Eric's back!

Too soon the speculation about An End to Zorn et al. on Chi Trib Metro page one.  He’s back today with deadly piece on Marian apparitions — unproven, irrefutable — near various CTA stations, including the most recent on Fullerton Ave.  He’s like a moth drawn to the flame on this stuff, which gets at the heart of his idea of how people should behave — NOT this way.  He has to deliver the cool rationality of Enlightenment to the issue, without sounding like the Village Atheist, has probably learned the hard way not to be too obvious about it in Chicago to his Chi Trib audience.  So he kills us with detail.  I’m dead already, help, help!

Meanwhile, the news layout and story delivery suffers on Metro page one.  Come on, folks, can’t we find local news delivered as if it carries itself without left-column maundering commentary and periodic fun and games learned in various college dormitories?  Like yesterday and the day before?

End of bolting on Bolton

 “Bolton's Chances for Approval Brighten,” says AP story, citing Republicans’ returning to the fold on the issue, while in Wall Street Journal former UN official and head of World Food Program Catherine Bertini says he’s OK in her book, based on years of working with him.

 I've known him for 30 years, and I know that he expresses his views in a forthright manner so that everyone knows where he stands. But John listens with as much intensity as he speaks. He hears others' views, and will change his own if a counterargument proves convincing. I have seen him do this many times, and have been on both the "winning" and "losing" sides of discussions with him. It is difficult to participate in one of these discussions without developing a healthy respect for the logic of his conclusions -- whether one agrees with him or not. [Italics added]

That’s as to the character issue.  As to what’s good for us, she says:

 John had a strong commitment to supporting U.S. leadership within the U.N., and of the importance of the U.N. to the U.S. He made significant efforts to improve the workings of the U.N., plunging into matters where he thought the U.S. could enhance U.N. operations, but was wise enough to try to fix only what was practicable. But the instinct was to fix: Shouldn't we have a U.N. ambassador like that? [Italics added]

All in all, he’s her man, because he’s “a forceful player, alive to U.S. interests” and will promote “steps necessary to strengthen the U.N.”

Embedded in such a mentality is the shape-up-or-ship-out philosophy required for change, it seems to me.

Where have all the columnists gone, where have they gone?

Big news of the day is that Chi Trib two days in a row does not have the Dippy Three — Zorn, Schmich, Trice.  Page 1 Metro section is pure metro news, with honest-to-(Censored) headline and columns and everything, all for Chicago news!

Keep in mind that Chi Trib is the ultimate corporate journalism product.  No one is not expendable, just as no one is fired for incompetence.  It’s a lifetime gig, hiring to retiring.  They would not announce no more Dippy Three columns, they would just disappear them.  Is this what’s happening?  One tends to doubt it, but they can’t all be busy testifying at the libel trial, can they?

Blago lies!

Ill. Gov. Blagojevich says a pharmacist is “in no position to decide who might or might not be someone you sell [contraceptives] to.”  He was responding to Cardinal George calling for him to rescind his directive that they must sell “contraceptives, including the morning-after pill,” as the Springfield State Journal-Register put it, “even if the sale goes against their personal beliefs.”

But does Gov. Blago think the issue is the customer, not the product?  And as to the product, the morning-after pill is not a contraceptive but an abortifacient.  It does not prevent conception but aborts it, dislodging the fertilized egg so it can’t get nowhere on its otherwise inevitable way towards becoming a little baby.

Lots of people don’t buy that formula, but shouldn’t newspapers take responsibility here, being fair and balanced and letting readers decide?

Wait.  Sun-Times also terms the morning-after pill something that “prevents” conception, which it aborts, else why after the fact?  Thus this mainstream media outlet ignores and obfuscates the key difference here, what puts this pill in an entirely new category.

The Sun-Times man, Ben Fischer, has apparently given the matter some thought, calling “the medication essentially an ultra-dose of standard birth control chemicals taken after sex.”  Ultra-dose?  What would that be?  Lots more of what prevents conception, thus locking the barn door after the cows are stolen?

Chi Trib took a pass on this matter.

Newspaper reading

Lifted from Blithe Spirit is this:

* How to read a newspaper: Always 2 or 3 days late.  You get so-called breaking (broken?) news by Internet and cable and talk radio.  Go to the paper for a palimpsest of local stories — crimes, accidents, school board fights, etc., above all sports!  It’s to prevent yourself from being too much impressed by story placement, headline, photos, etc.  More later: this is a very pregnant topic.

Here’s more, new to this blog: You want to remain untouched by the hype that inevitably attaches to The Selling of a Story, which is endemic to newspaperdom.  Newspapers are competing for your attention and they mean to grab it any which way.  This is not dishonorable.  Au contraire, it’s in the line of duty for them.  But so is it in the line of duty for readers (potential buyers of the story) to beware.  Caveat emptor and all that. 

