Spent some quality time last night with blogger Carl Nyberg, of Forest Park, whose legal victory in a defamation suit is told in the latest Forest Park Review. In his Proviso Probe blog, Nyberg reported that the brother of the local high-school board president, Chris Welch, whom Welch voted to hire as a school custodian, had been indicted on a drug-related charge in 2003.

This was true, as Nyberg demonstrated by showing the Review a copy of the indictment. There was more to the suit, which Welch, now running for the Illinois legislature, dropped this week. It ain’t over till it’s over, however. Nyberg called the suit “harassment based on deliberately false statements” and said he hoped “the system will hold [the Welch brothers] accountable.”

Welch has a history of suing opponents, having sued, also for defamation, a former school board president and two critics during his last campaign for school board president, the Review reported  Both suits were also dropped, “leading the defendants to speculate that they were sued in attempts to stifle further criticism.”

The quality time, by the way, was at the Wednesday Journal Christmas party at the Oak Park Conservatory, about which not enough good things can be said – it’s a gem, on Garfield west of East. The Journal publishes the Forest Park paper and several others, including the Wednesday Journal of OP & RF, which publishes my monthly column. For excellent catering, furthermore, run, don’t walk to Chew Chew Cafe, of Riverside (where WJ has another paper), who know how to do it. I came hungry and was not much good at conversation for the first half hour, eating. Nyberg caught me after that time.

He was defended pro bono by Latham and Watkins, whom he found by googling — asking for “Chicago First Amendment pro bono.”  The search turned up four firms, whom he called, eventually finding what he wanted.

Sun-T on Chi Trib troubles, 12/8/05, Eric Herman reporting: Trib Co. stock down 25% in 2005! It’s collapsing Wash Bureaus – Chi Trib, LA Times, et al. – into one, coverage to be “better than ever through greater collaboration,” says Dennis FitzSimons, Trib chairman. (Who will be in charge there?)

Wednesday, December 7, 2005, Wednesday Journal of OP

JIM BOWMAN

Remembering Colt … Talk of the Colt building these days brings back a cherished boyhood memory, when Dear Old Dad would take us on the Lake Street car to go and see it. We’d get off at Marion and walk the half block west and stop to gaze and gasp.

Dad would put his arm on my shoulder and say, “There it is, Jim, the building time forgot.” I never forgot.

“It’s art deco,” he said many times. I didn’t have the gumption to ask what that was but knew it was special.

The whole family would go. We’d take our lunch and munch it while watching from across the street. Sometimes the peanut butter would not go down easily, as a certain constriction took over the throat—constriction at construction, of a truly wonderful building.

How different today, when to stand on that spot is to witness another construction in progress, of luxury condominiums for big spenders who one day might walk the New Street to Metra—will they call it “New,” making every other street sound old?—and while they’re at it will help fund police, fire and trash-collection services beyond our dreams, not to mention schools, parks, and library.

But there are days when I could care less about that, when I look at such an ugly construction site and think that one day such would occur on the ruins of our beloved Colt.

Even today I meet or hear of visitors from abroad who have heard about our Colt and want to see it. “We came to see the Colt,” they say, and are aghast at the news that the village quibbles at spending five-plus million to buy and restore it. They return to their native lands shaking their heads.

One can only ask, plaintively, is there a Cicero in our midst who can stand up and ask, “How long, how long, Oh Taxman, will you abuse our patience with your regressive views on Colt, insisting on the letter of a contract imprudently signed by village fathers and mothers a few short months ago?”

Is there a Balzac who can sprinkle our walls with a reproachful “J’accuse!”—thus to finger the perpetrators of sacrilege in our midst? And for what? To enlarge our tax base!

Finally, is there a Patrick Henry who can tell our burgesses, as he told those of Virginia about something else in 1775, “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me Colt or give me nothing!”? I ask you.

Weaponry … Meanwhile, on another front entirely, a soft but persistent voice suggests to some citizens that even with excellent emergency response by police, there may be something walkers and riders can do to fend off harm. With that in mind, they consider gaps in Oak Park’s weapons ordinances.

There’s no mention of Mace, pepper spray, stun gun, or Taser. Knife and blackjack are mentioned only in connection with pawnbrokers, who must not keep either around. Air gun or bow-and-arrow or any other projectile-firing mechanism are ruled out for use, except arrows on a range supervised by the board of ed or park district—Ridgeland Commons on a slow day?—and blanks fired on stage, presumably for scary or other effect.

That leaves Mace, pepper spray, stun gun, Taser, knife, blackjack. The pepper sprays are good for eight feet, says TBO Tech-dot-com, the Taser for 15, the stun gun for no feet: you have to touch someone to stun him. It comes disguised as umbrella or flashlight or something else if the citizen wishes. Years ago on the West Side, a friend of mine in the projects said she had a friend who had to wait at night for a bus at Halsted and Lake. In her muff she hid a small pistol. The man who asked her for a match was a dead man. Maybe a spray or Taser shot would do it now, even in Oak Park.

Here’s David Diersen on Topinka et al.  Rather good.

