This woman looking very good for Will County (and the rest of Illinois). She just beat out Dems for state senate ballot place. They had been nit-picking, and the court decided in her favor. A win for democracy.
And for Illinois.
Tag: Blithe Spirit
Where’s that lede anyhow?
Buried-lede alert, buried-lede alert . . . Why would Manya Brachear focus on the issue behind the story rather than the hard news, as in her Sunday Chi Trib story, “U. of I.’s teaching partnership with Catholic Church draws scrutiny”?
She leads:
The flap over a University of Illinois adjunct instructor dismissed after making controversial remarks about homosexuality arises from an unusual partnership between the state university and the Roman Catholic Church.
But the hard news, that a second U. of Illinois faculty investigation is under way, in addition to one about why the teacher, Kenneth Howell, was fired and how, is way down:
Faculty and administrators now will review that policy [the “unusual partnership”] to determine if it violates the separation of church and state or threatens academic integrity. They hope to conclude their investigation before the fall semester begins.
I’m assuming the first investigation has been reported. Such a partnership is not new, by the way: my cousin, the late David Bowman, S.J., taught Catholicism at the U. of Iowa in the late ’50s under much the same rubric.
But by Sunday’s big paper, the first investigation had become an afterthought for Brachear and her editors, for whom the church-state issue, rather than academic freedom, was the really interesting thing.
But hard news comes first. Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times comes to mind. Columnist Mike Royko was always after news, as opinionated as he was: it was what he was raised on, starting, I presume, at City News Bureau. Columnist Robert Novak sought never to write a column without something new that he’d uncovered.
Moreover, why the absence of interest in the freedom issue, in this case to what extent the protected species that is the gay and lesbian community got such prompt, thorough response from university authorities?
Nothing wrong with a trend story, of course. Slow news days depend on them. But this spotting an issue and selling the story with it has an eagerness factor that damages credibility. Detachment, please, and a bit more reporting, as of similar situations if there are any, and if there are none, then it’s an even bigger story, rather than a mildly irritating one.
First blast of the season
In Missouri, Republican Roy Blunt has a message: Obama is for his opponent! Enough said!
(It’s a Drudge heads-up:
IT’S ON: First negative ad from candidate linking Dem to Obama.)
Heads up, Chicago!
Same day, same trial, two newspapers, two hard-copy home-delivery headlines:
* Chi Trib: “Brother sticks by ex-governor, Ousted leader was misunderstood on some issues, older sibling says,” all under under “Blagojevich on trial.” Nice story, will neither disturb one over morning coffee nor unduly tax the mind. Go Trib.
* Sun-Times: “BLAGO’S BROTHER TESTIFIES: JESSE JR.’S GUY OFFERED $6 MIL FOR SENATE SEAT.” Capsule summary underneath and to the right: “Robert Blagojevich testifies that Raghu Nayak — who authorities say was an emissary for Jesse Jackson Jr. — offered to raise $1 million for ex-governor Rod Blagojevich. Nayak then said Blagojevich would get $5 million more once Jackson was appointed senator.” Lots of info, non-generic, for newspaper reader with better things to do than decipher things. Go Sun-Times.
————
FYI: Online Trib story here, discoverable amidst online chaos, neither Drudge nor Newsalert, two that know how to reach online reader.
Sun-Times here, also not easy to find. Behold the noosepaper dilemma. But at least save the hard copy with punchy hard-news stuff! Nod goes as ever to S-T, Trib never was very good at it.
Remember McLuhan’s “People don’t actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath.” It’s here, but scroll down.
Job-killer
In hard times, union hardball has no traction:
With one of its two elementary schools crippled by a stalled construction project, the school board of River Forest Elementary School District 90 voted this morning to cancel a union contract and bring in a non-union company to finish the job.
Look. The working man is not just the union member, who in this case is killing jobs for himself and his brothers and sisters. When will they ever learn?
Thing is, this school board depends not a whit on labor money.