In this case beware the headline, pix, story placement, etc.  As I say above, more, more, more later on this.

Condolences to Chi Trib . . .

. . . for its amazing double boo-boo, running two pix in a row of supposed gangsters and getting it wrong, wrong, wrong both times! The one guy is suing; that was the first one.  The other guy is just complaining at this point, but give him a day or so.  WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IN THE PHOTO LAB AND AMONG PHOTO EDITORS??!!

Trice on "pimp"

Dawn T. Trice is not bad today with a shot at ghetto culture seeking respectability.

Marin on RJ Daley

Carol Marin discussed “Daley’s tight-lipped legacy” in a Sun-Times 4/22 column, deftly limning puffery surrounding golden-anniversary celebration of Richard J. Daley’s accession to the mayoralty.  Ex-Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, who paid for his sins with federal time thanks greatly to Sun-Times reporting some years back, bemoaned media’s lack of progressivism — were “not progressive enough,” he told a high-profile audience.  He also recounted the day in 1966 when Daley urged LBJ to get out of Viet Nam — beyond closed doors from which he emerged to pledge support for LBJ’s policies.  Rosty meant to praise that duplicity and apparently was applauded for doing so. 

Marin recalled instances of unresponsiveness to inadequately progressive media under Richard J., as in stiffing inquiries about lead-paint-related deaths, and brought us up to date with reference to similar unresponsiveness by the son Richard M., as regards hiring of a major Hired Truck scandal character — by whom in City Hall, that is.

It was a nicely honed and reported nay-saying at a time of reverence for the Great Man’s memory.

Well, well

Here’s a suggestion for newspaper writers and editors: No more “well” in the middle of a sentence to indicate a sort of chuckling hesitation to say what some may think shouldn’t be said but one is going to say anyway, because, shucks, it ought to be said, as in this from Andrew Martin of Chi Trib Wash. bureau, p. one, 4/20:

After four years of preparation that cost $2.4 million, the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday unveiled its highly anticipated replacement for the food pyramid, and it is, well, another pyramid.

 

Zorn on mark

“It pains [Chi Trib’s Eric Zorn] that ‘gay rights’ is still an issue,” but he still does not think it a good idea for teachers to impose a protesting “day of silence” on students as was done last week at “thousands” of schools nationwide, in part because he sees the counter protest “day of truth” in the offing.  In this sauce-for-goose, sauce-for-gander situation, he rejects “indoctrinating [his] kids on controversial socio-political matters,” period and says he’d be “just an opportunist” to buy into this one because he agrees with it.

Fair enough.  But are schools value-free?  He’s not saying that, but it’s worth asking.  The “day of silence” in itself is nothing to be upset about, but silence about what?  To what end?  If fairness and a spirit of tolerance is the goal, fine.  But to specify the object of tolerance is another story.  How about a debate?  That’s the way of a democratic society.  Invite debaters on both sides of, say, how much tolerance of gays is in order?  Even to raise the question is to get in trouble, however.

Bolton, Paige out of U.N.

* “The charge that he improperly sought to influence intelligence conclusions is a serious one, and it is reasonable to assess his conduct in these encounters. But no one should be surprised to find that episodes of conflict have occurred in this environment over the course of a four-year tenure," said Sen. Lugar in his day-before-vote preemptive strike toward confirmation of Bolton to UN job — italics added.  No one should be surprised at a lot of things that engage editors, reporters, and headline writers, De Lay’s junkets and relatives on campaign payroll, for one thing.  Washington is regularly awash in such things, is it not?

* Delayed congrats to Paige Wiser, who I think has been influenced by that Austen woman, on her 2^nd child. In her Sun-Times column before taking leave a few months back, she gave all the wrong reasons for having a baby, then says, "It’s too late now" and took leave.

* U.S. out of U.N., U.N. out of U.S.? Great slogan but won’t happen. If it did happen, however, why not Haiti? Think what U.N. headquarters would do for the Haiti economy. And those many UN third-worlders would feel more at home there.

NOT! They may be third-worlders, but like globetrotters everywhere, they would rather live (it up) in New York – assuming they needn’t reside in Fort Apache or some other impacted part of town, which is a very safe assumption.

This from John Leo on Terri Schiavo etc. is noteworthy in many respects, but for purposes of this blog especially so in his description of media bias. He notes reference to Florida rallies as "religious roadshow" and calls it "a term unlikely to have been applied to Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights demonstrations or any other rallies meeting CBS’s approval."