GOPUSA ILLINOIS

— Questions concerning the gubernatorial race – Dave Diersen

www.gopillinois.com

As of 7:30 AM today, the Illinois Republican Party (IRP) platform was still not posted on the IRP website.  Blagojevich and Topinka reject many important planks in the IRP platform.  Many of the people who support Topinka reject many important planks in the IRP platform.  Brady, Oberweis, and Rauschenberger support all the planks in the IRP platform.  Because Topinka rejects so many important planks in the IRP platform, to support Topinka is to reject the IRP platform.  Is someone who says they are a Republican really a Republican if they reject many important planks in the IRP platform and would rather see Blagojevich reelected than see Brady, Oberweis, or Rauschenberger elected?  What do you say to those who believe that Edgar almost ran and Topinka is running to stop Brady, Gidwitz, Oberweis, and Rauschenberger from being elected?

 

=================================

To say that Bush lied is to say that he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but proceeded to war anyway.

Paying more attention to people who look and act like they might be terrorists is sensible, not racist. I had hoped that this would have been accepted by now, but judging by the recent number of people who have been “deeply offended” by the idea, I guess it hasn’t.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said she was “deeply offended” by Kirk’s remarks, and I’m deeply offended that she’s deeply offended, so she should apologize to me.

Sun-Times’s Cathleen Falsani got a heck of a quote, at the expense of attribution, from a gay Chicago priest commenting about the Vatican’s banning of deep homosexuals from the priesthood and seminaries.  The Vatican said bishops “cannot admit . . .  those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’ .”

Bunk, says the gay priest.

“In a nutshell to say, ‘It’s OK to be homosexual as long as you don’t think like a homosexual, talk like a homosexual, act like a homosexual, hang out with homosexuals, or go to places that are known to be hangouts of homosexuals,’ well, that’s ludicrous on its surface. And I don’t say that flippantly. Sometimes the cardinal says, ‘Oh, that’s flippant.’ This isn’t flippant. That’s what the document says,” the priest said, adding that he believed the “right wing” of the Catholic church had decided to make homosexuals “their scapegoats and whipping boys.”

Chi Trib’s Margaret Ramirez and Manya A. Brachear in the meantime got one anonymous quote mild in comparison — “I find it kind of sad” — but scored a first as regards a working Chicago pastor if not for any Chicago priest ever in their quoting a gay pastor by name.

Rev. Michael Herman, a gay priest and pastor of St. Sylvester Church in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, recently joined with other priests to form a group called Catholics Affirming Homosexual Leadership.

“People who have a sense of bigotry or have sense of hatred toward people who are gay, these documents give people a chance to get on their soapbox,” Herman said. “My desire to speak out is to say `Wait a second. Is this a fair thing to say? Is it fair to isolate one group of candidates when these issues of maturity and integration are true of all candidates?”

Herman was ordained in 1989.  His consenting to be identified is a milestone in public discussion of gay priests.  It’s in sharp contrast to my experience eleven years ago in Oak Park, at the old Kroch’s & Brentano’s on Lake Street, where I was talking up my book Bending the Rules: What American Priests Tell American Catholics — available now as Priests at Work: Catholic Pastors Tell How They Apply Church Law in Difficult Cases — when I reduced a storeful of people to churchly silence with the mere mention of gay priests.

Chi Trib’s Charles Madigan says let’s hear it for “old media,” which gives us thought-based information.

In the glory days [pre-electronic], reporters could whittle away for five, six, seven hours at an event, parse it out, look for the contradictions and try to present an accurate, compelling account that would be published the next day.

The electronic world has now seized the turf of news immediacy.

Now it’s “breaking news” that carries the day.  But what you see and hear “may not be very well developed.”  Watching and listening,

you might well lose the crucial context or be left with a set of “facts” that are, ultimately, not facts at all, but changeable parts of an ongoing story.

“[T]raditional newspaper family values,” on the other hand, give or try to give the whole story.  But this is an old story.  Long before blogs was radio (which Madigan mentions), where it was “rip ‘n read” for the latest. 

Nor did newspaper people like radio reporters, as the late Len O’Connor recounted in A Reporter in Sweet Chicago (Contemporary, 1983).  He represented something new and threatening, which sounds familiar in today’s context.

Renew Illinois does not like Judy Baar Topinka, a presumed anti-Blago candidate for governor, and has this to say today:

What would a Topinka Administration look like?  How Republican would it be?  

Answer: about as Republican as her operation is now – that is to say – not very Republican, and not even very “moderate.”  Let’s have some honesty in our IL GOP for a change.  Topinka is no moderate – she’s a liberal extremist – and a rather wacky one at that. 

She’s a good huckster and she’s conned a lot of good people, granted.  But she’s never tried-out for the Big Leagues before now.  Few have really been paying attention.  Once folks in Illinois do, they won’t like what they see. 

One of Topinka’s closest allies and most loyal supporters is Rick Garcia, political director of the gay rights group Equality Illinois.  Just this past week, Garcia personally attacked the organizers of the Protect Marriage petition drive, calling them “rank bigots” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 24, 2005).

