Tag: Blithe Spirit

The good and the bad, emphasis on Trib and Sun-Times

‘Make a Grown Man Cry’ Pepper Spray CTA Ads Upset Women Commuters

Pepper spray, anyone? Not?

“Considering how many assaults occur on and around CTA property, I would think the CTA wouldn’t post ads reminding women not only how dangerous it is to use their services, but also that they’re on their own when it comes to personal safety,” [a woman] said.

Even when sometimes they are on their own?

Decades ago (in the mid-’60s), discussing the latest with women residents at the Near West Side high-rise project across the street from where I lived, at St. Ignatius High School, the instance arose of a woman raped on the elevator.

The women I talked to said the victim should have known better than to get on the elevator with a male rider (so that the two would be alone). They knew how this works and considered the victim foolhardy.

Being on your own is a regular condition for many.

(I write about life in the projects in my book Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968.)

Source: ‘Make a Grown Man Cry’ Pepper Spray CTA Ads Upset Women Commuters – Logan Square – DNAinfo.com Chicago

Trump Goes Around the Media: Offers Free Screenings of ’13 Hours’ to Iowans

Case in point here: Trump is formidable not just because he’s good (bad?) in attack mode — good for Republicans, bad for Hillary, who needs a good whupping — but also because he’s quick on the trigger (sorry for the hidden meanings in case unintended as they are if they offend tender sensibilities anywhere in the world) with effective campaign ploys like this one.

We need a tough campaigner with quick fingers when facing the vast left-wing conspiracy, is my point. With Trump we wouldn’t have to feel put upon all the time, beaten to the draw (sorry again!!!).

And frankly, Cruz is something of a jerk, I fear. Annoying. (Now I’m really sorry, better be.)

“Mr. Trump would like all Americans to know the truth about what happened at Benghazi,” the GOP frontrunner’s Iowa co-chair said Thursday.

And in order to go around and over the heads of a corrupt DC Media that has covered up this truth for years, Trump is offering Iowans free screenings of Michael Bay’s  superb “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.”

Think of all the campaign spending by Jeb and how ineffective it is, then think of this latest from Trump, whose cost per vote has to be niggardly.

Source: Trump Goes Around the Media: Offers Free Screenings of ’13 Hours’ to Iowans – Breitbart

A wise man from the East Coast returns to his old Chicago home to run its Catholic newspaper. Something is afoot.

Catholic journalist Heidi Schlumpf introduces the new CEO (under Publisher-Archbishop Cupich) of the Catholic New World. He is Grant Gallicho, late of Commonweal Magazine. (Say “Gallico,” as long-ago sports writer-novelist Paul wrote his name.)

His goals are intriguing.

[I]ncreasing both the print and digital audiences, by offering more and unique content and better promoting the publications, especially through social media.

Already, he’s signed Christopher Lamb, who also writes from Rome for the English magazine The Tablet, to do a monthly column about the Vatican.

A book review section and a redesign of the paper and website are also in the works.

Well. And letters to editor, long missing from the CNW? Voice from the Pew, that sort of thing? Let us piously hope.

Below is Gallicho and his editor Joyce Duriga, discussing things.

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While she’s at it, the writer, long-time Catholic journalist Heidi Schlumpf, also gives more than a nod of appreciation for CNW’s just retired Dolores Madlener, whose “benevolent gossip” column and other regular offerings offered meaty stuff for decades — one silk purse made of sow’s ear after another.

From my own less-extensive experience, I must endorse her warm regard for Madlener.

Source: Journalists find a home in Chicago archdiocese | National Catholic Reporter

Next Catholic Synod Is Already in the Works. On Married Priests

Missed this a month ago, but here is something new for Catholics and others to chew on:

ROME, December 9, 2015 – While waiting for Pope Francis to rule on communion for the divorced and remarried, which two synods discussed and split over, there is already a glimpse of the theme of the next synodal session: married priests.

Read the rest here: CatholicCitizens.org The Next Synod Is Already in the Works. On Married Priests – CatholicCitizens.org

Make me no promises, tell me no . . . 

. . . LIES! Not one! But he told ten of them! says this fellow. Including this for starters:

1. “[W]e’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.” This is pure fiction. Obama has doubled the national debt, and it’s not because he cut the deficit.

Rather, he spent staggering amounts of money in his first months in office–which he assigns, dishonestly, to the previous fiscal year, under George W. Bush.

He “cut” (i.e. spent more gradually) from that spending, but only under protest, after Republicans took the House in 2010.

(Update: It is true that Obama’s 2015 budget deficit was about 25% of his 2010 deficit. But he referred to “deficits,” plural. Until last year, all of Obama’s deficits were worse than all of Bush’s deficits except for the last two.)

Where are the other nine? Here.

Chicago to New York to Chicago again, on the trail of drama

His world, he says, and welcome to it.

On Tuesday afternoon I was sitting in the auditorium of Chicago’s Court Theatre, watching Charlie Newell reblock the final scene of his production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, which opens there on Saturday. Midway through the scene I received an e-mail from Eric Gibson, my editor at The Wall Street Journal.

Source: ArtsJournal: Daily arts news | Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City