Oak Park native and Sun-Times staffer Dave Newbart manages to admit that Sun-Times columnist Paul Molloy, whose obit Newbart has in today’s paper, promoted conservative values — “but in an eloquent way,” he adds. Conservative but eloquent, what do you know? 

Tags: Paul+Molloy, obituary, conservative

From Reader Ed, who got it from his friend Bill:

“It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and
our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered
by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my
strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was
too late. Accordingly, I’m readily willing to yield my command to these
obviously superior intellects, and I’ll, in turn, do my best for the
Cause by writing editorials – after the fact.”

Robert E. Lee, 1863

Joseph’s brothers sell him passing caravan, coming from Gilead with gum, balm, and resin, heading for Egypt.  They would have already drowned him in a well if one of them, Reuben, hadn’t intervened.  Their beef against Joseph, the youngest of them, was that their father, Israel, liked him best.  They also resented him personally, as a “dreamer.”  This was sibling rivalry to the Nth degree.  It’s in Genesis 37.

In Matthew 21, on the other hand, we have the vintner patiently sending his agents to the tenants, who killed or manhandled them, one group after another, including the vintner’s sons!  We may ask what the vintner was thinking next time they won’t do that, until his family is half wiped out?  It’s a story, of course, told by Jesus to show God’s patience with his people.  No more, as in the story, he says, and the chief priests and pharisees got the message.  Like Joseph’s brothers, they would have did him in, but held back because of his popular support.

The 105th Psalm recalls or tells us that Joseph, “sold as a slave” in chains, was avenged by “the Lord,” who “called down a famine on the land” and ruined their crops.  The sequence of readings (Lent 2, Friday, C-cycle) places the Christian God in stark contrast to the pre-Jesus God.  Same God, but changed somehow, and that’s to be explained in the coming Lenten and Passiontide readings.

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Later, Reader Phil gives retort simple:

If there were such a thing as Taliban catholics you would probably be a marked man for mentioning Reuben and beef during Lent.

To which I:

If you caught that, how many others did?  Oy vey.

Returning to the gang members who jumped the off-duty cop on Lincoln Ave. after a 4 a.m. bar closing, not identified ethnically by Sun-Times and erroneously presumed in this space to be Puerto Rican, they’re white non-Latino, as is clear from their names — Vincent Munday, David Podgorski and brothers Anthony Borias, Nicholas Borias and Joseph Borias (maybe Latin) — and headshots. 

The gang is Insane Deuces (alleged, allegedly and other kind of disclaimer for all this; it’s how newspapers protect selves, why not members of the Insane Bloggers gang?), one of whose members recently shot and killed a Marine home on leave.  One of the Lincoln Avenue Five is an Elmwood Park High School graduate — that town is kitty-corner from Oak Park at Harlem & North.

This town has its toughies.  I wandered into it now and then on walks from our northeast River Forest rental a few years back.  One quiet Sunday about 8 a.m., I sauntered down the strip mall near Harlem & North, west of the bank on the corner across the street from a Sears store on the Chicago corner (NE).  Noticing that the Great American Bagels was closed for redecorating, etc. — it’s when they absorbed an ice cream operation from next door — I stopped to look inside. 

I was immediately accosted by a tough young man whose accomplice stood at my rear.  We remained jocular with each other as I, blessedly unaware, wondered out loud what was up with the Bagels place.  The two and another were standing outside (guarding?) a late-model auto parked across a small parking lot in which sat (huddled?) an elderly couple.  Taking the couple at first to be mob-related, I was the more cautious. 

But my happy-go-luckiness worked in dealing with the two bully boys, who stood aside as I continued my stroll.  Confused, I guessed the two oldsters were being held, say until ransom was paid?  Lively imagination I had, you say.  But regaining the River Forest side of North Avenue, I looked back.  The wise guys and the oldsters remained in place.  I considered calling 911 but didn’t, feeling uncertain of my ground in Elmwood Park matters.  It’s culturally another world over there.  I turned and continued back to our Bonnie Brae quarters.