There ain’t no justice department
Sad to say, the Eric BeHolder — beautiful in the eyes of — justice department is appearing not only grossly politicized but also inept, as in this “flub” of the Polanski case.
He’s Obama’s man, of course, a brother under the skin, but not before he was Bill Clinton’s, as in the case of the grossly venal pardons.
Good morning, Chicago
No surprises, says Chicagoist, that Stroger is using patronage to reward supporters. No surprise either, sez I, that Blagojevich used his office to enrich himself. We are used to hearing about both of them, as we have long been used to hearing about political corruption in Illinois, especially Cook County, especially Chicago.
What’s new this time around is the brazenness and ineptitude of Stroger and Blago, to whom we should be grateful for making it all so clear, so that maybe, maybe a periodic paroxysm of pseudo-reform can have its 15 minutes of fame in our state, county, and metropolitan area.
(By the way, when was the last time any of us heard a sermon against political corruption? Like this by Rev. Dr. Bellows in NYC in 1875?)
Fat black people are victims
Vapid is as vapid talks. Wanna hear empty pseudo-rhetoric, a bromide every minute full of air? Listen here to Michelle O. telling the NAACP about fat kids.
Did you listen? Did you get the part about the black community being threatened by its health — not by its bad eating habits and leaving exercise to favorite NBA players?
The lady urges “intensity,” Drudge headlines. It sits better than dieting and running, not to mention watching less TV and reading more books.
No self-respecting PTO would invite her back.
Literature rocks
My heavens, this is the sort of thing dreadfully in need of being said (HT Instapundit):
Real life is not like a science experiment . . . . Humans are not purely rational beings. They have phobias, biases and other irrational elements. Ego, hatred and childhood experiences are not something that can be turned into statistics. . . . . [W]orks of literature can help [Obama]. Precisely because they’re not concerned with reducing every event to facts and figures, and because they’re not limited in length and description like policy briefs, they can explore events and people with a thoroughness that factual books and briefs can’t. They describe the world as it really is–and so are essential to making knowledgeable policy decisions.
Or any other kind of decision. The author applies it to Obama as “emotionally detached” and having things go badly for him. Fatuous that, if it’s that which will save this bad presidency. I will ignore the Obama part, if you don’t mind, and welcome the wise words that will lead a decision-maker to do the right thing, or increase his chances of doing it.
He’s puffing a book that makes the point:
This lesson–how great works of literature provide invaluable guidance to understanding events and people–is brilliantly explained in a new book, Grand Strategies, by Charles Hill. In the book, Hill, a . . . former career diplomat who . . . lectures at Yale . . . takes readers on a grand tour through the great pieces of literature, along the way explaining their lessons for policymakers. It’s the perfect primer for the president and his team.
Not quite, though it sounds interesting. The perfect primer would be Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. But big-govt. enthusiasts won’t touch it. Leopards and their spots, and all that, you know.
Sad about crime in Chicago
The alderman in whose ward the policeman was shot and killed with his own gun yesterday feels “sad” about it.
“I don’t know what to say. It just makes me sad,” said Ald. JoAnn Thompson, 16th, whose ward covers the area around the station. “That one individual does not speak for this whole ward. And I know there’s a lot of crime, but there’s still a lot of good people here, too.”
Not as sad as when a relative — father of her granddaughter’s children — was found in a van (not in her ward) 11 months ago:
Police discovered [Wilfredo] Gines’ body in the back of his Ford Expedition on Saturday night in a college neighborhood in Hammond, Ind., three days after he left his home in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood on the city’s South Side.
Family said Gines, 31, a relative of Chicago Ald. JoAnn Thompson (16th), was going to confront two men he suspected of stealing a car engine he had rebuilt in an auto garage in Chicago Heights.
She has a right to feel sad, but she also has a right to be pissed off — and dying for something that might reduce even a little the rampant antisocial behavior of her constituents.
Blithe Spirit 