Inspired by experience

Sun-Times corrected this boo-boo, which can be found here, at a Google search page and was not wrong in hard copy: “It was Devine design.”

Yes, there was a state’s attorney named Devine, but no, it was not his design for Otis McDonald to become lead complainant in the case v. Chi’s gun ordinance in the U.S. Supreme Court.  McD had divinity in mind, not the immediate past state’s attorney.

He and the ordinance and why he’s fighting it with help of “gun lobby” people is told in a quite good piece today by Mark Konkol, one of S-T’s hard-at-work conveyors of hard reporting.

McD has had enough and isn’t taking it any more, that’s why.  He’s a 21st-century urban hero who looks back on his sharecropper mother in Louisiana who cashed in her piggy bank, all $18, to buy him a ride to Chi in 1951, when  he was 17, so he could find, that is make, for himself a better life.

He became a janitor at U. of Chi, making “waves on campus” by applying for a promotion to building engineer when no blacks were applying because it just wasn’t done.  Now in his S. Side, Morgan Park neighborhood home, where he lives with his wife and daughter and has grandchildren as visitors, he is standing up to be counted as one who would be armed.

As a kid in Louisiana — seven years old — he went into the woods and bagged all manner of wild creatures who could be eaten and skinned.

Out there by myself. I’d get me some rabbits, squirrels, ‘coons, opossums,

he told Konkol.

When a kid tried to break into his garage, he levelled his long gun at him and counselled him henceforward to stay away, which the kid did.

But when three guys blocked his car on his way to the Jewel, “cussing … saying, ‘I’ll put you down, you old gray-haired mothers-and-such; I’ll put you down,” because he’d done the good-citizen thing as Mayor Daley recommends, calling cops on gun-toters earlier, he had no way to defend himself.  He wants that to change, so it’s McDonald vs. the city (and my own Oak Park, piggy-backing on Chi) at the high court.

The mayor?  He wishes he could get him to “feel and see what” he sees.

”Maybe he could come here and spend the night, especially during the summer, and listen to what I listen to out my window. If he could, and he was open to that, he would see what’s really going on in his city … and maybe he would understand where I’m coming from.”

Something like that would win some votes too.  Daley should take note.

Let no person call it father

The longtime resident priest at our parish has his own way of saying the mass, subbing out references to God the Father, for instance, as in this “doxology” or invocation of the Trinity:

P: Through him, with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, in, all glory and honor is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever.

To which the people say “Amen.” This is the “Great Amen” meant to affirm our trinitarianism.

The resident, however, says it this way, and the pastor today said it this way too, apparently brought around by the example of the older man:

P: Through him, with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, in, all glory and honor is yours, almighty God, for ever and ever.

This version sidesteps the fatherhood of God in favor of the politically correct non-reference to gender.  Irksome and annoying, to say the least.

Read it and weep

Toy Monster: The big, bad world of Mattel, by Jerry Oppenheimer, is scored by reviewer Eric J. Iannelli, in the 9/4/09 Times [of London] Literary Supplement for its triteness.  (On-line only for subscribers)

“As befits such a seedy, tabloid-style expose, the writing is cliched and hyperbolic,” writes Iannelli, giving some juicy particulars:

Investigators are “hard-nosed”.  It is the “tired,poor, huddled masses” who immigrate through Ellis Island.  Japan is “the Land of the Rising Sun,” Germany is “the Fatherland” and Hollywood is “La-La Land.”

Etc.  A main character in this non-fic account “always got what she wanted” and “never took no for an answer.”  Her rise is twice described as “meteoric,” she “goes ballistic.”  And especially good are the verbs used instead of “say” or “said”:  “Very few . . . say anything. . .  they observe, maintain, intone or opine.”

Ianelli still found the book “engaging,” even if “sensationalist” and “one-sided,” because it raises “legitimate concerns” such as “lavish executive bonuses . . . in the face of scandal and falling profits.”

