will happen if Chicago actually wins the 2016 Olympics?

We’ll have lots and lots of insider deals.

And we’ll have lots of Mayor Chucky.

Kass names Blake and Thomas but not the other mainstreamers on hand going along with the MD-2 program for the day — not his skywalking atop Willis Tower of a day earlier, but infrastructure developments.

Whatever “the stunt of the moment,”

reporters . . . give oodles of coverage to the news managed out of the mayor’s press office.  . . .  And then you see the stunt on TV, the ribbon cutting or the meet-and-greet with the children or the seniors, and you think you’re actually watching the news. [Italics added — it’s why people turn to the ‘Net]

But criticizing fraternity members even anonymously, is to enter dangerous territory.  Kass sounds ominously like those who accuse mainstreamers of bias towards their favorite party and their favorite political philosophy. 

If his reporting on civic corruption isn’t enough to make libs uneasy and send them scurrying to the NY Times comfort zone, his critique of the main stream, even if veiled, would be enough.  You don’t do that in j-circles. 

Probably not in j-schools either, where the first step of the Twelve, “My name is ____ , and I am a biased liberal,” is probably rarely taken.

So it is that Chi Trib, for all its fluff and relative unreadability (vs. Sun-Times, which has its own problems) has this alter ego — not only Kass but a fleet of energetic civic-corruption investigators — that terrifies true-blue liberal readers for whom the state is, sans irony, a holy mother.

This with apologies to those who, like Dorothy Day, reserve that encomium sans irony for the Church of Rome.

Censored account of Lincoln Park attackers?

The attackers — police said they believe the incidents are connected — have been described as men in their early 20s, police said.

We are to believe that the attacked had nothing more to report?  This leaves readers perhaps blaming blacks when attackers were hispanic, or vice versa.  This is not fair, nor does it help in spotting culprits, we might say profiling them.

A neighborhood jogger, 28, says he won’t give it up:

Zach Bornemeier, 28, who lives a few blocks west of the zoo, after learning of the attacks said he was unfazed and still plans to jog alone late at night along Stockton [where one or more occurred].

“It just sounds like to me just one group of punks,” he said, adding that he’s not going to change his lifestyle.

Punks?  Admirably circumspect, to be sure.  He plays them down, clinging to his late-night jogging, like candidate Obama’s Pennsylvania yahoos with their guns and Bibles.  Not savages?

Later: Comment on Channel 7 story:

usgirl4ever

8/3/09 8:01 AM EDT

Are the suspects black, white, latino, etc…….???? My god…for fear of being labeled “racist” you can’t tell the public what kind of person to look for? All because of our racist president!!

. . . violent robbers have savagely beaten four people in the neighborhood since Thursday, . . .

 

Police say the victims were all men walking in the early morning hours.  They were attacked from behind by a group of black and Hispanic [!] men in their early 20’s.

• 600 block of West Fullerton        July 30, 2009 at 2:00 a.m.
• 2100 block of North Stockton     July 30, 2009 at 2:05 a.m.
• 2000 block of North Cleveland   Aug 1, 2009 at 3:00 a.m.
• 300 block of West Webster        Aug 1, 2009 at 3:36 a.m.

She’s identified as “an Examiner from Chicago.”  Her home page is here.