Stunned by the Trice reappearance (without explanation for absence), I forgot to take note that Schmich got back yesterday — “Illness’ 2 voices agree: Being sick is no fun at all.” She’s been sick and tells us about it, lightweightly describing a horse (hoarse?) race between “your eight-year-old” and “your 108-year-old.”

No problem. Chi Trib demographics clearly call for such, as its sales people put it at Media Kit:

Chicago Tribune’s sites are number one in total market reach for Chicago news and information Web sites (source: Media Metrix).  Beating out popular national sites like CNN.com and MSNBC.com, Chicagoans choose to get their online news from a trusted, local brand. Attracting a young, educated, and affluent audience, the Chicago Tribune sites reach more than a million readers every month. (Italics added)

Of course.  The Dippy Three — Schmich, Zorn, Trice — are there for a reason.  They are deemed to appeal to the young, the educated, the affluent — the future leaders of our great nation.  Why am I complaining?

On its discredited Koran-flushing story that led to riots and deaths abroad:

Newsweek’s editor, Mark Whitaker, apologized to the victims on Sunday and said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.

Not to its readers?  For snapping up a tip and running it gossip-like in good old breezy fashion, never suspecting there was a hot-to-trot anti-Musharraf Pakistani movie actor-activist there to read it aloud on the Muslim street?  Where was the sensitivity to The Street, about which we have heard so little lately? 

And be advised that what you have here is very mild commentary.  For link after link to informed indignation about Newsweek and its Michael Isikoff, author of the rumor, start with www.instapundit.com, which as usual is all over this thing.

Trice has re-appeared page one Metro in Chi Trib, leading with this:

A South Carolina Republican legislator, not known for his sensitivity and tact, incensed a bunch of people last month when he said he didn’t understand why women who are victims of domestic violence fall back into the arms of their abusers.

a) The commas are ridiculous.  b) “A bunch” is alarmingly chatty. 

In any case, she identifies the faintly damned legislator in paragraph two:

Rep. John Graham Altman made his comments just after helping to defeat a criminal domestic violence bill working its way through a legislative committee. That bill failed at the same time one protecting chickens passed.

They care more about chickens than women in South Carolina!  Point made in manner most droll. 

Etc.  Can’t read any more.  At any rate, she’s back, without explanation where she’s been for a week, having led fans and at least one observer to ponder her fate.  Maybe it took a week to put today’s column together, as opposed to the usual half week.

Flush Newsweek now?

Another day sans p-1 columnist in Chi Trib Metro section, sans Zorn, sans Schmich, sans Trice, sans everything but news.  In a daily newspaper.  Can you imagine that?

To the ramparts, cries Bishop Bruskewitz:

Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz has issued a blistering letter calling on Roman Catholics in the Lincoln Diocese to fight a federal decision requiring all employers to provide health insurance that pays for birth control, female sterilization procedures and “the morning after” pill.

He socks it to Obama’s secy of health and human services:

“The present secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, a bitter fallen-away Catholic, now requires that all insurance, even when issued privately, must carry coverage for evil and grave sin,” Bruskewitz wrote in the letter, which he instructed parish priests to read aloud to their congregations at Mass this weekend.

She’s been literally excommunicated, in fact:

Sebelius is among a number of Catholic politicians in the United States who have been banned from receiving Holy Communion because of their positions on abortion.

She was banned by Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., because, as Kansas governor, she vetoed strict anti-abortion legislation that her advisers told her was unconstitutional.

Bruskewitz confrere in Omaha is pushing the subject:

Archbishop George Lucas of Omaha has written a letter to be distributed to pastors next week, said Deacon Tim McNeil, chancellor of the archdiocese. Priests were asked to read the letter to parishioners or include it in their church bulletins.

The letter will ask Catholics in the Omaha Archdiocese to pray about the issue and to contact their congressional representatives to pass legislation overturning the rule.

“The bishop’s letter will state how this order negatively impacts the church in the U.S.,” McNeil said. “It’s a violation of religious liberty and our First Amendment rights.”

