The [Wednesday] Papers

"I do not believe they are in a civil war today," said Secretary of Defense and former Tribune Company director Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday.

You do not believe, or you do not know?

Because that's not really something the secretary of defense could be expected to know. Or believe.

But then, the real problem in Iraq is the failure of the media to report the good stories.

We don't make that mistake here at The Beachwood Reporter.

For example, we think all of the items that follow in today's column are quite good.

Was He Shirtless?
"A neighborhood man who later told police he had been drinking breached security at Midway Airport, apparently walking off the street, through a checkpoint and onto the airfield, officials acknowledged Tuesday."

Is it too obvious to ask if he was a White Sox fan?

Today's Assignment
This being Wednesday, we are forced to confront another installment of "English 439" , in which the Chicago Tribune's Julia Keller attends a DePaul University class on Jonathan Swift this winter and then forces us to live through it too.

The Tribune is a paper that utterly fails to understand the art of assigning stories. You send Steve Rosenbloom to a class on Jonathan Swift. You send Julia Keller to cover Rummy.

Now that would make for an interesting newspaper.

Mistakes Happen
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jennifer Hunter writes today about sending her husband away to vacation on his own.

The part where she disclosed that her husband is the publisher of the Sun-Times must have been accidentally edited out.

Scribble Spin
Reported by Michael Miner of the Chicago Reader in April 2004: "Jennifer Hunter, the former editor of North Shore magazine, has just been named to the Sun-Times editorial board. 'It's a step down for her, having run the magazine successfully for almost three years,' says her husband, John Cruickshank, publisher of the Sun-Times.

Yeah, you wouldn't want to leave North Shore magazine for the editorial board of one of the nation's largest newspapers--and get your own doodly column there too.

Line of the Day
"Marty Kovarik creeps me out."

- Carol Marin

Bell Curve
Does anyone really believe consumers win when big telephone companies merge?

Yes. The business editor of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Does anyone really believe that AT&T has a warm and fuzzy image?

Yes. Same answer.

Calling Agnew
Zay Smith points out in QT that Dick Cheney's approval rating has fallen to 18 percent, while Paris Hilton's approval rating has fallen to 15 percent.

Which puts the pair's free-fall into a dead-heat, because the margin of error with these two has to be way beyond 3 percent.

Grape Nuts
For more information on the weird wine thing going on in Illinois, check out Free the Grapes!

Because the story in today's Sun-Times only confused the matter.

Daley Watch
"And he played down the security debate now playing out at the nation's ports if, as at the Skyway, a foreign-owned consortium wants to take over Midway Airport.

"'We had security [issues] at the Skyway. . . . It's a big bridge. If it blows up, you can't get to Indiana."

- Sun-Times

Half-Court Press
Mayor Richard M. Daley spoke out about his endorsement of Cook County Board President John Stroger, but did the press bother to ask the mayor about Stroger's shaky performance? And if so, did the mayor bother to answer them?

We'll never know. It's not that kind of press.

Clown Town
A new book scheduled for release later this month promises yet another take on the murders of the Spilotro brothers.

KLAS-TV investigative reporter George Knapp reports that "a lot of new information is about to be made public," based on author Denny Griffin's interviews with "a small army of former police detectives and FBI agents."

And that means more news about the Chicago Outfit, which ran Las Vegas in the mob's golden age. We'll be looking for details on the role of Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, awaiting trial here in Chicago along with a 11 other defendants grabbed up in the FBI's Operation Family Secrets investigation.

Says Knapp in his report: "[Lombardo] probably knows plenty about some of the most famous murders in modern history, including those of mobster Sam Giancana, Teamsters official Allen Dorfman, and quite possibly the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa."

Griffin is the author of such fiction works as Killer In Pair-A-Dice, Blood Money, One-Armed Bandit, and Pension.

He also authored the non-fiction work Policing Las Vegas.

In today's Reporter
Learn how (not) to leave a message for Neko Case in our new installment of Alt-Country Corner.

Wanna read hiply? A guide.

Decide if you're already tired of Dusty Baker again in after reading the latest additions to The Dusty & Ozzie Show.

Take one more look at an inspired elegy of irrepressible Kirby Puckett.

And the Bob Sirott thread is heating up in our Beachwood TV forum!

Don't forget our Tip Line: Drunken interlopers welcome.

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