[A few clarifying words are added below in boldface.]

Second City never looks so second as when Sox games are broadcast. And it’s never so obvious, by contrast, as when the Fox or ESPN (both national) ‘casters are doing a game. They keep the air alive with solid info, not cracker-barrel speculation, about players and the seasons they are having and where we had dinner last night. Comcast is no Fox, of course, and the technical aspects also make a big difference. I don’t aim a camera, but I do know when I’m being bored by the same shots time and again, sans movement, sans teeth (bite), sans everything but the same old where-the-pitch-goes and (after the hit) where the pitches went, all of which goes with interminable, repetitive discussion of what this pitch does and that.

The Fox play-by-play man is a professional announcer who knows baseball, vs. an amateur-once-a-player who does the cracker barrel with the best of them. Or the bar or the team bus, whatever. The Sox radio man, Farmer, once in a tight spot said, “There’s the pitch!” and there went the pitch, but he said nothing, so disappointed was he at what came of it. They get cranky when Sox lose, TV man Harrelson drawling out his disappointment — hey, Red Barber had an accent, but it didn’t matter — and Farmer removing even more affect than usual from his deadening voice. He makes Bob Elson sound lively. And his cohort Singleton has his dumb jokes. Yuck!

How long, how long, O Sox fans, will you endure the shamless huckstering of your favorite players, the excuses — it’s hard to put down a bunt, so much do you expose your body and head to a pitch, or it’s hard to keep playing with injuries and in such a long season — and the all-around root-a-toot-tooting for “us,” meaning the Sox? You’ll endure it as long as Reinsdorf the businessman, and a very good one, thinks that’s what we want. And the heck of it is, maybe most of us do.

What to make of this from Maywood, one ‘burb west of Oak Park: The village manager, who, by the way, is white, told staff behind closed doors of racially offensive lyrics he had put a stop to at a Latino-oriented festival, using the exact words by which he was offended.  Shit hit fan, and he and other “officials” have to undergo sensitivity training, because he did not use a euphemism or code word for whatever the lyrics were. 

He didn’t use the words on his own account but quoted them, as the pope quoted the late-medieval king engaged in dialogue with an emir.  It’s as if the manager hit someone in the face, even to use the word.  This is primitive.  The word is a totem.  Such response brings us back to far before the Enlightenment, even beyond Western understanding period, to a land of magic and superstition.  For whom should sensitivity training be prescribed — or desensitivity training?  An executive trying to help people or those who go bananas at the use of a given word?

Startling viewpoint:

Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939. By Wolfgang Schivelbusch. Metropolitan Books, 2006. 242 pgs.

Critics of Roosevelt’s New Deal often liken it to fascism. Roosevelt’s numerous defenders dismiss this charge as reactionary propaganda; but as Wolfgang Schivelbusch makes clear, it is perfectly true. Moreover, it was recognized to be true during the 1930s, by the New Deal’s supporters as well as its opponents.

. . . .

Read more here

How can we follow Sun-Times critic Doug Elfman’s lead on a new show he promotes after he said “Path to 9/11” was dull?  Henceforward, his judgment is suspect.  (I.e., we are suspicious.)  That’s the problem with bias: it damages credibility and loses readers.

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh makes an extended argument today, running and re-running Rep. Charley Rangel’s cautious, polite criticism of Chavez’ anti-Bush rant and running and re-running Rangel’s anti-Bush rant a year ago for the black congressional caucus.  The argument is that Chavez took his cue from Democrats, and people will get that, and Rangel has to stem the damage somehow.

LITURGICAL PROBLEMS:

1. Man behind me at mass sang:

* “To-ma-hah-row” and “Ah-hah-men,” twice inserting “hah,” which is not part of the liturgy.

* “Ho-ho-holy Lord,” inserting “ho” which is not part of the liturgy either.

* “Have mercy ah-hahn us,” inserting “hahn,” which is also not part of the liturgy.

2. Fr. L. substituted “God” for “father” at a key point in mass, free-lancing — apparently because he prefers “inclusive language” and does not approve of God as father. It happens at the close of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, where since 1975 the church’s powers that be have ordained this:

Through him,

with him,

and in him,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

all glory and honor is yours,

almighty Father, for ever and ever. [Italics added]

I don’t like the idea of Fr. L. free-lancing in the first place (not fair), and I like it even less that he does so without explaining it every darn time. Truth in packaging and all that.

DIDN’T MEAN TO PRY: I called Muldoon’s Irish American Eatery in Wheaton, asked the young woman, “What are your hours tomorrow?”

“I don’t have any,” she replied. “I’m not working tomorrow.”

I explained that I had the restaurant in mind. She apologized and after asking around told me 11 a.m. to midnight, but bar would stay open later than that.

AFRAID OF “HIS”?: “With Commissioner Patrick Doolin’s announcement that he is running for the office of mayor of Forest Park next year, the election period is officially open. . . . Political newcomer John Plepel is the only other villager to announce their candidacy so far,” says Dave Goetz in the Forest Park Review.

Their candidacy? How many John Piepels are there?

Goetz is eloquent nonetheless with:

God help our country if there exists a more corrupt county than our own Cook County. I guess we’re supposed to believe that the son that almost no one had ever heard of is qualified to sit at the helm of a $3 billion budget. Try again. I don’t know much about Peraica except that he isn’t a Cook County Democrat. That’s enough for me this year.

Tell it, brother.

What do we make of this from the Pope, except that you have to head off restless natives at the pass.  They go wild sometimes.  On the other hand, being “deeply sorry” you offended someone is not saying you were wrong, just that their taking offense is not what you had in mind. 

On the other hand, he said it’s not his opinion that some of Muhammed’s are “evil and inhuman.”  He was inviting them to “frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect,” to which we must say, Lotsa luck.

He could take a tip from the Australians, as below. 

“We live in a world of terrorism where evil acts are being regularly perpetrated in the name of your faith,” Mr Robb said at the Sydney conference.

“And because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem.

“You can’t wish it away, or ignore it, just because it has been caused by others.”

On yet another hand, they burn churches, don’t they?  And shoot nuns.  And there are neither papal terrorists nor missiles nor surveillance drones. 

“You either have to say this ‘I’m sorry’ in a proper way or not say it at all,” complained the Turkish state minister.  “Are you sorry for saying such a thing or because of its consequences?”

If he would just grovel.