"More important," he says:

it was hard to find news that Michael Schiavo had provided no therapy or rehabilitation for his wife since 1994 and even blocked the use of antibiotics when Terri developed a urinary infection. And the big national newspapers claimed as a fact that Michael Schiavo’s long-delayed recollection of Terri’s wish to die, supported only by hearsay from Michael’s brother and a sister-in-law, met the standard for “clear and convincing evidence” of consent. It did nothing of the sort, particularly with two of Terri’s friends testifying the opposite. The media covered the intervention by Congress as narrowly political and unwarranted. They largely fudged the debates over whether Terri Schiavo was indeed in a persistent vegetative state and whether tube-feeding meant that Schiavo was on life support. In the Nancy Cruzan case, the Supreme Court said that tube-feeding is life-support but some ethicists and disability leaders strongly dispute that position.

"The Schiavo case is only slightly more consequential" than Eric Zorn's pet, the U. of Illinois mascot case, he says today.

Just when I decide I will pay no more attention to him, a headline rips my attention away from something substantial, in this case

Eric Zorn: "Just another skirmish in the culture war"

in a Tribune email.

I leave it to you to plow through Z's head-tripping convolutions to discern his argument, which usually is a triumph of logic over experience but may not be that much in this case.

"It hasn't happened in the 46 other states that have a system that allows people to obtain a permit to carry a concealed firearm," says NRA man Todd Vandermyde in Sun-Times, referring to Mayordaley II's "more arguments settled with firearms. More bodies in the morgue and more gun victims in the rehab hospitals" when concealed-carry laws pass.

Is this a good follow-up for Illinois newspapers, to look at what's happened elsewhere? As a noosepaper reader, I think so.

HAH! I THOUGHT OF IT AND YOU DIDN'T, OR IF YOU DID, I GOT COLUMN SPACE AND YOU DON'T! . . . Got instant reaction to random shootings? Don't? Try Dawn Turner Trice in today's Chi Trib, where it's a matter of "Want security? Treat mental illness."

"If we fail to discuss mental illness, its devastation and the lowly place it continues to occupy in our health-care system . . . we miss something huge," she says. Security remains "paramount," but we have to go preventative.

A doctor tells her 60 percent of children of depressed parents are going to battle depression "during their lifetime" but if identified they "may never become" ill. He's right, but so what? He didn't ask to be asked by Trice about it.

Did she talk about mental illness at tsunami time? Why not? Her response is typical instant expertizing by columnist, which should have instant penalty imposed by the American Society of Prevention of Stupidity by Columnists. A day's pay, minimum.

Better she talk about the tragedy of life, even its sweet mystery, and not the supposed "myth and mystery" in which mental illness is "still shrouded."

Docs have long wait lists, insurance is inadequate, Trice has her cause for the day -- mental illness and the inadequacies of the health system! She has bounced from shooter headlines to an issue!

WINNING IS WHAT? . . . U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel says he comes from the "Vince Lombardi wing of the Democratic Party: Winning is everything," says Chi Trib with ill-disguised approval or at least conspicuous non-disapproval. Can we imagine reading that about Karl Rove?

Later: The head was unfortunate, because the story stands up, if somewhat laboriously. Take a look.

The Chi Trib (Co.)-owned LA Times is raked over righteously and it seems rightly indignant coals by radio man Hugh Hewitt here . He is madder than hell about a p-1 story that as he quotes it is a puff piece for our friends the North Koreans -- just folks, after all, like us -- sans context, as if Ed Murrow had told how warm-hearted those Nazis are. FYI Trib Co. leadership, says Hewitt.

I told Dennis Byrne he would be disappointed to hear that I did not read his entire column in today's Chi Trib to the lady of our house after dinner tonight, only selections. Such as his compromise proposal whereby a fetus's being brain dead or alive suffices to bring us together on whether to respect his life or not.

Why didn't I think of that? I asked my helpmeet. Because I am stuck in Vatican-style (old Europe) thinking, I told her. Look to the American experience for a decent solution, I said.

Seeking common ground, he argued that brain life would qualify the fetus as belonging to the "community," whereby hangs the tale in contemporary parlance.

Fanatical pro-choicers will not buy it, he wrote, but they can be properly marginalized, he implied, once the issue becomes once more debatable and debated, I mean once we (thru the Supreme Ct) return choice to voters by overturning Roe-Wade.

Very good column, hung on the Hillary-as-veering-right peg. Byrne closes by urging her not to oppose Bush's pro-life-leaning judges, who will return choice to voters.

Scare headline here: "Shiite with ties to Iran poised to be Iraqi leader" for story from Baghdad by Liz Sly in Chi Trib in which she says:

it is now almost certain that Iraq's first elected prime minister in half a
century [Al-Jaafari] will be an Islamic scholar with close ties to Iran, a leader whose party once carried out terrorist attacks against U.S. targets

in third paragraph, adding immediately:

But al-Jaafari, currently one of two vice presidents in the interim
administration, also is regarded as one of the more moderate of the Shiite
Islamist politicians, a pragmatist who has tempered his views as he has risen to the top of the political establishment in the new Iraq.