And nobody kept inserting “you know” in the middle of sentences or between them.  If you heard them talking live, ah, that would be a different matter, I’m sure.

McGuire sick in prison

The imprisoned former Jesuit priest and sex offender Donald McGuire has leukemia.

A close friend of McGuire dislosed [sic] his diagnosis to the Dallas Blog on Sunday after the priest called his residence on Saturday night. McGuire made the heavily-restricted and closely-monitored one-and-a-half minute phone call from a federal pentientiary [sic] in Springfield, Mo, which can be proven through phone records.

He’s been having a hard time of it.

Sources working closely with McGuire claim that he’s been violently beaten by inmates on numerous occassions [sic] while prison guards watched in amusement.

This “Dallas blog” heard from him before he was incarcerated.

Shortly before McGuire was convicted in the Chicago trial, the defrocked Jesuit spoke to the Dallas Blog on the phone around Christmas time in 2007. He loudly proclaimed his “innocence” in what could best be described as a “contentious” conversation.

Around that same time period, the Dallas Blog received thousands of pages of documents and evidence showing that his accussers [sic] may have perjured themselves on the witness stand in Wisconsin. They had proof that McGuire had proven alibis showing he was elsewhere on some of his so-called nightly escapades. Witnesses inacurately [sic] described his rectrory [sic] rooms and his physical body description when they were first interrogated by investigators in Wisconsin.

Supporters claim he got a raw deal.

Sources from McGuire point their fingers at inadequate legal representation from his defense attorneys, Jerry Boyle and Stephen Komie, in the two trials. They claim they provided sufficient evidence to the lawyers to more rigourously [sic] cross-examine the accusers, but they failed to do so. After reading the entire transcripts of the Wisconsin trial, it appears that McGuire’s team has a legitimate argument.

This version has no legs with mainstreamers.

The McGuire team made attempts to approach media outlets this past year to show some of their evidence, but to no avail as an eeiry [sic] silence ensued. They were informed that editors were no longer interested in the story.

Barbara Blaine of SNAP is not buying it either.

Nonethless, Barbara Blaine, a licensed attorney and founder of SNAP (the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priets [sic]), continues to focus her attentions on the convicted pedophile priest. A few months ago, she told the Dallas Blog that more accusers alleging sex crimes by McGuire will soon come forward with a “mountain of evidence” that will be difficult to dispute.

Tom McGregor covers the waterfront for The Dallas [TX] Blog, which

is intended to be a news and viewpoints, online newspaper. Our Texas writers will comment on major issues affecting our community, state, nation and world. It is no slam at Dallas’ only daily newspaper to say that competing news sources make for a better community. We will attempt to give our readers insights into various issues and public personalities that you may not see in the pages of the Dallas Morning News.

We will do things differently in more ways than one. First, we intend to invite you to Blog here. Yes, we will have our own reporters and our own commentators who write for Dallas Blog. But, we give you the opportunity to respond to our stories and viewpoints by posting comments on our site.

This piece links to another of his about Jesuit sexual misconduct, reporting allegations about a “Fr. JG,” for The UN Post, and another by a Dallas Blog-connected writer, Tom Pauken II, for Ohmy News, about a lawyer who is appealing McGuire’s 25–year sentence.

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Mass transit misunderstanding

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.

Bruso is a 67 year-old  Vietnam veteran, who apparently has some history of mental illness. While riding the bus in Oakland, he was talking to someone about getting his shoes shined for his mother’s funeral and a black man named Michael—whose last name is unknown—managed to get offended because the words “shoe shine”, “boy”, and “brother” were used in the same sentence. He confronted Bruso, who initially misinterpreted the man as offering to shine his shoes. Michael yelled “Why a brotha gotta spit-shine yo’ shoes?” and “Why a white man can’t shine his shoes?”

The rest is on tape.  This blog reports, you decide.

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Trip down academic lane: Boccacio vs. Chaucer vs. church

At Dominican U in RF last night, Robert Hanning from Columbia U. on confession in the middle ages.  Title led me to expect a socio-cultural explication but he was about close reading of Bocaccio and Chaucer. 

