The [Tuesday] Papers

"Well, we're halfway through the two-week Super Bowl hype orgy, with media from around the world grinding away so hard they ought to be administered lube," the Tribune reports.

Whoa!

That's in the Tribune?

Circulation must be really bad.

* Our approach to discussing how the media will occupy itself until the actual game.

* "The media are making a big deal out of Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy becoming the first African American head coaches in the Super Bowl. Good. It provides the perfect contrast to an untold story about the media," writes the Tribune's Ed Sherman.

"In a sport where more than 60 percent of the players are African American, there never has been an African American analyst in the booth for a Super Bowl."

* "Bears Play Underdog Card, But They Were Favored In 16 Of 18 Games."

* "Pines Die and Bears Feel It."

Blue's Clues
You can now start your O'Hare delay early on the Blue Line.

"The problems on the Blue Line illustrate how slow, unreliable and inconvenient taking the L has become for riders on almost every line," Monifa Thomas reports in the Sun-Times.

Daley's CTA
"Only Mayor Richard M. Daley can save the train system," Crain's implores in an editorial. "So far, he's mostly ignored the deterioration of service as trains swell with downtown office workers commuting from the gentrifying neighborhoods of the North and Northwest sides -- a predictable side effect of the middle-class renaissance he worked so hard to foster."

Daley Delusions
The mayor responds to a watchdog report card critical of his rule:

"No other city is building new schools. No other city builds libraries. No other city builds affordable housing. No other city is building parks. No other city is improving quality of life."

No other city has streets! No other city has office buildings! Go look for yourself! You won't find them! So I'm very proud of my administration. I work very hard. Next question!

Burke's Law
"[Ald. Ed] Burke is sitting on an astounding $6.8 million in campaign funds through various political committees he controls," Mark Brown writes.

Good for Burke, seeing as how he's facing his first opponent since 1971.

And Barack Obama says you shouldn't go into politics if you want to get rich.

Well, he was just an Illinois legislator representing a Chicago district, so he couldn't be expected to know any better.

Obama's Law
Obama will not endorse Burke's opponent. But he'll gladly accept any help Burke will offer, if he hasn't already.

Mikva Challenge
Abner and Zoe Mikva think that the way we teach civics in school is broken. Maybe it's the civics itself that is broken. I don't see Mikva calling out the mayor on 17 years of corruption and anti-democratic rule. Maybe the mayor needs a private tutoring session. I also don't see Mikva running for mayor or funding a civic-minded reform candidate to do so.

Whore House
Most aldermen are ho's.

Beavers Slop
Bill Beavers calls himself "the hog with the big nuts."

Nuts fit for roasting. It's past overdue that reporters pulled every piece of paper on this guy and did a f ull-court press on his financial and city council dealings.

Bush League
"President Bush was unqualified to run the country in 2000, just as Obama is now."

Kitchen Knife
"White House Gets A New Pastry Chef."

Old one turned against the war.

Scooter Ride
The Libby trial shows once again that politicians spend far more time planning how to manage the media than the media spends planning on how to conduct an effective interview and do the reporting that will reveal the scoundrels for who they are. Even more so now that newsrooms are being gutted.

Ari's Gold
Ari Fleischer's damaging testimony is front page news in the Tribune and New York Times, but buried in the Sun-Times on page 26 under "Oklahoma Produces Another Miss America," perhaps to spare editorial page editor Steve Huntley the embarrassment of being so blindingly wrong - among others.

ChicagOlympic Sun-Times
The Sun-Times has never felt moved to put an editorial on its front page calling on the mayor to clean up his act, but on Sunday the big headline was "Why The Olympics Must Be Ours."

The paper never lists the ad dollars it hopes to reap as one of the reasons.

Mayberry Post
"It's time for Chicagoans to get behind the effort to sell Chicago to the world," the paper says.

No, it's time for newspapers to do their job and vet the exaggerated economic claims being made by the local Olympic committee, and flesh out the financial issues, flaws in planning including lack of community involvement, the mayor's horrible track record with large projects, and the impact upon the city and residents that shouldn't automatically be presumed to be a positive one.

Record to Run On
"Publicly, [USOC members] want guarantees that the games will not drown in red ink and cost overruns," the Sun-Times says.

Good thing those issues have never been a problem on Daley's watch.

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