In a recent interview at his offices in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, he said his priority is to see a constitution that enshrines equal rights for all of Iraq's ethnic and religious groups.

"We will not have any laws that oppose Islam," he said. "That doesn't mean we want an Islamic government. The majority of Iraqis are Muslims, and so it is natural that Islam should be the official religion. But the most important thing is to respect the freedom of religion of all Iraqis of
all ethnic backgrounds and traditions."

And farther down the Iran and terrorist links are handled nicely. He fled to Iran when his party faced death and destruction from Sadaam. As for the terrorism,

Al-Jaafari, a physician, has always denied any links to the attacks. Jawad
Maliki, a senior Dawa official, said the attacks were carried out by Dawa
factions that were co-opted by Iranian intelligence agencies, not the mainstream Dawa Party that al-Jaafari leads.

In 1989 al-Jaafari moved to London, where he distanced himself further from the Iranian-influenced Iraqi exile movement. He still maintains his family home in northwestern London, where his wife works
as a physician, and among Iraqi Shiites he is as closely associated with the
West as he is with Iran. (Italics added)

He is also a religious scholar, and while in exile in Iran he studied in the holy city of Qom, reaching the rank of mujtahid, one rung below that of ayatollah. That qualification will help him when it comes to steering Iraq's government in accordance with Islamic laws, said one of his top
aides, Adnan Ali.

"He's capable of defending Sharia law and he's a moderate," he said.

It's a good story. Why the headline, which misses its main point, that the guy looks good?

If Eric Zorn’s 2/10/05 Chi Trib column, “No eye-rolling: Daley Pledge may just work,” were well argued, it would be dangerous and subversive of good government, because he naively takes Mayor Daley seriously with his most recent declaration of good intentions as regards civic corruption and moreover expects it to make a difference. He presents interviews with several office holders as if their politic and self-serving responses make his point. They do not, because they are politic, except for one that is candid enough to provide good copy that makes the column interesting.

This is by the irrepressible Cook County Board president John Stroger, who, asked if he too would pledge to take no money from people doing business with his branch of government, declined to play to the Zorn-reader gallery and said he would make no such pledge but would follow the law in such matters.

The others – a Gov’s spokesman and three probable gov candidates – all to varying degrees said yes, which is not news. Candidates and office holders do not usually tell a reporter “nonsense” when he suggests taking a good-government (goo-goo) tack, but Zorn seems not to be aware of this.

Nor does he seem aware of how goo-goo professionals can be expected to respond to the sort of statement Daley made, faced as he was with gale-force winds of stinky-poo corruption blasts. Zorn quotes – yes! – the new Terry Brunner in our midst, Better Govt. Assn. director So-and-So, and Cindy-Something, of Illinois Campaign for Political Reform (not identified by Zorn, who is perfectly willing to let its name say it all), both endorsing Zorn’s respect for the “Daley pledge.” Or is the other way around?

Meanwhile, Zorn might refer to his own commendation at year-end 2004 of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald for “bipartisan nailing of corrupt hides to the wall,” wherein lies – with dogged newspaper coverage – the be-all end-all of anti-corruption work. That is to say, there would be no breast-beating and pledge-taking by Daley if it were not for law enforcement by an outsider with no ties to Daley.

Zorn should give this more mention and more prominence. The rest is frosting on cake – gooey and sticky and not very nourishing, especially in newspaper columns.
=================
LET US ADD THIS: Sun-Times editorial same day sang same tune. Daley "takes shot at real reform," said head. "There was no shrugging off the changes announced by Mayor Daley Tuesday," etc. We should not become "jaded to the corruption in City Hall" and should instead put on a happy face, as a cute circle-shaped yellow sticker is pasted to a bulletin board.

So what if it’s "a case of better late than never"? We still must hand it to Daley because "potential long-term consequences" of his pledge "are dramatic and far-reaching."

Yes! Like McCain-Feingold on campaign-donation so-called reform and its spawning of 527s such as the heavily George Soros-bankrolled moveon.org.

No! The mayor is "going beyond earlier unfulfilled promises of reform" in his pledge, says this very editorial in support of using a news conference as grounds for consolation.

Does not the Sun-Times know the man will promise anything to gain a minute’s advantage in his ongoing war with dogged journalism? What on earth is this reference to "skeptics" who say "the mayor hasn't gone far enough, that he has left himself loopholes"? It’s bad to be skeptical?

Sun-Times editorial writer, give us a break.