Now that Garcia quote is sure provocative.  It’s always nice discussing politics with Rick, apparently.  (Excuse me, I have a pressing engagement.)  This time it’s a petition for signatures to put an advisory Marriage Protection Referendum on the ballot in November 2006, when Judy B. would oppose Blago. 

In the referendum voters would say whether they want to amend the state constitution to define marriage in Illinois as between a man and a woman.  Garcia would rather snap at it than argue against it, unless you count this:

“These people no more care about families than the man on the moon. If they wanted to protect families, why aren’t they pushing a ban on divorce? Divorce ruins more families than any gay person ever has.”

But eating away at the very concept, Rick — what about that?

What a blessing is Chi Trib’s Perspective section for liberals wandering lonely as a cloud in pursuit of stuff they feel comfortable with in this day of Fox News, blogs, and talk radio.  Take today’s three essays on their high-ranking bete noir Intelligent Design, the approach to the universe that says it was not accidental.

There’s one by a biology teacher at Olivet Nazarene University — defending ID?  No, telling us, “Christians can’t afford to oppose evolution: Not such intelligent design.”  There’s another by Trib reporter-intellectual Ron Grossman, “ID dilutes the drive to discover, invent: Survival of the smartest.”  And a third by another Trib reporter: “Teachers can walk a creative middle road: An open discussion.”

Oh?  ID is “a newfangled term for creationism,” says this reporter, dishing liberal patois as if there’s nothing new under the sun.  However, his middle road is basically what ID promoters ask for.  However again, his old biology teacher did roll his eyes when he discussed creationism 17 years ago, we are told.  So not to worry, lefty friends, Perspective is still a friendly place.

But of course, read for yourself.  No blog, fair and balanced though it be, can — ahem — decide for you. 

On “Standing up and falling down (on the job),” Reader Dolores:

Ah, would that all Chgo Trib readers were as astute and tuned in to Wilkerson’s betrayal . . . .

Along similar lines, did you hear Hugh Hewitt the other night (or was it Rush?? [it was Rush]) on Mary Ann Wright — was that her name? [It is]  “Former” [yes, resigned, 3/21/03] US diplomat now protesting near the ranch in Crawford with the Cindy Sheehan crowd. Wild woman diplomat! It was she who heckled Condi Rice [10/19/05, at a Senate hearing] with: “Stop this woman from killing].”

[S]he . . .  decided to publicly resign because of all kinds of noble reasons, mostly disgust with the cabal again. She is part of the Wilkerson, Plame, etc. and anti-Able Danger bunch who might as well be pinkos from the 40s-50s in the State Department, undermining our country and any chance at Victory over worldwide terrorism.

Happy day after Thanksgiving??? I’ll step down off my soap box now.

And Reader Jennifer, with astute churchly twist:

Interesting dissection. Thanks. . . . In homily on day after Thanksgiving, our pastor compared Cindy Sheehan favorably to St. Catherine of Alexandria. In prayer of petitions, we were asked to pray for better attendance at Mass. Does this sort of thing have anything to do with declining attendance? [italics added]

“As Cheney stands up, his polling goes down” is the clever, provocative head to a page-one Chi Trib story 11/24/05, Thanksgiving Day.  Mark Silva and Stephen J. Hedges almost-lead (third ‘graph-sentence} with their interview with Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, billing him as among “early proponents of the Iraq invasion” who now question Cheney’s “stern, unbending activism” on behalf of administration policy, which activism was “once seen as an advantage.”

But they write, and their editors go along with it, as if most readers won’t know about Wilkerson as recent slam-bang critic of Iraq policy.  They quote him as tough-talkingly placing Cheney among a “cabal ‘of extreme nationalistic . . . and messianic'” war proponents.  It’s not new that Wilkerson feels this way.  He uses “cabal” in his 10/25/05 LA Times op-ed.  Nor does his criticism have anything to do with Cheney’s no longer being an advantage to Bush, as Silva-Hedges clumsily aver.  They interviewed Wilkerson — we assume since his 10/19/05 speech at the New America Foundation — teasing out of him some quotes they can claim as Chi Trib’s, making no mention of either speech or op-ed.  Why not?

Any Washington Post reader http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101902246.html might know about the speech.  But Silva and Hedges and editors package Wilkerson as page-one stuff in a piece citing “early proponents of the Iraq invasion” — standard gotcha stuff, by the way.

They got this and more out of Wilkerson, but nothing out of Cheney or his aides, which is not surprising.  But “a senior administration official” said Cheney will continue his activism.  This is apparently Alan Simpson, identified as “a former Republican senator from Wyoming” but not as current official; if he’s anything current, besides a Harvard chair-holder, he’s co-chairman of the Continuity in Government Commission [sic].  Apparently, because without connecting word or phrase, Simpson’s comment follows immediately.  Silva and Hedges must have been heading home for the holiday, and nobody reads the paper Thanksgiving anyway, so they and the editors dished this one up. 

There’s more to the story, but one does tire when ease of reading and credibility limp so.  Does this sort of thing have anything to do with declining newspaper circulation?