I found the former heavy-handed in his slashing attack on church practice, producing cartoon characters — opera boffo? — none of them credible or noteworthy.  The latter — dear Geoffrey — produced memorable people and made same points with relative understatement.  Subtlety, thy name is not an Italian one.

Considered a q. during post-lecture q&a, where was holy mother church during all this?  Besides indexing Bocaccio.  But H. was not attuned to that, or seemed not to be, or had simply ruled that out a la monograph-style, not to mention journal-ready text with references and attributions right and left.

Appropriate, in that he was keynoting a joint meeting of the Illinois Medieval Assn. and the Midwest body of medievalists, this in DU’s near spanking-new Parmer Hall on west side of burgeoned if not still burgeoning campus. 

From which I exited on Thatcher, by the way, using the easement much disputed by tree-huggers and forest preservers.  The trees did not cry out at me as I hung a left and headed south.

A nice evening, for $10 that included a sip of wine and bite of something beforehand, sitting and watching medievalists chatter in clumps.  A look at the ivory tower, you might say, without prejudice. 

But I had to think about what Ezra Pound would say, he who moved ever in the mainstream of (literary and other) life and preferred jumping to (fascinating, engaging) conclusions.  Takes all kinds.

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Opus pokus

Yesterday an editorial about Opus Dei hosting lib RC (“heterodox”) Cokie Roberts at its DC bookstore led to cancellation of said talk-diva.  But old-world defensiveness delayed things:

The Washington Times called the Catholic Information Center on deadline Tuesday seeking comment and asking if the Cokie Roberts event had been cancelled, but we were repeatedly sent to voicemail. Putting someone on the line could have clarified the situation.

That is, Wash Times publicized the much-protested near boo-boo but would not have done so if it only knew.

This long-ago religion reporter had a similar no-talk response from Chi Opus D people in the 70s, when they were much newer kids on the block, followed by letter of correction after the story had run, about what I do not recall.

Look.  Talk and ye shall be saved at least a little embarrassment.  You might be anyhow.  You could make things worse, of course.  This guy in Pittsburgh threatened to sock me over the phone.  Speaking for the diocese. 

Had he succeeded, it would have been a story that wrote itself: easy to write but hard to research.

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Bi-Dem, bi-Republican, buy partisan

Reporters were barred from a meeting of the full Illinois senate this morning, so that “bipartisanship” might be achieved, explained Oak Park’s Don Harmon, an assistant senate majority leader and Democratic committeeman.

Harmon said the meeting was closed solely to avoid “political posturing” on the issues of the state’s finances and budget deficit.

“There was virtually no posturing, as we often find in open meetings,” he said, adding: “It remains to be seen what people do in public.”

Those damn open meetings with their posturing.

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Punches thrown at Wheeling Jesuit

Black eye here for immediate past acting/interim president at Wheeling Jesuit, or at least a smudge or at least a potential smudge:

[Catherine] Smith claims she discovered federal grant funds were being misused, including the classification of direct and indirect costs, direct payment of salaries without proper time and effort certification and payment of rent for John Davitt McAteer’s personal law office

and that she “promptly” reported what she found to McAteer himself, who was her supervisor, and to others, reports the West Virginia Record, a legal journal.

This would be about the NASA overcharge, announced almost simultaneously with Rev. Julio Giulietti’s firing as president and installation of McAteer as acting/interim president last August.

McAteer [had already] used inappropriate language [says Smith in her “whistleblower” suit] that was verbally abusive, vulgar and sexual in nature.  . . . after [her] report, McAteer responded by creating a hostile work environment,

Smith says. 

Subsequently, she was fired immediately after an employee whom she had “counseled” regarding his “substandard job performance” complained, she further says.

If she can make this stand up in court, it’s potentially a blow to the midsection for McAteer, who relinquished his acting presidency position this month, returning to his former position as University Vice President for Sponsored Programs.

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