The bishops are putting out a “call to action” to try to overturn the rule, McNeil said. 

I love that “call to action” business.  It resonates, somehow.

The government plan has a wrinkle

The insurance rule, which does not require abortion coverage, exempts churches and other institutions whose primary purpose is to foster religious belief and that mainly employ people who hold those beliefs.

U.S. bishops, however, wanted a broader exemption that includes Catholic hospitals, universities and church-affiliated social services agencies.

They want to peel off the hospitals, which is where so much of bioethics hits the road.  They’d like to do away with the Catholic presence there and in social service?  Or denude it of Catholic identity?

 “Bolton’s Chances for Approval Brighten,” says AP story, citing Republicans’ returning to the fold on the issue, while in Wall Street Journal former UN official and head of World Food Program Catherine Bertini says he’s OK in her book, based on years of working with him.

 I’ve known him for 30 years, and I know that he expresses his views in a forthright manner so that everyone knows where he stands. But John listens with as much intensity as he speaks. He hears others’ views, and will change his own if a counterargument proves convincing. I have seen him do this many times, and have been on both the “winning” and “losing” sides of discussions with him. It is difficult to participate in one of these discussions without developing a healthy respect for the logic of his conclusions — whether one agrees with him or not. [Italics added]

That’s as to the character issue.  As to what’s good for us, she says:

 John had a strong commitment to supporting U.S. leadership within the U.N., and of the importance of the U.N. to the U.S. He made significant efforts to improve the workings of the U.N., plunging into matters where he thought the U.S. could enhance U.N. operations, but was wise enough to try to fix only what was practicable. But the instinct was to fix: Shouldn’t we have a U.N. ambassador like that? [Italics added]

All in all, he’s her man, because he’s “a forceful player, alive to U.S. interests” and will promote “steps necessary to strengthen the U.N.”

Embedded in such a mentality is the shape-up-or-ship-out philosophy required for change, it seems to me.

Ill. Gov. Blagojevich says a pharmacist is “in no position to decide who might or might not be someone you sell [contraceptives] to.”  He was responding to Cardinal George calling for him to rescind his directive that they must sell “contraceptives, including the morning-after pill,” as the Springfield State Journal-Register put it, “even if the sale goes against their personal beliefs.”

But does Gov. Blago think the issue is the customer, not the product?  And as to the product, the morning-after pill is not a contraceptive but an abortifacient.  It does not prevent conception but aborts it, dislodging the fertilized egg so it can’t get nowhere on its otherwise inevitable way towards becoming a little baby.

Lots of people don’t buy that formula, but shouldn’t newspapers take responsibility here, being fair and balanced and letting readers decide?

Wait.  Sun-Times also terms the morning-after pill something that “prevents” conception, which it aborts, else why after the fact?  Thus this mainstream media outlet ignores and obfuscates the key difference here, what puts this pill in an entirely new category.

The Sun-Times man, Ben Fischer, has apparently given the matter some thought, calling “the medication essentially an ultra-dose of standard birth control chemicals taken after sex.”  Ultra-dose?  What would that be?  Lots more of what prevents conception, thus locking the barn door after the cows are stolen?

Chi Trib took a pass on this matter.

Lifted from Blithe Spirit is this:

* How to read a newspaper: Always 2 or 3 days late.  You get so-called breaking (broken?) news by Internet and cable and talk radio.  Go to the paper for a palimpsest of local stories — crimes, accidents, school board fights, etc., above all sports!  It’s to prevent yourself from being too much impressed by story placement, headline, photos, etc.  More later: this is a very pregnant topic.

Here’s more, new to this blog: You want to remain untouched by the hype that inevitably attaches to The Selling of a Story, which is endemic to newspaperdom.  Newspapers are competing for your attention and they mean to grab it any which way.  This is not dishonorable.  Au contraire, it’s in the line of duty for them.  But so is it in the line of duty for readers (potential buyers of the story) to beware.  Caveat emptor and all that. 

In this case beware the headline, pix, story placement, etc.  As I say above, more, more, more later on this.