Here’s Sun-Times giving mucho space to Rick Santelli, whose rant about bailouts set off the tea party movement:

“People ask me if I’m the father of the Tea Party movement,” the CNBC commentator said outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. “I was the spark …that started it. If being the lightning rod that started the Tea Party is what’s written on my tombstone, I’ll be very happy.

Etc.

That’s the (usual apocalypse-size) page one on S-T. “His ‘rant’ started it all, leading to major pages 4&5 story, right after page 3 on Glenn Beck, “We are 40 days from . . . changing America”:

Five thousand conservative true believers cheered Fox News host Glenn Beck and other right-leaning firebrands at Right Nation 2010 in Hoffman Estates on Saturday night in a call-to-arms 45 days before Election Day.

With his trademark chalkboard behind him, Beck invoked God, the Constitution and Thomas Jefferson.

“We are 40 days from fundamentally changing America,’’ Beck said. “. . . What the Tea Party movement wants is an end to out-of-control spending, an end to the insanity, an end to the growth in government that is gobbling everything up.’’

Now that, by professional newsman Abdon Pallasch, is how a news story is supposed to read.

Chi Trib, on the other hand, has — on page 15 of home-delivery hard copy — an account by a free-lancer (“special to the Tribune”) that is loaded with ambivalence.

Fresh off a week of stunning Republican primary victories, several thousand exuberant and newly-empowered tea party followers descended on the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates on Saturday for Right Nation 2010 — a carefully choreographed night of conservative political cheerleading, headlined by radio and TV host Glenn Beck.

This guy should sit down with a copy of Ford Madox Ford or Ezra Pound or, best of all, Strunk and White on what his role is and how he should play it.

What means this “carefully choreographed”?  Well organized?  He doesn’t say, but gives us a hint-hint of something bad.

Also making an appearance was Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady, who used the tea party’s mantra to stir up an enthusiastic and suddenly crucial electorate.

“We’re going to take this state, and this country back, after this election,” he said. “We’ll take back the government. “

Mantra?  Come on.  Every political rally has a pitch.  Every out party promises big changes.  Some also promise hope, do they not?

Last month, Beck led a huge and controversial rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Controversial is so generic as to be meaningless, but like the other items here listed, it’s negative.  Stirring maybe?  No.  But some hot quotes will do.  The reporter is supposed to find and display them to encapsulate the flavor and fervor of the event.

But worse than this to many, many Chi Trib readers is its inability to tell you in home delivery THE NOTRE DAME SCORE, which is slapped across the Sun-Times main sports page — 34–31 Mich. State — just flip the paper over, and there it is.  WHY CAN’T THE TRIB PRINT THE SCORE OF A NIGHT GAME IN EAST LANSING?